Ocellated Quail

Yesterday morning I had the good fortune to stumble upon a very handsome bird that’s rarely seen: Ocellated Quail. They live where I live, on Cerro de Hula in Honduras, and I occasionally hear them or get brief views of birds I flushed from practically under my feet. When that happens, they usually fly only short distances, then drop down in the vegetation, and you can search all you want to, you’re unlikely to see them.

For years, Xeno-Canto only had one recording, from Guatemala, of a bird giving a drawn-out whistle (“puuuuuurr”), followed by some shorter phrases (“piu-piu-piu”). 

Living in Honduras these past three years, I would hear that long phrase sometimes, but never the shorter second half [edit: I once heard the shorter phrases without the long phrase, which I mention in an eBird checklist comment I forgot about, here]. I wondered if the second part was only given part of the time, or perhaps part of some Guatemalan dialect that the Honduran birds didn’t do. 

Not so long ago, I flushed a pair on nearby Montaña de Izopo. Classic scenario of practically stepping on them, then seeing them fly a short distance, next they drop down in the vegetation and are not seen again. This time, however, they flew off in opposite directions. Then they started vocalizing. One of them – the male? – gave the long whistle, while the other answered with the shorter phrases. Exactly as in the Guatemalan recording – mystery solved! 

The birds yesterday were right at the edge of a dirt road on Cerro de Hula. At first I saw only the male, just sitting there. Thinking my time with this bird would be very limited, I snapped away some photos, but the bird did not move. After about a minute or so, a female appeared from out of the grass. Together they posed for more shots.

Then, as I stealthily walked closer, two more females materialized! Evidently, this male was quite the gentleman, keeping watch while the females foraged. They then quickly walked off, of which I was able to get a few seconds of video.

Anyone interested in seeing this species should come to Honduras, where it is probably a little less rare than in Chiapas, Guatemala, El Salvador or Nicaragua. The pine forests of Olancho have traditionally been the place to look for them here in Honduras, although they can also be found closer to Tegucigalpa. Parts of Olancho are not considered safe, which is why I haven’t done much birding there. I’ve seen or heard them several times in an open pine forest with a brushy understory on Montaña de Izopo, about 20 km south of Tegucigalpa. Here on Cerro de Hula (close to Montaña de Izopo), they are found in an agricultural area where fields are used for corn cultivation or left abandoned for horses to graze. There's a few small patches of degraded woodland here and there, but it's mostly grassland. Land management practices here include yearly burns (usually around April), where most of the grassy vegetation that dried out during the dry season is burned at the end of that season. One would expect such practices to impact the local bird communities, yet the Vulnerable (IUCN) Ocellated Quail occurs here, as does a large population of Sedge Wrens (highly local in most of Central America). This spot is also the only known wintering location of Cassin’s Kingbird in Central America (the majority wintering further north, until southeastern Mexico).

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.

Prairie Merlin: overlooked in Central America?

Sunday morning, I photographed this female or immature Prairie Merlin (Falco columbarius richardsonii) behind our house, on a dirt road that leads to the top of Cerro de Hula. In this plumage they are similar to Taiga Merlins (ssp columbarius), the expected ssp in Central America, but subtly differ in the following aspects: paler overall; rufousy thin breast streaks on a white breast; malar stripe nearly absent; paler mantle. The overcast weather made for a very dark photo. In the field, the bird looked pale.

Two years ago, there was an adult male on the campus of Zamorano University, about 27 km from Cerro de Hula. The weather was about the same that day, i.e. overcast and drizzly, but adult males are a little easier to identify. See this blog entry for a detailed description and photos of that observation, and for a discussion of the regional occurrence of the various Merlin subspecies.

There’s one other record on eBird for the region, from Belize two years ago. That bird was photographed only after it had flown further away from the observers. Although the photo apparently was too distant to be conclusive, the description is convincing. Interestingly, that observation was 5 days apart from ours in Zamorano. The Zamorano bird was not seen again that winter, despite regular coverage. I wonder if our Cerro de Hula bird will stick around.

