Northern Peru Hummingbirds #1

Even though I’m nearing the end of my six weeks of “vacation” in West Africa (Ghana, Togo, and Benin), and have lots of great photos to share, I’m going to catch up on some photos from my Northern Peru tour last month.

One of the most striking changes in South American birding in the past decade has been the appearance of hummingbird feeders. Northern Peru is no exception, and we took advantage of three feeding stations that have been operational for about the past five years only and were surprised by the addition of two more within the past year. This allowed us to tally 41 species in just 9 days, an unthinkable total just a few years ago.

One of the new sites was a short drive from our first night’s city of Tarapoto. The star hummer here was Koepcke’s Hermit, a Peruvian endemic that occurs nearly throughout the length of the country, but only spottily in low-elevation foothills at the outermost fringes of the Andes. In this area, one could only hope for a quick glimpse at a stand of Heliconia flowers before these feeders came to be.

Another good one at these feeders was this Gould’s Jewelfront. Interestingly, the only other feeders in the world I know of that host either of these same two species also host both of them, at Amazonia Lodge in southeastern Peru, hundreds of miles away. (It remains to be seen if the new lodge at Villa Carmen nearby will also have them.)

 The first hummingbird we actually tallied on the tour was a female Black-throated Mango that was attending this nest on a power line right over the airport parking lot. I have seen this species nest in similar, very open situations, such as on a twig of a fallen tree in the Cristalino River, Brazil.

 At the end of the tour we caught up with a few male Black-throated Mangos at the feeders of Waqanki Reserve, now branding itself as Fruiteater Lodge.

The feeders here were simply amazing. White-necked Jacobins, now regarded as one of the most primitive of hummingbirds, were in all sorts of plumages, this one an adult. (Some females look just like males, so I'm guessing one can't tell the sex on this one.)

It’s so cool to see hermits come to feeders, and one of the prizes at Waqanki is this furtive Black-throated Hermit – always at the feeders hanging low in the dark shadows.

We were just high enough in the foothills here for Sparkling Violetear and low enough for Golden-tailed Sapphire.

The rarest one was this Many-spotted Hummingbird, which came in only 2 or 3 times briefly. They are usually a bit higher in elevation than this (where there are no hummingbird feeders...yet).

One of the best birds here is always Rufous-crested Coquette, with several birds present at the feeders and in the Porterweed (Stachytarpheta) hedges.

In addition to the 15 species we saw at the feeders, three came only to flowers: A male Little Woodstar (very rare this side of the Andes), several Blue-tailed Emeralds, and a scarce Violet-headed Hummingbird. The only species we missed that had been reported recently was a Rufous-throated Sapphire.

The Crocodile Watchman

My burgeoning backlog of bloggable booty is growing daily, and I may soon get to it all. But first I must share today's exciting find. Mich took me to a site in south-central Togo where he found Egyptian Plover a couple months ago, and this was my most-wanted bird on my six-week visit here (shockingly already half over).

Check out this beauty!

This bird is common nowhere, and most birding tours spend at least a couple days to drive to where they can see it. Where we saw this bird and three others (!) is a mere three-hour drive from Lomé, the capital of Togo – which may make it the easiest place to see it anywhere. One of its English nicknames, Crocodile Bird, echoes the German name Krokodilwächter, from old, unreliable observations that they picked teeth of Nile Crocodiles. It does look kind of like a plover, but is only distantly related and is now in its own family, Pluvianidae.

It used to be considered a relative of pratincoles and coursers, and at the very same reservoir we had about 200 or so Collared Pratincoles in all directions, once a large group in a single flock. Like a cross between a swallow and a shorebird, these are also handsome birds.

These fine birds came at the end of what had already been a fantastic day of birding on our way home from what were an incredible two days at Pendjari National Park in far NW Benin (another blog or two to come). We stopped at a rocky ridge south of the Togo city of Kara just to poke around and found six lifebirds for me, including these gorgeous Violet Turacos. Even Mich had never seen them perched.

I look forward to getting in a few more mornings of birding in while here in Togo, but now it's back to catch-up time on the computer while Kate and Mich are at work.

