Bulletin #223 - Best of 10 years #4 - Flycatchers and Thrushes

The Tyrannidae family (Tyrant Flycatchers) of the New World is the largest family of birds with some 430 species. Although many are rather plain brown or olive, a few are quite beautiful.

The beautiful Scissor-tailed Flycatcher occurs on grasslands from Kansas to Texas. This male has a pearly gray head and body, salmon underwing and exceptionally long tail feathers. I photographed this bird on the coast during spring migration.

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher - male

The male Vermilion Flycatcher of the USA southwest is another amazing bird. He has a brown back and wings with red head and underparts and a brown stripe through the eye.

Vermilion Flycatcher - male

This third flycatcher is the cute little Black Phoebe. It is a resident from west Texas to California. It likes to be near water. I photographed this on a rock by the Pacific in Monterey California. He let me walk right up to him and take his photo.

Black Phoebe

The Great Crested Flycatcher has been a life long favorite. It is a resident of eastern North America. We had a pair of them nesting in a bird house for many years when I was growing up in Canada. Flycatchers will eat fruit at times and I photographed this one at High Island during spring migration with a bright red mulberry in his mouth. He is typical of the myiarchus genus with brown back, gray breast and yellow belly. I framed a photo of this and put it in my office and some people noticed a whole parade of bugs walking on the underside of the branch. I hadn't seen the bugs!

Great Crested Flycatcher

The thrushes are a worldwide family of 180 species. They are familiar to everyone in North America as the American Robin and bluebirds are thrushes. Many thrushes are beautiful singers.

The Varied Thrush is a bird of the mountains from northern California to Alaska. I have only seen it twice and I was lucky to get this male on the ground in Alaska. It resembles a robin, but has a stripe across the chest and wing bars.

Varied Thrush - male

The Omao is the thrush on the Big Island of Hawaii. As I talked about in bulletins of Hawaii birds, extinctions have been rampant in the Hawaiian Islands. There were 4 thrushes, but 2 have gone extinct in last 30 years and a third one is critically endangered and being raised in captivity to save it. The Omao is the only one that can be seen.

Omao

The La Selle Thrush is an endemic to Hispaniola. It also sort of resembles an American Robin with the red breast. One has to go to the Dominican Republic to see this bird. I had one morning to see it, and was successful.

La Selle Thrush

The Bicknell's Thrush is a small thrush that is the hardest to find in North America as it nests on mountain tops in New England and New Brunswick, Canada. I had not made a trip to see it. I was pleasantly surprised when I was in Dominican Republic last November, to discover that 90% of the birds winter there. So I was able to add photos of this species.

Bicknell's Thrush

A cousin of the Bicknell's is the Hermit Thrush. I had seen this bird several times in California, but never in Texas until I found this one in my back yard, one Thanksgiving weekend. He spent the winter in my yard and I photographed him many times. Some mornings I would hear him singing his beautiful song. This was the best of hundreds of photos and was right outside my kitchen window. He had become used to me and I could approach to within 15 feet of him. This photo made it on the Houston Audubon web site as well.

Hermit Thrush

The last is the male Eastern Bluebird. In 25 years of birding in Texas, I have seen it in my yard 4-5 times. This one landed on my bird bath and stayed long enough for me to run and get the camera set up and take his photo. What a treat to have such a beautiful bird by your house.

Eastern Bluebird - male

Happy birding and photography,

David McDonald
dkmmdpa@gmail.com

photos copyright 2006 - 2015 David McDonald

To have these trip reports sent to your email, please email me at the above address and ask to subscribe

Bulletin 222 - Costa Rica #4 - Warblers, vireos, manakins and others

I saw several species of North American warblers in Costa Rica. These were Wilson's, Chestnut-sided, Tennessee and Prothonotary. However, I did see 5 of the tropical species. I have now photographed 57 of the 120 species of warblers. So I still have a lot to do, as this is one of my favorite families of birds.

The 4" Tropical Parula (Setophaga pitiayumi) does occasionally show up in south Texas. It is similar to the Northern Parula of the USA, but the face is darker and it does not have the white eye arcs.

