Photo contest

Laughing Falcon - photo Perla Damara

Some weeks ago, I decided to organize a photo contest, with my camera as the prize! Several crew members of the Veracruz River of Raptors project had expressed an interest in buying my camera, and I felt that selling it to one of them would leave others disappointed. Personally, I had been toying for a while with the idea of birding without a camera altogether. I felt that wanting to photograph a bird often got in the way of observing it, and more than one encounter with an interesting bird resulted in a couple of poor quality shots, when I could have had great views.

Thus, the idea for the contest was born. I'll be birding without a camera for a while, and will likely be blogging less also.

All VRR count crew members and the educational interns were eligible for participation, and many liked the idea well enough to take a day to go out in the field and document good birds. Anything could be photographed, but it was understood that a great photo of a very common, easily photographed bird was not going to win against an equally great photo of a rarer or more secretive bird. The idea was that all participants and myself would vote, and that you could not vote for your own photo.

Well, the voting part got curtailed by my sickness (food poisoning) the last few days, but the winner was obvious to everyone. So, I proudly present on this blog some of the entries in this competition.

Incidentally, the camera in question is a Canon PowerShot FZ-20.

The winning photo at the top of a Laughing Falcon was made by Perla, who worked on environmental education this season (and did a great job). Laughing Falcon is not a particularly rare species in central Veracruz, but like most raptors it is not so easily photographed when perched. She had many photos of this individual, from many different angles; it was clear that she had spent time thinking how to best capture the bird. Perla surprised us with great photos of other species also. She came into the project knowing little about birding, but quickly learned a great deal. I hope that she will continue to go out in the field and document her sightings, and maybe get hooked on birding. Mexico is a great place to live as a birder.

The other photos are in no particular order.

Vermilion Flycatcher - photo by Roberto Rodriguez

This photo of a Vermilion Flycatcher is also a treat. Roberto must have been very close to the bird when he took it. Again, there were many shots of this individual, some even showing behaviors like preening. My impression is that this species is an uncommon breeder in the area, but becomes much more common from early November on, when the local population is augmented by winter visitors from the north. Even on a dull day, the vermilion of the male is dashing, attractive.

Sharp-shinned Hawk and Ferruginous Pygmy Owl - photo by Rigoberto Mendoza

This is a completely different type of photography. Here, the photographer had to act very fast while the story developed. What happened was this: we were sitting on the lower level deck of the Chichicaxtle observation tower when an adult female Sharp-shinned Hawk suddenly came wheezing out of the sky with landing gear out, to try and grab a Ferruginous Pygmy Owl perched in a tree in front of us. A brief pursuit ended on the ground with the owl screaming, wings held open, and the sharpie trying to approach it, also with wings open. The cries of the owl attracted a Merlin, who came in to inspect what was going on. The owl took advantage of this brief distraction and escaped; in the end, the attack was unsuccessful. It may be worth mentioning that the BNA account for Sharp-shinned Hawk lists as known avian prey items members from the orders of Passeriformes (the majority), Falconiformes, Galliformes, Charadriiformes, Columbiformes, Apodiformes, and Piciformes - but not from Strigiformes (owls)! A unique opportunity where the photographer did not have any time to worry about proper camera settings, composition etc, and just had to document the action in front of him. Well done, I think.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher - photo by Jeniffer Abrego

Jeni captured a very common winter visitor to the area, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. This bird seems to be intently studying the substrate for possible prey items, seemingly oblivious to the photographer nearby. Maybe not a difficult species to photograph, I still like this photo for the way it captures a bird actively foraging.

Black Vulture with Turkey Vultures - photo by Lynn Schofield

Lynn said she wanted to photograph vultures. Her objective was to document a behavior rather than a rare bird. So here the Turkey Vultures timidly walking away while the Black Vulture unashamedly continues to gorge on the rotting fish creates the dramatic tension she was looking for.

Willet - photo by Alfredo Beltran

Alfredo was unlucky with the weather. He was one of the first and most enthusiastic contestants, but had the camera on a day when taking anything worthwhile was going to be difficult. Secretly I kinda wanted him to win the contest. Alfredo is a very funny, likeable kid. He's got a hat that reads "My Life is a Gamble" and sometimes it seemed that way, with him drawing the shorter of the two straws.

Ruddy Ducks - photo by Irving Chavez and Pilar González

Irving and Pilar chose to capture moving subjects, always more difficult than a stationary bird. Practically everything is in focus, up to the splashes of water flying around. In the same lagoon, they found a mega rarity - Common Loon - which they dutifully photo-documented and reported to eBird, but the shot of the ruddies taking off was the better photo.

