New birds from the Gulf of Fonseca

Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrel

The last two species to be added to the Honduras bird list were California Gull, which I saw back in February of this year with Roselvy, Mayron and Oliver, and Kelp Gull, which I saw with Roselvy, also in February of this year. It's always exciting to find new birds for a country, and yesterday, the same team of observers (Oliver, Mayron, Roselvy and me) added two more for Honduras: Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrel and Black Storm-Petrel! All four new species this year have come from Gulf of Fonseca in southern Honduras, an area that remains underbirded, and may have more undiscovered treasures.

Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrel

Our idea was to repeat the trip to the Farallones we did two years ago. Unfortunately, our boatsman rather carelessly got us into Salvadoran waters, and the testy relationship between El Salvador and Honduras being what it is, angry Salvadoran marines intercepted us, and almost had us arrested for entering Salvadoran waters without the necessary paperwork. We actually had bothered to get all necessary paperwork, but for leaving Honduras and entering Nicaragua (Los Farallones belong to Nicaragua). We hadn't planned on visiting El Salvador or El Salvador waters.

The poor pumped-up marine officer, suffering from unnaturally high levels of testosterone, started giving us all kinds of crap about not being able to do research without a permit. We tried to explain to him that not all birding is research, and that we were just tourists. He then claimed we needed a tourism permit (which does not exist, as we respectfully pointed out to him), and he said that our names did not appear on the paperwork we had processed with the Honduran customs people. (Later on, we discovered that all our names were there.) He also ordered a giant bag we had on board containing life vests to be emptied, and, seeing there were only life vests in there, he himself started to deflate a little. He handed us back our documents, and ordered us to get the hell out of his waters.

Which of course we did. Back in Honduran waters, we hoped to continue our trip to the Farallones, but our boatsman was now so afraid that he refused to do that. We ended up birding an area 6 km east of (Salvadoran) Meanguera and 3-5 km south of (Honduran) Amapala.

This proved productive, because that's where we observed the afore-mentioned pelagics. Both Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrel and Black Storm-Petrel occur widely along the Pacific coast of Central America, and thus were expected to occur in Honduras also. We observed an estimated six Black-Storm-Petrels (at least four seen at the same time) but as the birds were criss-crossing those waters casually, there may have been more, perhaps even ten or more. We only saw one Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrel twice, although it's possible there really were two or more.

Black Storm-Petrel

Oliver and Mayron got better (and more) shots of the Black Storm-Petrels than I did; my camera died on me in the middle of intense heat and heavy usage. It's been back from the dead before, but this time it seems a replacement is in order.

Bridled Tern

Bridled Terns (from the colony on the Farallones) and Black Terns were also there.

I apologize to the readers of this blog for the rather long hiatus between this and the previous post. I'll try to post a bit more regularly from now on.

Los Farallones

Los Farallones

Yesterday, Roselvy and I took our friend Dan Germer on a boat trip to a group of rocky islets in the Gulf of Fonseca called Los Farallones. Our objective was to find breeding Bridled Terns, and who knows what else pelagic. These rocks are about 10 km from the Cosiguïna Peninsula of Nicaragua, and about 10 km from Meanguera, an island that belongs to El Salvador. We left from Amapala, a Honduran island at about 25 km distance. Yes, the small Gulf of Fonseca is littered with volcanic islands and peninsulas from all three countries. Most authorities now accept that Los Farallones belong to Nicaragua, although the (Honduran) harbor master of Amapala was of the opinion that those rocks really belong to all three countries. It matters little to the birds that breed there, and ultimately — I'm not really a lister — not that much to me either. I was excited to see these birds no matter what nationality they possess.

Bridled Terns (and a Brown Booby)

The Bridled Tern colony on Los Farallones was first described by my friend Oliver Komar (Komar & Rodríguez 1996), who encountered an estimated 600 breeding pairs in 1993. Nineteen years later, this colony still exists, although my impression was of fewer individuals. 

Bridled Terns

As we circled the islands, it was difficult to get an accurate sense of how many Bridled Terns were there, but we estimated about 600 individuals, or 300 pairs. There may be a fairly wide margin of error in this estimate.

breeding Bridled Terns - note chick on right

We found at least one chick, and many apparently incubating birds. Komar and Rodríguez reported 8 chicks in early August of 1993, so the breeding season there appears to be July/August.

Blue-footed Boobies and a Brown Pelican

We saw five other species on the island: Blue-footed Booby (estimated 30, possibly more); Brown Booby (estimated 60, possibly also a low estimate); 300 Magnificent Frigatebirds; 80 Brown Pelicans; and 15 Gray-breasted Martins. A Least Storm-Petrel was seen darting away from the islands just as we approached.

Blue-footed Booby with a USFW band on its left leg

One of the Blue-footed Boobies was banded. Blue-footed Booby, a relatively recent addition to the Honduran list, now appears to be regular in the Gulf of Fonseca, as well as off the coast of El Salvador. Jenner et al. (2007) listed the species as unknown but expected from the Honduran part of the Gulf of Fonseca, and indeed eBird shows several recent records for the area.

Adult male Brown Booby

Unlike Atlantic Brown Boobies, adult male eastern Pacific Brown Boobies have a beautiful frosty-pale head around the face.

Note: a trip to Los Farallones needs to be planned beforehand; you can't just show up there and ask a fisherman to take you to 'those rocks out there'. If traveling from the Honduran side, a permit can be obtained from the harbor master in Amapala. Bring your passport and enough money to buy gasoline. From Amapala, the roundtrip is about 50 km. We spent about 80 USD in gasoline (which included the boatsman's fee) plus 12 USD for the permit.

Cited literature:

Jenner, T., O. Komar & A. Narish. 2007. Noteworthy bird records from the Gulf of Fonseca, Honduras. Cotinga 28: 13—20.

Komar, O. & W. Rodríguez. 1996. A Major Bridled Tern (Sterna anaethetus) Colony in the Gulf of Fonseca, Nicaragua. Colonial Waterbirds Vol. 19, Nr. 2: 264—267.