From Hummingbirds to Sunbirds

I will will will write something substantial here soon. I've just come home from a successful Northern Peru tour, where everyone got multiple lifebirds (including me – I think I had four, some had over 200). Hummingbirds were a huge part of the trip, with five feeding stations, two of the new in the past year and all of them newer than about 6 years.

Here's my one Marvelous Spatuletail photo that wasn't bad enough to trash. It was one of 41 species of hummingbirds we had on the tour, and probably the most-wanted hummer for all birders that come to this region.

I'm home for three nights before I head to western Africa for a 6-week vacation (but yes, I'll have my laptop with me to catch up on lots of work). I'll be in Ghana for 1 week and then Togo for 5 weeks, staying with my friends Kate and Mich. No hummers there, but the nectar-feeding sunbirds are at least as gaudy with their iridescence. I'm told that Johanna's Sunbird is a good possibility – and I'd never even heard of it before this morning.

Sage, Sagebrush,or Saltbush? Sparrow or...?

This last week I birded the Santa Cruz Flats of Pinal County with my close friends and birding guides Keith Kamper, Jake Mohlmann, and Gavin Bieber. We tallied 67 species of birds, including Bendire's Thrasher, Ferruginous Hawk, American Pipit, and Horned Lark, but after many stops to look at weedy fields, brushy hedgerows, and well-watered sod farms, we stopped at a patch of native habitat that hadn't been plowed, graded, or watered – a rare thing in this valley. We were looking for Sage Sparrows.

The name Sage Sparrow is a bit misleading on two counts. It doesn't occur in sage and it's not a sparrow. With Sage Sparrow being officially split into two species this past year, we are now a bit closer to the truth, Sagebrush Sparrow being the name of the Great Basin breeder now known as Artemisiospiza nevadensis. That's its winter habitat in Pinal County, Arizona above. The other half of the split is Bell's Sparrow, Artemisiospiza belli, which has two subspecies.

Here are some definitions to help you understand.

Sage = Salvia. A genus belonging to the mint family, formerly Labiatae, now Lamiaceae, with the familiar square stems, opposite leaves, bilabiate flowers, and a fruit comprising four nutlets. It's a very large genus that includes the common kitchen herb, among many other aromatic plants.

Sagebrush = wormwood = mugwort = Artemisia. A genus belonging to the aster family, also known as composites, formerly Compositae, now Asteraceae, having many tiny flowers in compact heads, all with inferior ovaries, each with one-seeded fruits. Another huge genus, not used commonly in cuisine in this country as far as I know, even though very aromatic, but at least one is used in the classic version of Absinthe. Notice that the new genus of Sagebrush and Bell's sparrow, until recently part of Amphispiza now gives a nod of recognition as this plant being the favored habitat.

Saltbush = shadscale = Atriplex. A genus of plants related to spinach and beets formerly in the goosefoot family and now lumped into the huge amaranth family with very small flowers lacking typical petals and sepals, also with odd fruits bearing large bracts.

Passerellidae = the newly named family of New World "sparrows" or "buntings" formerly lumped with the Old World bunting family Emberizidae, and also not to be confused with Passeridae, the original sparrows such as House Sparrow and the petronias. This hasn't been adopted by any of the taxonomic committees yet, but it's inevitable.

One problem is that the subspecies of Bell's Sparrow (A. b. canescens) that breeds in saltbush desert in the Mohave Desert and San Joaquin Valley looks extremely similar to Sagebrush Sparrow – so much so that field identification is not a sure thing. It is a short-distance migrant, mixes in winter with Sagebrush Sparrows, and has been known to occur as far east as where we were. (The other Bell's Sparrow, A. b. belli, is non-migratory in California's chaparral where its favorite plant is Chamise, Adenostoma fasciculatum, in the rose family, and it looks and sounds quite different.)

In winter, Sagebrush Sparrow leaves the freezing Great Basin and Colorado Plateau sagebrush steppe and winters in lower elevation saltbush desert. Here's the habitat in south-central Pinal County. Scattered mesquites and wolfberry break up the monotony of the saltbush.

A closeup of Desert Saltbush, Atriplex polycarpa.

