What's better than 3 owls?

It's CBC season, and with CBC's come owling.  This morning I struggled with noise from I-94.  Yesterday I had all 3 locals by dawn.  But there would be more than 3 owls for the day since Kip found Long-eared's at Dayton Prairie.  He found FIVE long-eared's at Dayton Prairie.

I circled back with Hazel, the birds were still there mid-afternoon.  At first I could only see one, though there's a bit of flank from a second visible in this view.

Moving 30 feet left along road's edge brought the rest into at least reasonable view.

The 5th bird is mostly blocked but just visible behind the 2nd from the left in the front row.

As for today's CBC?  Highlight was ...

a Turkey Vulture

End of Ecuador

As we headed back to Quito, Jose pulled us off onto a little side road to pick up a few last dry scrub birds.  (We'd have gone farther but the bus got stuck.  We ended up pushing it out at one point!).  We learned a batch of seedeaters, this one was new for the trip; look at the tail's underside for the identity of this female

 It's a Band-tailed.

Not all the birds were completely new, a few Vermillion Flycatchers enjoyed their winter haunts.

Unlike the Blackburnians who trade wet jungle for spruce forest, the Vermillions seemed to be in similar habitat to where we would find them in the southwest.

Though there's fewer Tufted Tit-Tyrants in our Southwest.

Golden Grosbeak was a bird I saw a few times flying up from the roadside from the back of the bus; here the whole group got to see them, if somewhat distantly.

We saw a few Blue-and-yellow Tanagers here as well.

The final birds I'll leave you with?  A pair of Peregrines, what else.

If you hunt birds for a living it makes sense you'd head to the Bird Continent for the winter.

And speaking of which, maybe that makes sense for birders too ... give it a few months ... stay tuned.

last hummingbird pics

A few last birds from Angel de Paz, hummingbirds, what else?

Violet-tailed Sylph is not an easy bird to photograph.  The tail is so long it's hard to keep the bird in focus, or even in the frame for that matter.  And while this may not come as a surprise, hummingbirds frequently don't hold still very long.  There were reasonable opportunities at Angel's though.

I liked the little dashes of rain in this pic of Andean Emerald.

Brown Inca wasn't really ever common so it was nice for them to appear at close range

Same for Speckled Hummingbird (the sexes are alike) and look like female mountain-gems

I try not to use birds perched on feeders, but this was by far my best pic of this species so let's make an exception

a Vampire bird

We ate lunch at Angel's and enjoyed the activity at the feeders on the railing's edge.  Check out the bill on Toucan Barbet...

We saw several species of brush-finch on this trip.  These towhee like sparrows tend to skulk in the thickets, but the feeders were too much for this White-winged Brush-finch.

We'd enjoyed portrait looks of Flame-faced and Golden-naped Tanager the day before, but who would refuse even closer looks?

I had expected based on eBird bargraphs for Blue-winged Mountian-tanager to be a very common bird on this trip; I think we only saw them a couple times.  But they saved the best looks for last.

Finally, if brush-finches are skulkers, they're nothing to compared to spinetails.  This Azara's Spinetail was lurking about in the thicket beneath the balcony and I just caught it as it raced through a little opening, definitely my clearest pic of any species of spinetail

at the Murrelet Peak!

Tim and I have joked a lot over the years about being at the "peak" for whatever fill-in-the-blank heretofore unseen rarity you want to invoke.  Since it's never been seen at Tiscornia, you're always at peak time to see it!  Data don't lie.

Of course some birds, even if off course, do fall into patterns.  August 24 and November 14 are two classic Tiscornia days.  November 14 was the date Tim found probably the most chased murrelet in the state back in 2009.  Observance of "Murrelet day" the next year was rewarded with a Franklin's Gull, and then better yet a Black-headed Gull 2 years later.  August 24 has had Hudwit in multiple years.  And now November 20th gets added to the list.  After the original murrelet hung around for a week and a half Tim had another on November 20th a few years later (and his Say's Phoebe appeared November 20th even farther back).

So enter the 20th a few days ago.  We were standing on the dune and Tim yelled "Alcid! Alcid! Alcid! Over the river water ... Ancient Murrelet!"  And so it was.

Despite pretty extreme distance the camera still picked up the pale bill, and black cap and wings contrasting with the gray back.

Dovekie and Long-billed Murrelet have dark wing linings

What will the last week of the count bring?  Besides mergansers of course?  Stay tuned...

What's better than TWO antpittas?

Three more of course!

We'd actually seen this first species (though not as close) early in the week at Guango, Chestnut-capped Antpitta.

 After waiting our turn we were led down a narrow (muddy) trail to look down into a ravine holding Ochre-breasted Antpittas.

 Two of them in fact.

These tiny birds were fairly charismatic, standing still on branches and rotating their bodies while keeping their heads still.  This is another bird that's possible in a lot of places in Central America, but much more likely here.

Moustached Antpitta was our final species.

We each had no more than a few seconds to look down on this shy bird.

So there you have it, 5 species of antpitta in one day.  Honestly I'm not sure what I thought about it.  I guess it's no different than seeing birds come in to feeders, but it was almost too easy (and there were way too many people) to see these very uncommon birds.

In case you're wondering where Blackburnian Warblers get their awesomeness, well they winter in the same trees that shelter antpittas

I'm not used to Blackburnians being the easy birds to photograph (though didn't get the shutter speed cranked back up as far as it needed to be for warbler movements).

What's better than 1 antpitta?

Two antpittas of course!  Well let's come back to that.

Antpittas are the star of the show at Angel de Paz and we did very well.  The first one in the line-up was arguably the most impressive, Giant.  While I've seen photos of Giant Antpittas right at the trailhead Angel walked at least a couple hundred yards up the (very muddy, steep, and only occasionally stepped) trail before he started making calls and chucking snake-sized night crawlers into the brush.  His body language was looking a little concerned about the bird showing at all, but ultimately this (seemingly football sized!) bird worked its way out of the drizzling gloom.

A tall burly European with a really loud shutter started hammering away at this point.  I was worried it wouldn't come out (and Angel was motioning and quietly asking him to stop which was either ignored or not understood).  The bird did come out on the branch though.  Gotta love the muted shutter setting of my camera though!

It was so big I had a really hard time fitting it in the frame.  These aren't cropped.

Honestly I almost like the pic of the bird mostly obscured in the brush the best.

But crowds don't go to Angel's to see one antpitta.  I'd only seen 3 species of antpitta in my life before this morning, but number 4 was the next bird I photographed, a Yellow-throated Antpitta.

This bird was viewed from a fenceline along the road looking down into a ravine that Angel chucked earthworms into.

With that we were ushered up to the visitor center to allow the crowd snacks and a bathroom break.  A Red-billed Parrot teed up briefly along the road.

There was more activity right next to the lot with nice views of a Golden-bellied Flycatcher.

One of my most-wanted birds for the trip was alongside the lot too, Strong-billed Woodcreeper.

This species is in all the Central American books but is quite rare there and this was our first real chance to see one.  It didn't disappoint.