Cuckoo cornucopia

Never before have I seen as many Coccyzus (i.e. Yellow-billed and Black-billed) cuckoos as in the last week or so. Down here in Honduras, these birds seem to be everywhere right now. The majority of what I've seen thus far have been Yellow-billed Cuckoos, which sometimes aggregate in small migrant flocks of up to 10 individuals.

This is a first fall Black-billed Cuckoo, with a dull yellow (instead of red) orbital ring. 

Pearl Kite

I recently blogged on what appeared to be the second record of Yellow-headed Caracara for Honduras, and speculated that this species might be expanding its range northwestward in Central America.

Pearl Kite is another raptor with a very similar distribution (most of South America and southern Central America) and is found in similar degraded habitats. It too appears to be expanding its range. It was first documented for Honduras and El Salvador in 2009 (Van Dort et al. 2010); since then, it has been observed in Honduras at least twice: one bird in 2011 in the department of Choluteca and a pair earlier this year in the department of Francisco Morazán (eBird 2012).

Saturday I found one in the department of Valle, not far from San Lorenzo. This is the same location where I found the Clapper Rail family that day. The Pearl Kite was perched in a short tree in someone's yard, right across from the entrance to the salinera La Ostia, and allowed close approach. A mostly hazy white sky was unfavorable for photography, but the bird was close enough for the photos to show rufous edging to the mantle, a character associated with the juvenile plumage. 

Finding rare birds is always exciting, but in the case of Pearl Kite and Yellow-headed Caracara (Southern Lapwing would be another example here in Central America, or European Starling in Veracruz, Mexico) the excitement for me is tinged with a feeling of regret. These are opportunistic species that succeeded in adapting themselves to heavily degraded habitats. On the other side of the coin we find regional endemics or habitat specialists disappearing along with the habitat that was cleared to make way for cattle pastures, and for the likes of Yellow-headed Caracara, Pearl Kite and Double-striped Thick-knee…

Cited literature

eBird. 2012. eBird: An online database of bird distribution and abundance [web application]. eBird, Ithaca, New York. Available: http://www.ebird.org. (Accessed: 6 August 2012) 

Van Dort, J., O. Komar, R. C. Juárez-Jovel & M. Espinal. 2010. First records of Pearl Kite Gampsonyx swainsonii for El Salvador and Honduras. Cotinga 32 (2010): 129-130.

Clapper Rail

Clapper Rail is found in salt marshes and mangrove swamps from the northern United States south to Peru and Brazil, but little is known about its distribution in Latin America (Rush et al. 2012). eBird does not show it for Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras or Nicaragua, and neither do Howell & Webb (1995). Burt Monroe (1968) did not report the species for Honduras either.

I found two adults tending two very young chicks in a salinera in southern Honduras today. I actually first spotted the chicks, little black fluffy things on large feet, before I saw the parents. They looked like they were perhaps less than a week old.

I was not searching for this species, and I obviously lucked into seeing them. They tried to stay under cover of the mangrove vegetation and were difficult to photograph. When the parents became aware of my presence, one of them briefly vocalized, which I was able to record:

Honduran friends tell me there have been two previous reports from Honduras.

Cited literature

Howell, S. N. G. and S. Webb. 1995. A guide to the birds of Mexico and northern Central America. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, UK.

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

Rush, Scott A., Karen F. Gaines, William R. Eddleman and Courtney J. Conway. 2012. Clapper Rail (Rallus longirostris), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online:http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/340

Yellow-headed Caracara

Last time I went to my local birding patch Laguna Villa Royal (Sabana Grande), a couple of weeks ago, I found a Striped Owl. Yesterday, this was topped by this immature Yellow-headed Caracara. 

It appears to be only the second record, and the first documented record, for Honduras. An undocumented sight record from northern Honduras in November 2005 was published in North American Birds (fide Oliver Komar).

image provided by eBird (www.ebird.org/) and created 30 July 2012

Yellow-headed Caracara is common in disturbed habitats (even cities) in South America and southern Central America. The first Costa Rican record dates back to 1973 (Garrigues & Dean 2007); now the species is common in the Central Valley and Pacific lowlands. eBird shows recent records in southern Nicaragua, and Yellow-headed Caracara may well be one of several open habitat species (like Pearl Kite and Double-striped Thick-knee) expanding their range in Central America, as a result of continuing deforestation and the creation of cattle pastures. 

Cited literature:

Garrigues, Richard & Robert Dean. 2007. The Birds of Costa Rica. Zona Tropical, Ithaca, New York.

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.