Prairie Merlins are thought to winter no further south than northwest Mexico, but these reports indicate that small numbers may winter further south than previously thought.

Cool yard bird: Black-billed Cuckoo

Lately, I have had cuckoos on my mind. There was a week or so last year when you couldn't bird just about anywhere in central Honduras without seeing at least one of the Coccyzus cuckoos – usually the more common Yellow-billed Cuckoo. But that was late September / early October, and after mid-October this year, I thought the window was closing on them, and I wasn't going to see one this year.

Then suddenly there was this hatch-year Black-billed Cuckoo in my own backyard this morning! Probably not a rarity in Honduras, where the entire North American population must pass through in migration twice a year, but all the same a species rarely reported, due to its secretive habits.

Now I need to find me a Yellow-billed Cuckoo.

27 October 2013 postscript:
Eight days later and 200 m further, Roselvy and I found an immature Black-billed Cuckoo today! According to eBird, nobody else is reporting this species in Central America this fall, and here we are with two immature Black-billed Cuckoos. Are they the same bird? It seems likely, yet I'm not 100% convinced that they are. Here are some photos of today's bird, seen along the dirt road that goes up to Cerro de Hula (Honduras). As I said, this is roughly 200 m from our backyard.

We're looking at the other side of the face, compared to last week's bird. But note the distribution of the darker color on the (lower) mandible. Here's a photo in which the bird turned its head:

Compare that to the bird at the top of this post, and tell me if it's the same bird or not.

I never did find that Yellow-billed Cuckoo...

Raptor migration in the Gulf of Fonseca

Swainson's Hawks migrating over San Lorenzo, Valle

Exactly one year ago, on 10 October 2012, I observed a large raptor flight in San Lorenzo, Valle. Thinking the same phenomenon would likely be visible at the same location a year later, Roselvy and I went down to the southern lowlands yesterday, where we visited the same site, and a few nearby birding spots.

Sure enough, when we got there, we found a sizable raptor flight in progress. Like last year, the flight consisted mostly of Turkey Vultures and Swainson's Hawks, with modest numbers of Broad-winged Hawks and a smattering of other species present. Unlike last year, most lines were far away from the salt ponds complex La Ostia, where we started our birding, so there we focused on the shorebirds present.

Wilson's Plovers

Those too were nearly the same species and number as last year! Last year I missed Stilt Sandpiper – yesterday two were present; and I missed (western) Willet – yesterday three were present. We missed Solitary Sandpiper yesterday, but apart from those differences, we observed the same species in more or less the same numbers as exactly one year ago.

Stilt Sandpipers

After an hour and forty-five minutes in oppressive midday heat, we bailed and looked for food, shade and a better view of the raptor flight at Restaurante Brisas del Golfo. There we observed a raptor line directly overhead, one further south crossing the Gulf, and one further inland over the hills. Although we didn't count, we estimated about 10,000 Turkey Vultures, 6,000 Swainson's Hawks and 500 Broad-winged Hawks to have been passing us during the one hour and forty-five minutes we spent there.

Swainson's Hawks

A final stop at nearby shrimp farm Culmavic added migrant Chimney Swift and American Kestrel to our list, as well as the locally common Clapper Rail.

More small hummingbirds

Bumblebee Hummingbird

Very similar to the Wine-throated Hummingbird of the previous entry is Bumblebee Hummingbird, which replaces it north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. I myself went north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec last week, on a business trip quite similar to the one I undertook in March of this year. This time I visited the Veracruz River of Raptors project, a project I worked for in 2008, 2009 and 2011. I got one day of birding in the pine-oak forests of La Joya in, just west of Xalapa. Bumblebee Hummingbird is locally common there.

Unlike the male Wine-throated Hummingbird, which perches conspicuously and vocalizes constantly, flashing his brilliant gorget in all directions, the male Bumblebee Hummingbird is more low-key, and apparently perches inside the vegetation, where it was difficult to find. Every once in a while, a conspecific would fly by and mouse-like squeaks emanated from the vegetation, while the producer of those squeaks remained invisible. They were more easily seen when feeding, moving slowly but constantly like a bumblebee from flower to flower.

