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From: math0065@waikato.ac.nz
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Wintering in the Summertime
Message-ID: <1991Jun11.103425.3942@waikato.ac.nz>
Date: 10 Jun 91 22:34:24 GMT
Article-I.D.: waikato.1991Jun11.103425.3942
Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Lines: 32

In Article  "Wintering in the Summertime" Date: 5 Jun 91 13:00:23 GMT
jclarke@remus.rutgers.edu (James C. Clarke) writes

> I hope that this is the right forum for this question.  There are a great
> number of birds in North America that winter in South America, some as far as
> Argentina.  Now, I suppose that these birds are "wintering" in a locale that is
> then in it's summer. I would also assume that these birds are non_breeding and
> interact with local bird population which is breeding.  With the exception of a
> few pelagic species, such as a several species of Albatross, are they any
> species of bird that the main portion of the species "winters" in the 
> Northern Hemisphere's summer?  I can't think of any. 

	The only New Zealand species (of land bird) that seems to meet your
requirements is the long-tailed cuckoo (Eudynamis taitensis) which regularly
breeds in Stewart Island (47 S), and straggles to the Auckland Islands (51 S),
but migrates in our winter time as far north as the Marshall and Caroline
Islands (~10 N).  All the same, the main wintering range is south of the
equator, from Fiji east to Tahiti.

	The comment of from dmark@acsu.buffalo.edu (David Mark) of 6 Jun 91 
11:25:29 GMT:

> Next, relatively few of our breedings birds go all the way through to the
> temperate zone or antarctic zone.  The only land birds I can think
> of right now that do that are some of the swallows.  Others would be many
> shorebirds and seabirds.  Most of our migrants stop in the tropics, or north 
> of the tropics.

is quite relevant, though.  If one insists that the migrants cross the equator,
then even the list of "normal" northern birds wintering south is much reduced.

Hamish Spencer (h.spencer@waikato.ac.nz)