Double-striped Thick-knee - photo by John van Dort

This is one of the last shots I took with that camera. We found these birds to be abundant in a stretch of dunes close to Playa Juan Angel. Had I known about this, I would have told our Dutch visitors, for this was one of their target birds, and I don't think they found any.

I'm not planning to give up birding altogether, but I'll be birding without a camera for a while. I may end up blogging less, or perhaps I'll just work on improving the static pages of this blog. I'm going to play it by ear a little bit.

Dots

A couple of posts ago, I grumbled about having seen so little hawk migration thus far in El Salvador.

Last Saturday, Roselvy and I went to a Maya archaeological site called San Andrés, in the Valley of Zapotitán, more or less halfway between San Salvador and Santa Ana. Here, we found beauty, tranquility and, atop "Estructura 4", a 360° view of the sky.

Structure 4 is the hill on the far right in this picture, behind the little tree. The other three hills are Structures 1, 2 and 3, which are off limits. Although not as impressive as Tikal in Guatemala or Copán in Honduras, San Andrés is an interesting place to visit, with remains of human habitation dating back 3000 years. Situated in the Central American Volcanic Belt, its history is one of settlements establishing themselves, growing, flourishing, and then being wiped out by a volcanic eruption, before the whole process starts again.

Between 10 AM and 4 PM, we watched thousands of raptors, mostly hawks and vultures, stream high overhead. In the morning, the flight was dominated by Swainson's Hawks, which can be seen in the picture at the very top. A few broadwings are also visible in that photo.

Turkey Vulture and Broad-winged Hawk were the other two abundant species, both of which can be seen in this picture if you click on it. The hawk on the left is something else, and if you want to try and identify it for yourself, go right ahead. I'll tell you what it is a little further down in this post.

In the afternoon, the flight was dominated by Turkey Vultures, with thousands streaming over. Scattered among them were Broad-winged Hawks, eight of which can be seen in this picture.

Other migrant hawks we noted were Zone-tailed Hawk (2), Mississippi Kite (12), American Kestrel (1) and Sharp-shinned Hawk (1). With non-migratory, resident raptor species Northern Caracara, Short-tailed Hawk and Roadside Hawk, we got to 11 diurnal raptors, two vulture species included. The 'mystery hawk' in the third photo of course is a Zone-tailed Hawk. Only superficially similar to Turkey Vulture, the bird stands out as different from TV's in a number of ways: wingtips pointier and swept back, tail longer and thinner, head bigger. In this photo, the zone-tail looks a lot smaller than the Turkey Vultures, but that's partly because it is flying higher.

To get a sense of where we were seeing all these birds, here is a relief map of western El Salvador. Right in the middle, below a small crater, is San Salvador. The crater belongs to Volcán de San Salvador. The two yellow cards halfway between that crater and a crater lake, called Lago Coatepeque, identify two archaeological sites, one of which is San Andrés.

We saw birds flying mostly due east, which would bring them a little north of Volcán de San Salvador. I posted our sightings to the national birding listserv here in El Salvador, and this yielded a couple more descriptions from people who had seen the same thing.

Winding down

The hawk counting season here in Veracruz is nearing its end, and the raptor flight this late into the season is dominated by the two species illustrated above: Turkey Vulture and Swainson's Hawk. We're still getting a few broadwing stragglers; Mississippi Kites have all gone through. Yesterday, an immature Zone-tailed Hawk was a late migrant, for most of them have passed too. Late in the season, we can still expect modest numbers of redtails, and probably some more Turkey Vultures. Migration of Swainson's Hawks will soon be over. Currently, the season total stands at almost 4.5 million birds, a sizeable improvement over last year when the count stalled at 3.3 million. An interesting sighting for me personally was a dark morph Ferruginous Hawk which sailed high over Cardel recently. A striking bird: a long-winged buteo with whitish flight feathers in the wings and tail, contrasting with dark brown body feathers and underwing coverts.

This is a Fork-tailed Flycatcher, a primarily South American species that is known to wander widely and will sometimes show up in the United States. Here in Veracruz, it is fairly common in cattle pastures near the dunes.

I'm looking forward to another Golden-cheeked Warbler field season in Central America, only three weeks away, and was pleased to note yesterday that the Micheletti administration in Honduras struck a deal with the ousted Honduran president Zelaya. Elections are scheduled for November 29, in which neither Zelaya nor Micheletti will be candidates. As the country returns to political stability after a coup last summer, it should be safe enough for us to do field work there.

Higher numbers continue

Good hawk flights continue here in Veracruz, with daily totals of at least 70,000 raptors for four consecutive days.

Broadwings and, to a lesser extent, Turkey Vultures dominate the flight this part of the season, while Swainson's Hawks are seen daily in low numbers.

We also had a good Wood Stork flight yesterday, with 3,110 migrants counted. After a long day of travel, these three were looking for a place to spend the night.