Sparkling-tailed Hummingbird

A similar feeding style is seen in Sparkling-tailed Hummingbird. This morning I photographed this female as it fed quietly in a flowerbed on the top of Cerro de Hula (Honduras).

Wine-throated Hummingbird

Many migratory birds that breed in the United States and Canada have finished breeding and have started to show up in Honduras recently. Many residents have also finished their breeding season, and juveniles of those species which retain a juvenal plumage for a while (like Rusty Sparrow, Eastern Bluebird and Bushy-crested Jay, to name a few) now seem to be everywhere.

For one group of residents – the nectarivores – the breeding season is just starting here in Honduras. Both hummingbirds and flowerpiercers are easily found these days, because many of them are quite vocal and active. Some species, like the Wine-throated Hummingbird pictured above, spend much of their time displaying at leks, and produce an endless series of chips when perched on a favorite branch, or a surprisingly musical song when hovering in front of a female. 

While chirping from an exposed perch, the male often puffs up his extravagant gorget, which glitters bright magenta from some angles, but shows a duller green or a dark wine-red from other angles.  

Posturing also forms part of the display of this species. Every once in a while, whenever a conspecific flew past (my feeling was males mostly, but I'm not 100% sure), the displaying perched male would spread his tail and raise his wings, but remain perched, apparently to impress another male, or perhaps to impress the watching female.

We observed these Wine-throated Hummingbirds in La Tigra National Park, near Tegucigalpa, last Saturday. While hummingbirds and flowerpiercers can be hard to find at times, their songs are now frequently heard, and watching their displays is fascinating. We also observed several male Green-breasted Mountain-gems dueling fiercely in mid-air.

Cerulean Warbler

Fall migration is truly underway here in Honduras also, not only with a good variety of shorebirds present (Roselvy and I had good shorebirds last Monday), but with the first warblers also showing up now.

This afternoon, on a brief outing on the slope of Cerro de Hula, right behind our house, we found a first fall male Cerulean Warbler feeding in a free-standing oak surrounded by farm land. Cerro de Hula has some notable residents, including Ocellated Quail and a sizable population of Sedge Wren, but things really get interesting in migration. Last year in spring migration I had a Cerulean on the same dirt road going up to the top of Cerro de Hula; that was my first in Honduras. Today, number two.

Cerulean Warbler is an early migrant, with the first individuals reaching the South American wintering ground in August. The eBird map shows birds just starting to arrive on the Gulf coast; our record is the first in Central America this fall.

Fonseca Rails

I've written here a couple of times before about the Clapper Rails of the Gulf of Fonseca. I've even written a short note documenting breeding in Honduras for El Esmeralda, the bulletin of the Asociación Hondureña de Ornitología (ASHO).

Clapper Rail was first found and documented in the Honduran part of the Gulf of Fonseca in 2010, by Robert Gallardo and Mayron Mejía. In 2012, the species was first reported from the Nicaraguan side of the Gulf by Jens Olek Byskov, Salvadora Morales, Orlando Jarquín and Juan Carlos Alaniz, and in 2013, Oliver Komar, Roselvy Juárez and I found it on the Salvadoran part of the Gulf.

I corresponded about these birds with James Maley, a rail researcher from the University of Wyoming, who expressed an interest in sampling specimens from this population. Together, we wrote a research proposal which we submitted to ICF, the Honduran governmental organization in charge of research permits. James is here right now and we have just finished a week of field work, in which we collected a total of 8 specimens. This series will be used for a taxonomic description of this population.

This week, with the help of playback, we got a sense of how common this species really is in the Gulf of Fonseca. For example, one transect that was about 450 m long had an estimated 15 pairs and 3 single individuals – that's 33 individuals, on a relatively small stretch of mangrove. In some parts, densities seemed so high that we wondered if Clapper Rail was perhaps the second most common species there, after (Mangrove) Yellow Warbler! While few birders or biologists have seen this species in Honduras, most locals that we talked to in the salt ponds and shrimp farms of the area knew the bird well. One of them assisted us with field work, and he told us those birds have been common there for as long as he could remember – at least 40 years!