Tropical Parula

The 5" Flame-throated Warbler (Oreothlypis gutturalis) is an endemic to Costa Rica and western Panama. It is gray above with a white belly and bright orange throat and breast.

Flame-throated Warbler

The 5" Black-cheeked Warbler (Basileuterus melanogenys) is olive gray above, whitish below with a black cheek. The top of the head has a rufous central stripe bordered by white stripes.

Black-cheeked Warbler

The last 2 are cousins. The 5" Collared Redstart (Myioborus torquatus) is an endemic to Costa Rica and western Panama. It is gray above, yellow below and has a yellow face. There is a black collar across the breast. The crown is reddish.

Collared Redstart

The 5" Slate-throated Redstart (Myioborus miniatus) has gray upper parts, face and throat. The breast and belly are yellow and it also has the reddish crown. 

Slate-throated Redstart

2 vireo species that don't occur in the USA were found. The Yellow-winged Vireo (Vireo carmioli) has yellow wing bars and yellow underparts. It is endemic to Costa Rica and western Panama.

Yellow-winged Vireo

The Brown-capped Vireo (Vireo leucophrys) has a white eye line and throat and distinctly brown cap. There are no wing bars.

Brown-capped Vireo

Manakins are a small (52 species) New World family of colorful birds notable for the elaborate dance routine the males perform to attract a mate. Usually it consists of several related males who dance and jump over each other on a branch. In general. the males are brightly colored and the female are dull, inconspicuous olive or green. I saw 2 species on this trip.

The White-collared Manakin (Manacus candei) is a 4" bird. The male has a black cap, wings and lower back and tail. He is white on upper back and breast. The belly is yellow and his legs are bright orange. The female is dull olive and I didn't see her.

White-collared Manakin - male

The Red-capped Manakin (Ceratopipra mentalis) is another 4" bird. The adult male is all black except for a red head. He also has a white iris. The female is dull olive. I only saw a juvenile male. He is starting to molt from his olive as you can see some red feathers on his head. He also has the white iris.

Red-capped Manakin - juvenile male

I saw one new swallow, the Blue-and-white Swallow (Pygochelidon cyanoleuca). This 4" distinctive swallow is blue on upperparts and white below. The undertail is black. Its range is higher elevation from 1600 - 10,000 feet, so it is the only one to find in the mountains where I photographed this one. The sexes are similar.

Blue-and-white Swallow

Lastly is a member of a small New World family (4 species) the silky flycatchers. There is one member in the southwest USA, the Phainopepla. Here is the 9" male Long-tailed Silky-Flycatcher (Ptilogonys caudatus). The male is gray with a yellow head and crest and long spiky tail. The female is duller olive. Despite their name, they eat primarily fruit. It is a montane bird and will be found above 5200 feet. It is endemic to Costa Rica and western Panama.

Long-tailed Silky-Flycatcher - male

Happy birding and photography,

David McDonald
dkmmdpa@gmail.com

photos copyright 2006 - 2015 David McDonald

To have these trip reports sent to your email, please email me at the above address and ask to subscribe

Bulletin 221 - Costa Rica #3 - Woodpeckers and frogs

Woodpeckers are a favorite family of birds for many birders (me included as they photograph easily). The woodpeckers of the tropics can be quite differently plumaged from the black and white coloration of most of our USA birds.

The 9" Chestnut-colored Woodpecker (Celeus castaneus) is a neat brown bird marked with black spots. His head is a little paler than the body and he has a bushy crest. This is a male with the red cheeks. The female does not have the red.

Chestnut-colored Woodpecker - male

The 7" Rufous-winged Woodpecker (Piculus simplex) has an olive back, striped underparts and reddish primary wing feathers that can be seen in the photo. This is a male with the extensive red on the head. The female just has red on the back of the head.

Rufous-winged Woodpecker - male.

The 8" Golden-olive Woodpecker (Colaptes rubiginosus) is the same genus as our much larger flickers. I guess it wasn't called a flicker because of its size. Who knows how these names were applied? It has a olive brown back, and streaked underparts. This is a male with the red all over the top of the head and the red malar stripe. The female would just have red on the occiput and the malar stripe would be black.

