Sunday, March 23, 2014

3 mystery birds

We saw a lot of birds in CR obviously.  Some of them were left unidentified with views too brief or too dim.  A couple (the first yellow-headed caracara and the spadebill) were mis-identified.  These three seem like they shouldn't be as hard as they were.

The first is a small flycatcher near the Tarcoles boat launch.  We were hoping for Panama Flycatcher, a myarchid class bird when this one flew up.  It flew away in seconds.  I'm fairly confident it's Greenish Elaenia based on the dark eye, narrow bill, pale base to the lower mandible, and lack of wingbars (Yellow-olive Flycatcher, a bird that never quite looks like the books to me, would have opposite features).


Next is a female becard from the same patch of forest.
Rose-throated Becard is a lot more common than Cinnamon at this location.  The book shows Rose-throated as having a more contrastingly dark gray cap than this bird has.  My memory of Cinnamon from last year though, was of a more blank-faced bird.

Finally is a small group of ground-doves from Guacimo Rd.  There was a pair of Ruddy Ground-doves.


And there was a 3rd bird, pictured here.  The female ruddy is on the left, but is the bird on the right Common Ground-dove or Plain-breasted Ground-dove?
It does seem to have a plain breast (but do all ages of Common lack scaling?) and seems to have a darkish bill, lacking the pink base of Common.  The color is a little off on these pics since they're shot through the bus window.

1 comment:

David Bell said...

I think you nailed all three: Greenish Elaenia, Cinnamon Becard, Plain-breasted Ground-Dove - all for the reasons you mentioned.