Remarkable then that this population, apparently never rare, went undiscovered for so long. Given available habitat and abundant food resources, there are probably thousands if not tens of thousands of these rails in the Gulf of Fonseca.

Two tropical birds: one expected, one not

Last Saturday, Roselvy and I set out to find Long-tailed Manakin and Blue-tailed Hummingbird in Choluteca, two species that we hadn't observed yet this year in Honduras. While we easily found those species in a community called La Fortuna, situated in humid middle elevation forest among coffee and mango plantations more or less in the middle of the department of Choluteca, I did not get any (reasonable) photos.

I did get photos of Tropical Pewee (top) and Tropical Gnatcatcher. While the former was expected and indeed quite common there, the latter wasn't really on our radar screen for that part of the country. 

When we heard a descending trill, we didn't immediately recognize it. Locating the singer was not difficult, and upon seeing a gnatcatcher producing that song, I instantly realized it had to be Tropical Gnatcatcher. It occurs in eastern and northern Honduras, and is no doubt common in many areas, but these are exactly the areas far from where we live, where we haven't done that much birding yet.

For us, this was a cool and unexpected find, well outside its known range.

Great Swallow-tailed Swift calls

Yesterday I recorded Great Swallow-tailed Swifts vocalizing near El Obraje, in the Honduran department of El Paraiso. I just uploaded these calls to Xeno Canto, and as far as I've been able to ascertain, these are the first public recordings of this species.

I went to El Paraiso yesterday morning with Roselvy Juárez, Oliver Komar and Ruth Bennett to bird another data-deficient eBird quadrant. It was a pleasant and productive morning of birding, as we found 92 species for the quadrant, including Little Tinamou, White-tailed Hawk, Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Fork-tailed Flycatcher, Lesser Greenlet, Rufous-and-white Wren, Tropical Parula, and Giant Cowbird. 

Chantler and Driessens, in their 1995 book "Swifts: a Guide to the Swifts and Treeswifts of the World" cite Edwards' 1989 book "A Field Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Adjacent Areas", which describes the call of the Great Swallow-tailed Swift as "a plaintive tyee-ew". Yesterday, one of the individuals in a flock of five gave that call, illustrated in the following recording:

Howell & Webb (1995) give another description of a Great Swallow-tailed Swift vocalization, noting a "reedy, screechy chipping, including a distinctive, accelerating series, ending emphatically, may recall Pileated Flycatcher song: kree kri-kri-kri-kri kree-kreeh!" One of the birds yesterday also gave that call, illustrated in the following recording:

I recorded these calls from a single-species flock of five individuals, at an elevation of 1000 m, as they flew over us. The habitat there was montane semi-humid forest, with some shade coffee plantations, and steep rocky canyons.

Until now, neither Xeno Canto nor the Macaulay Library had any recordings of this species, which appears to be fairly common in the highlands of Honduras.

Cited literature:

Chantler, P. & G. Driessens. 1995. Swifts: a Guide to the Swifts and Treeswifts of the World. Pica Press, Sussex.

Edwards, E. P. 1989. A Field Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Adjacent Areas: Belize, Guatemala, and El Salvador, Third Edition. Corrie Herring Hooks Series.