Golden-olive Woodpecker - male

The 13" Pale-billed Woodpecker (Campophiles guatemalensis) is black with striped underparts and completely red head with a crest. It has a white bill. The sexes are quite similar except the female has a black forehead. We saw both of them, but I can't tell from the angle of this photo which it is.

Pale-billed Woodpecker

The 7" Black-cheeked Woodpecker (Melanerpes pucherani) was seen again. I had photographed it in Panama last year, but this time it was closer. The pair took turns excavating this hole in a dead tree and it was neat to see them pick the sawdust out of the hole and drop it to the ground. I hadn't seen this behavior in a woodpecker before. This is the male with the red extending to the top of the head.

Black-cheeked Woodpecker - male

And in the female, the red just cover the back of the head.

Black-cheeked Woodpecker - female

The 9" Acorn Woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus) is a resident of the USA but its range extends to the mountains of Costa Rica. The unusual clown-like facial pattern makes this bird an easy ID. This is a male with the red touching the white on top of the head. The female has less red and a patch of black separating the red from the white.

Acorn Woodpecker - male

The last woodpecker was the 7" Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus). This bird has an extensive range from Alaska and Canada all the way to Costa Rica where is is found in the mountains. These birds are unlike the birds in eastern North America in that they have almost no white on the wings and are brownish underneath. This is a female as she lacks the small red patch at the back of her head.

Hairy Woodpecker - female

Costa Rica is home to 138 species of frogs and toads. The most famous are the Red-eyed Tree Frog and the poison dart frogs. These are often illustrated in travel brochures etc. I photographed 3 species, all at La Selva in the rain forest.

Why are they called poison-dart frogs? Well the Amerindians noticed that the skin exuded a potent toxin, so they  rubbed their arrows against the skin of the frogs to make a small dart become lethal. The poison stayed active for up to 2 years on the dart. The frogs get the poison from the mites and ants they eat. They don't manufacture it themselves. There are about 170 species in . All are brightly colored, but the level of toxins varies considerably. They range in the neotropics from Nicaragua south to Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. The most toxic species is the 2" Golden Poison-dart Frog (Phyllobates terribilis) which lives in the Pacific coast of Columbia. It has enough toxin in its skin to KILL 10-20 men or 10,000 mice! It is the largest species of poison-dart frog and may be the most poisonous of any living animal.

Interestingly, these frogs are popular terrarium pets. The frogs raised in the pet trade are non-toxic, because the grubs they are fed contain no poison.

The Strawberry Poison-dart Frog (Oophaga pumilio) is a small 1" or less frog popularly known as the 'blue jeans frog'. It is orange to red with blue front legs and blue hind quarters and legs. Other color patterns exist, some without any blue at all. It inhabits the leaf litter and the males guard the eggs in the leaf litter until they hatch. Then the female carries the tadpoles to a bromeliad that has retained water, and returns to feed them unfertilized eggs over the course of 10 weeks, until they are fully grown. Noel Urena, my guide, had a tape of the males call, and knew where some frogs were. He played the tape and the males crawled out into the open to defend their territory!

Strawberry Poison-dart Frog

The less common Green-and-black Poison-Dart Frog (Dendrobates auratus) is about 1.75 inches. The guide didn't have a tape of this one, but he spotted one as we were walking the trails. The males guard the clutch of 3-13 eggs in the leaf litter until they hatch. Then he carries the tadpoles, one at a time, to a suitable water filled plant. The tadpoles feed on algae until fully grown in 7-15 weeks.

Green-and-black Poison-dart Frog

The last frog was a species of Rain Frog . There are 47 members of this group in Costa Rica and I don't know which one it is. We almost stepped on the frog, as it is about 1.5 inches and was in a puddle on the path. Fortunately my guide, Noel Urena, spotted it. It looks pretty cool with purplish body and what looks like a yellowish epoxy coating on his back.

Rain Frog species

Happy birding and photography,

David McDonald
dkmmdpa@gmail.com

photos copyright 2006 - 2015 David McDonald

To have these trip reports sent to your email, please email me at the above address and ask to subscribe