Thanks to the long, soaking rains we had in late November and early December, the Fremont's Wolfberry, Lycium fremontii, is in full bloom. A Costa's Hummingbird staked out one as his territory.

With pale malar streaks and obviously streaky backs, most if not all of the sparrows we saw were probably Sagebrush Sparrows, though I can't swear we didn't see some canescens Bell's Sparrows. More study needed.

A Gnatcatcher Big Day

Southeastern Arizona is the only place in the United States one can see three species of gnatcatcher (genus Polioptila, family Polioptilidae), though I have a hard time of thinking of any other area in the entire world where one can do this. There are more species of gnatcatcher as you progress south through the tropics (as there are with most groups of birds), but there is usually just one species of gnatcatcher in each area, with a few areas having moist and dry tropical forest each harboring a species within close proximity.

Gnatcatchers were long considered to be members of the family of Old World Warblers, Sylvidae, but that concept has been superseded by a new understanding based on genetics that has made many families out of that old Sylvidae. The new arrangement gives us an entirely New World family with three species of gnatwrens and 13 gnatcatchers, though there are some pending splits that will increase those numbers soon.

Here in southeastern Arizona we have a small population of wintering Blue-gray Gnatcatchers along our willow and tamarisk-dominated riparian areas in the lowest, mildest elevations of the Colorado River tributaries. Only a few make it as far "upriver" as the Santa Cruz in Tucson, where a stream of treated sewage replaces our lost river and feeds an ever-changing strip of willow, cottonwood, seepwillow, and tamarisk. This is where you can find Blue-gray Gnatcatcher in winter. There's an entirely different population which breeds in our higher-elevation oak and oak-chaparral habitats, but they all disappear in winter, probably well south into tropical western Mexico, possibly also northern Central America.

Then we have our resident desert-scrub specialist, Black-tailed Gnatcatcher. Permanently-bonded pairs have small territories in almost any kind of desert. It's interesting to note that they are missing from the largely exotic plantings of urban Tucson, found only in the perimeter of the urban area where there is native desert scrub.

Finally, the subtropical Black-capped Gnatcatcher, mostly found in western Mexico's tropical deciduous forest and subtropical thornscrub, staged an invasion in 2002. From scattered records of just individuals and a pair or two in the previous three decades, suddenly we had a dozen or more pairs  throughout the SE corner of the state in the few canyons and washes where the appropriate habitat (barely) exists, with a pair showing up even in Guadalupe Canyon, New Mexico, just over the Arizona border and only a few miles from the international border.

This past Sunday (a week ago, now) I invited Kelly Rishor and Chris Rohrer to join me in attempting see all three in one day. Kelly and Chris had helped me out in my area of the Tucson Valley CBC, and on that day Kelly admitted to having still not seen Blue-gray. Chris also mentioned that he had tried for but not convincingly seen Black-capped. So they seemed like obvious and enjoyable companions for this quest.

We started on the Santa Cruz River where the dry Rillito River meets the Santa Cruz, where a group of Lawrences's Goldfinches had been found on the CBC, and a local birder looking for them a couple weeks later found a very rare wintering Dickcissel. We found all three species – the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, the goldfinches, and the very cooperative Dickcissel.

We then moved to the lovely Montosa Canyon in the western foothills of the Santa Rita Mountains, about an hour's drive south.

There is plenty of desert scrub in this area, and we quickly found a pair of Black-tailed Gnatcatchers, but right along the creek (usually dry, as it was now) is an astonishing diversity of trees and shrubs. Two kinds of hackberries, two oaks, three sumacs, Graythorn, Blackthorn, multiple acacias and mimosas, ash, walnut, Coralbean, Kidneywood, California Rosewood, Hopbush, Oreganillo, and many others create a woodland that the Black-capped Gnatcatcher has found suitable since at least October 1, 2003, when I found a pair here. The male and female are very closely bonded, and when they get more then ten or so meters apart from each other, they call back and forth, making for easy detection and identification. The 1) long bill, 2) black above the eye in the male in winter plumage, 3) brown on the back and wings in the female, and 4) entirely white outer tail feathers are visual cues that separate them from Blue-gray and Black-tailed, but getting all of those takes patience, time, luck, and honest assessment of what you actually saw. Or, in a nanosecond, you can hear them call and eliminate all doubt. These guys were calling. Here are a couple horrendous images of the male I took with my point-and-shoot camera through my binoculars. My recordings can be heard at xeno-canto.org.