Howell, S. N. G. & S. Webb. 1995. A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

eBirding southern Honduras

female Rose-throated Becard

Roselvy and I targeted another data-deficient eBird quadrant yesterday morning, trying to fill gaps in our knowledge of bird distribution in southern Honduras. We did seven complete checklists of about twenty minutes each (plus one incidental list) in a quadrant just north of Nacaome, in the department of Valle, where most of the habitat is Pacific dry forest interspersed with corn and bean subsistence cultivations, small mango orchards here and there, and small-scale cattle farming. Some of the birds we found are uncommonly reported from Honduras (such as White-bellied Chachalaca, or Thicket Tinamou), while others we found in higher than usual densities (like Striped Cuckoo). In total, we dug up 68 species for this quadrant. Not bad, considering all winter visitors aren't there right now. We'll come back for them later.

the 'empty quadrant' we visited yesterday

We stopped at three different river crossings, and thus likely biased our counts toward waterbirds. This explains three kingfisher species on our list (Ringed, Amazon and Green), and the high frequency of riparian birds like Rose-throated Becard (present on 70% of our checklists yesterday). Cuckoos appear to be genuinely common in this area, with Groove-billed Ani on 85%, Striped Cuckoo on 70%, and Squirrel Cuckoo and Lesser Ground-cuckoo each on 40% of our checklists. The only species present on all of our seven checklists yesterday was White-tipped Dove. Curiously absent was Black Phoebe, diligently looked for but not found, while Social Flycatcher only appeared on one out of seven checklists – normally a more common species in disturbed areas.

Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher

Our best birds yesterday included Collared Forest-Falcon, White-bellied Chachalaca, Thicket Tinamou, and Green-breasted Mango. Soon we'll try to hit the quadrant above it, to continue eliminating as many holes on the map as we can. The area around Tegucigalpa is starting to look pretty good!

Great Swallow-tailed Swift

Great Swallow-tailed Swift

Although Chantler & Driessens in their Guide to the Swifts and Treeswifts of the World (1995) describe it as "one of the rarer species", Great Swallow-tailed Swift is regularly reported from Honduras. Monroe (1968) considered it a common resident in the interior mountains of Honduras, and around Cerro de Hula, half an hour south of Tegucigalpa, we see this species occasionally. Last fall, it was regular (daily) for a couple weeks at the very top of Cerro de Hula, with sometimes up to 8 individuals together. Another spot where we have been seeing this species every now and then is from a dirt road behind the community of El Tizatillo, about 15 minutes south of Tegucigalpa.

While most sightings of Great Swallow-tailed Swift are of birds flying high and fast, we had a pair flying rather low and slow this morning at El Tizatillo. Despite the poor lighting, I was able to get a few pictures of this cooperative pair. The apparent damage in this individual's right wing did not seem to hamper it in flight.

At some point, we saw one of them was carrying something in its bill, but we couldn't quite see what. Could it be nesting material? [Edit: I now think this is simply a throat bulging with food.]

Great Swallow-tailed Swift is found from southwestern Mexico through Guatemala, northern El Salvador and the central highlands of Honduras, to northwestern Nicaragua.

Cited literature:

Chantler, P. & G. Driessens. 1995. Swifts – A Guide to the Swifts and Treeswifts of the World. Pica Press, East Sussex.

Monroe, B. L. 1968. A Distributional Survey of the Birds of Honduras. Ornithological Monographs No. 7, American Ornithologists' Union.

Baby boids!

recently fledged Plumbeous Vireo

Down here in Honduras, 'tis the season when young birds are everywhere. This is a recently fledged Plumbeous Vireo, one of the members of the Solitary Vireo complex that is resident here. Its parents look more like Cassin's Vireos than northern Plumbeous, but that is how they remain classified for now. With some genetics work, this Central American population may one day be elevated to species level.

On a short walk I encountered a couple of Plumbeous Vireo families, now more easily detected because of the constant begging calls that the fledglings produce. 

these feathers were all grown at once, and thus – although new – are of poor quality

I photographed this bird a couple of days ago in the pine-oak forest of San Buenaventura, a small village 30 minutes south of Tegucigalpa, close to where we live. Also present there were recently fledged Eastern Bluebirds.

recently fledged Eastern Bluebird

This bird's dad was singing from the top of a tall, nearly dead pine tree. I recorded his song and posted it on Xeno-Canto:

Lesser Nighthawk breeding in Honduras

Incubating female Lesser Nighthawk

The Lesser Nighthawk is a common migrant and winter visitant in Honduras, occurring in the lowlands of both coasts and in the interior highlands to 1,200 meters. It prefers arid situations and is most abundant along the Pacific coast and in the arid interior valleys. It is also a regular migrant in the Bay Islands and the Cayos Cochinos. There is no direct evidence that the species breeds in Honduras, although several specimens have been secured in June (Eisenmann, 1963: 165).

Burt Monroe, 1968, A Distributional Survey of the Birds of Honduras

Twenty-seven years later, Howell & Webb (1995) did not know much more ("exact distribution poorly known"), and their map shows it (incorrectly) as a breeding resident in the interior of northern Central America, from Mexico through Guatemala to western Honduras. Juárez & Komar (2012) however described breeding of this species on the beaches of El Salvador and Guatemala, away from the interior. They noted that breeding of Lesser Nighthawk is still not reported for Honduras.

Yesterday, while in the company of one of these authors, I almost stepped on an incubating Lesser Nighthawk down at one of the salt ponds in the Honduran part of the Gulf of Fonseca. Although a brown bird against a green background should have been obvious, we just weren't prepared I guess. 

Nest of Lesser Nighthawk

As the female flew off, a little scrape on the ground revealed two eggs. We decided to quickly take photos and then leave, to let the female go back to her nest.

Can you find the nest?

When we passed again an hour later, we found her back on her nest brooding her eggs. This time I took some photos of the bird on the nest, but was careful not to flush her again.

Although near the coast, the habitat here is notably different from breeding habitat on the beaches of El Salvador and Guatemala, where the birds were found breeding on white sand close to the high water line (Juárez & Komar 2012). This Honduran nest was approximately 20 m from a shack used by the supervisor of the salt pond complex, and on short grass, about 7 km away from open water.

At times we have seen large numbers of Lesser Nighthawks at dusk in the lowlands of the Gulf of Fonseca. Are these birds perhaps breeding in the salt ponds here and there, and on the beaches of Choluteca, between Punta Ratón and Punta Condega?

Cited literature:

Howell, S. N. G. & S. Webb. 1995. A Field Guide to Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America. Oxford University Press.

Juárez-Jovel, R. C. & O. Komar. 2012. Nuevo sitios de anidación para el Chorlito Piquigrueso (Charadrius wilsonia) y el Chotacabras Menor (Chordeiles acutipennis) en El Salvador y Guatemala. Bóletin SAO, Vol. 21, 6 pp.

Monroe, B. L. 1968. A Distributional Survey of the Birds of Honduras. Ornithological Monographs No. 7, American Ornithologists' Union.

Buff-breasted Flycatcher

Buff-breasted Flycatcher is a fairly common resident of pine-oak forests from the southwestern US through Mexico to Guatemala and Honduras; apparently rare in El Salvador. eBird does not have records for Nicaragua, although I observed this species in Honduras not far from the Nicaraguan border in 2007 and 2008 (as eBird reminds me), so it may occur there also. There's a historical record for El Salvador of four specimens collected in Chalatenango in 1927 (Dickey & Van Rossem 1938), and a slightly more recent record - 1976 - from Thurber et al. (1987). Evidently, the SalvaNATURA database (unpublished) has a few more recent records from northern El Salvador.

Yesterday we found a pair in Reserva Biológica Misoco (Honduras), on the border between the departments of Francisco Morazán and Olancho. This observation put a new dot on the eBird map for this species and a new bar (for the first week of May) in the Honduras eBird bar chart. 

Since the birds were vocalizing, I grabbed some audio and uploaded that to Xeno Canto. Although in the middle of the day there was no singing, they did vocalize briefly every time they changed position.

Literature:
Dickey, D. R. & A. J. Van Rossem. 1938. The Birds of El Salvador. Field Mus. Nat. Hist. Zool. Ser. No. 23, 609 pp.
Thurber, W. A., J. F. Serrano, A. Sermeño & M. Benitez. 1987. Status of uncommon and previously unreported birds of El Salvador. Proceedings of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, Vol. 3, No. 3, 294 pp.