The Other Madera Canyon Hike

For the Green Valley Christmas Bird Count on December 28, I hiked up Madera Canyon, but not the usual, well-worn route up to Josephine Saddle. Instead of heading up the Super Trail and down the Old Baldy, or vice-versa, I followed the main drainage up beyond the Mount Wrightson Trailhead and turned right on the Vault Mine Trail.

This trail makes many switchbacks up the east-facing slope of Mount Hopkins, in about a mile reaching the Agua Caliente Trail. This trail is not for the out-of-shape, as it goes up, up, and up.

In the first half mile or so of trail, Hermit Thrushes were everywhere, and I ended up with 58 for the day, more than a third found on the entire CBC.

Then near the top of the trail, I was imitating Northern Pygmy-Owl, which worked to bring in juncos, more thrushes, and Bridled Titmice (which were very scarce this year) when suddenly a flock of Cassin's Finches came in. But I was close to large stands of Cercocarpus montanus, the Birchleaf Mountain-mahogany, and this is the favorite food of Cassin's Finch, so they weren't a huge surprise. But then another bird flew in silently and landed on a dead branch right in front of me – a Northern Pygmy-Owl! I managed to get this recording of it.


The view from the top, looking north towards Tucson, was stunning.

In the next half-mile I had two more Northern Pygmy-Owls, this one perched in a Birch-leaf Mountain-mahogany. In this area, Yellow-eyed Juncos were particularly numerous.

As I skirted the slopes of Mount Hopkins, I found shady patches and talus slopes a bit tricky to navigate.

This is looking to the east towards Mount Wrightson, the higher of the Santa Rita's two peaks.

I had a few other good birds worth the invigorating hike, including three Golden-crowned Kinglets and this Williamson's Sapsucker.

Pajarito's Sycamore Canyon on the Atascosa Highlands CBC

Here are some photos from my fabulous, memorable day on the Atascosa Highlands Christmas Bird Count on December 22nd last year.

Jake Mohlmann, my close friend and now sole compiler of this spectacular and unequalled CBC, assigned me to do the hike into Sycamore Canyon from the trailhead, joined by Alex Baish, a graduate student at ASU. Alex was game for anything, so I suggested we camp, get up early, and get some owls down in the canyon and that way avoid covering the same stretch of canyon twice during daylight hours.

We awoke just before 2:00 a.m. and soon had a pair of Whiskered Screech-Owls at the trailhead, just after Jake came by as he was owling his way down Ruby Road. Alex and I began hiking down at 2:25 a.m.

This is a pretty rigorous hike with two rather tough spots – in the daylight, that is. During the dark, it turns out to be downright treacherous. Here's an older photo from the toughest spot that had me sweating it.

But we made it without injury and had a great day. We heard 8 Whiskered Screech-Owls (seeing two of them), heard a pair of Great Horned Owls, and most amazingly, heard then saw the eye-shine of a caterwauling Mountain Lion. I barely could make out that there was some sort of body below the eyeshines in my head lamp's beam, but that was cool enough.

One of the first birds of the morning was this female Elegant Trogon. This one and another that we heard ended up being half of the 4 seen on this year's CBC. This is the best place in the US for this species in the winter.

Some scenery shots from the canyon:

A dormant harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex sp.) colony.

Finally, on the way out of the canyon, we heard the Mountain Lion again, but only very distant, and weren't exactly certain what we had been hearing. Before we got very close to the sound, she had stopped. We had forgotten about it, and perhaps 20 minutes and a couple hundred yards later stopped to pish in a group of birds, and then she started yowling again. She seemed to be in a cave about 50 meters upslope but not visible from where we were (which is probably why she felt safe to start calling again). Her voice came and went as we assume she turned and faced into the cave, just out of sight. I got this recording:



Back at the trailhead, I discovered this Jerusalem Cricket underneath my tent.

Jake will soon be posting a summary of this great CBC at http://atascosahighlandscbc.blogspot.com.