Warbler song in migration

Black-throated Green Warbler

According to the Peterson Field Guide to the Warblers of North America, "male warblers sing almost incessantly early in the breeding season, and often in spring migration as well (especially as the breeding grounds are approached); many species begin singing before departing the wintering grounds." (Dunn & Garrett 1997).

This week I heard some migrant warbler song here and there among the rich chorus of resident species now singing down here in Honduras. A couple of days ago I obtained a poor recording of a singing Black-throated Green Warbler, while today I got a rather better recording of a singing Wilson's Warbler. Although the phenomenon is evidently not unknown, it remains poorly represented in bio-acoustic libraries such as Xeno Canto or Cornell's Macaulay Library. 

Unfortunately, the Black-throated Green Warbler is barely audible as its weak song is drowned out by a chorus of cicadas. Listen carefully for what I believe is a so-called 'unaccented song'. This Black-throated Green Warbler was in the company of at least three conspecifics, as well as two Blue-headed Vireos, a Black-and-White Warbler and a Magnolia Warbler. They were foraging in encino (thin-leaved) oaks on a sunny, south-facing slope at an elevation of about 1300 m.

This Wilson's Warbler was foraging in similar habitat, but did not appear to be associated with other insectivorous birds. The weak ending of his song suggests the nominate eastern subspecies. At the time of writing, Xeno Canto does not have any other Wilson's Warbler song from Central America, but the Macaulay Library has an excellent cut from Costa Rica.

Cited literature:

Dunn, J & K. Garrett. 1997. A field guide to the warblers of North America. Peterson Field Guide Series 49. Houghton Mifflin, New York.

Raptors in La Muralla

Swallow-tailed Kite

La Muralla National Park in Olancho, Honduras is one of the lesser-known birding destinations in Honduras, at least if gauged by eBird checklists. Maybe that's because it's far away from the north-south axis of San Pedro Sula / Tegucigalpa, or because there are no mayan ruins nearby, or because there is little tourist infrastructure in the park. The birding itself, however, is as good as any in Honduras, and this place has quickly become one of my favorite birding destinations.

King Vulture

Roselvy and I went there this weekend, and stayed at the rustic visitor center inside the park. We went to bed with a calling Mottled Owl outside, and woke up with the songs of Black-faced Antthrush and Pheasant Cuckoo. Highlight species for us included Black-throated and Unicolored Jays, Scaled Antpitta, Dusky Antbird, Stub-tailed Spadebill, Resplendent Quetzal, Blue-crowned Chlorophonia, King Vulture (seen both days), Great Tinamou and Nightingale Wren - to name a few birds that we don't usually see or hear closer to home.

Strong-billed Woodcreeper

When we got there Saturday afternoon, sunny weather made for pleasant birding, and for decent lighting for photos. Sunday however was overcast. We saw some great birds, but practically all raptors I photographed against an off-white sky, not the best lighting conditions for raptor photography. Here goes anyway:

Ornate Hawk-Eagle

Ornate Hawk-Eagle was high on our wish list for the trip, so we were pleased to see this spectacular raptor make an appearance over the open space around the visitor center, right after we had birded the El Pizote trail for nearly six hours. 

Double-toothed Kite

It was soon followed by a very high Double-toothed Kite, and a Short-tailed Hawk.

A little later, our guide Naim Torres spotted this Plumbeous Kite perched on a snag at the edge of a coffee plantation. The bird allowed close approach and would occasionally fly out to catch a dragonfly, and then return to its perch to consume it.

Plumbeous Kite

Elsewhere in the park, we saw two more Plumbeous Kite hunting insects.

Plumbeous Kite

For good measure, a White-breasted Hawk made a brief appearance. Still not its own species, this tropical subspecies of Sharp-shinned Hawk is nonetheless distinctive. 

White-breasted Hawk

Although a solid five and a half hour drive from where we live, we will probably come back soon get a little more of that sweet Honduran Atlantic Slope birding in. (The drive ain't so bad though when you have to stop twice to look at little groups of Swallow-tailed Kites...)

Swallow-tailed Kite