Long-billed Dowitcher

Otherwise known as the red one.

Mary Jo found a Long-billed Dowitcher on Friday in the central county, kudos to her for going around and checking for little flooded fields.  It was still there midday Saturday.  Dowitchers can be hard to separate as most of the characters have at least some overlap.  This one has a fairly long bill, and has a decent amount of more brick reddish breeding plumage so the overall gestault is certainly of Long-billed.

Another gestault characteristic is the loral stripe.

 Long-billed on average has the supercilium (white line between the cheek and the cap) run more or less straight into the lore whereas Short-billed has a more marked angle down.  Again there's overlap, and you have to be careful because there's probably some degrees of this that are dependent upon the bird's posture, but it's another useful thing to look at.  The above pics are with the camera, the rest are video-grabs while phone-scoping to get some more magnification.

The tail is one of the more traditional field marks, typically white with thin black bars in Short-billed and at least 50-50 or more black than white in Long-billed.  This bird is at least 50-50 to my eyes.  This is hard to see in the field, but useful with the camera.

There's a few more useful plumage characters.  The breeding scapulars in Long-billed frequently show bright white ends whereas Short-billed is more marbled with yellow-orangish.  The white scapular tips showed up best in the 2nd pic; this next one got a little over-exposed and washed-out, but is the sharpest.

Hopefully this is the beginning of the floodgates!

the Spring Wren and the Spring Sparrow

From a midwestern perspective, Winter Wren would be much more aptly called Spring Wren.  Of course you could say that for most of our migrants.  I've never been able to get a decent pic of one until earlier this week in Warren Woods where a bird was way more intent on belting out a huge song from a tiny bird than evading my lens

 He sat long enough that I video'd him.

It then hopped up a branch and ruffled his feathers before disappearing.

White-throated Sparrow was the theme at Floral today.  There were hordes of them.

I was hoping to get one standing next to a trillium but couldn't quite pull it off.

A robin actually came the closest...

a Cattle, errr, College Egret

One of Tim's friends texted him a pic of an odd bird they'd seen at LMC.  It was a Cattle Egret.  The bird was still there when I went over in the last evening light.  At first the bird was distant, feeding on the berm across the pond, but after about 20 minutes the bird took flight, flew directly overhead, and then disappeared over the college.  A quick walk around the building brought the bird back into view.  It was oblivious to the car.

It stalked about hunting for small prey items in the lawn.  With the combo of mowers to keep the grass down and Canada Geese to boost the, uhhhh, organic nature of the greenery it seemed to have pretty fair success.

 
At least once it appeared to have caught a slug.

The bird just kept working closer and who could complain about a fully plumed out bird.

My spreadsheet shows this is the 4th year I've had Cattle Egret in the county.  Most years a person can find at least one uncommon long-legged wader.  Here's hoping that bittern (or Little Blue!) are soon to come...

the bird at the end of the White Stone Road

otherwise known as Lajas Blancas.  The road that is.  The bird was Great.  But we'll get to it a few pics down.  We alternated walking and idling down the road in the half-truck and stopped when Domi spotted a Red-breasted Blackbird, a bird I've seen a few times but always at a distance.  The full adult male has black where this one is streaked.

We had decent luck with swifts that morning with Lesser Swallow-tailed and these Short-tailed Swifts being unique for the trip

We were watching the swifts when Cathy spotted another new bird for the trip, a Cattle-tyrant.

 It's a flycatcher that acted like a robin, was shaped like a thrasher, and colored like a Western Kingbird.

 About an hour later Domi heard the other candidate for bird of the morning (with Red-billed Scythebill the other candidate), another one he'd been trolling for at intervals.  It came right in to his tape this time, a Great Jacamar.

We enjoyed walkaway views of a bird I'd really hoped to see last year.   We eventually headed back to camp, but not before Domi stopped the truck for a White-whiskered Puffbird we drove practically on top of.

We saw this bird at dusk last year and a few of us saw it on the trails at Canopy Camp, but this bird at point-blank range made it unanimous for the group.

Kinglet's crown

Last year for spring break I took the family to Costa Rica.  This year ... I worked.  Which was less fun.  So with a week and a half of densely packed shifts behind me it felt great to be outside again.  Lincoln Twp Beach can be a good place to spend an hour, or maybe 20 minutes.  There was a big flock of kinglets today and some steep sections meant a person could look down on some of the birds.

I'd actually forgotten just how active kinglets are through the lens.  This was my first visual on a Ruby-crowned this year.

A Pine Warbler announced it's presence with the more recognizable melodic version of its song.  It was a bright male.

Turns out warblers are flighty too.

Scythebill

Who wouldn't want to see a Scythebill?  There are 2 members of this woodcreeper sub-group in Central America.  I've briefly seen the more widespread Brown-billed at Rancho Naturalista but Domi efforted Red-billed all week, occasionally trolling with tapes in likely looking spots.  He had his work cut out for him to not make post-eagle day anti-climactic, but we were at his next location pre-dawn the next morning and Red-billed started calling right out of the bus.  He was able to pull it out of the gloom somewhat with a few more audio cuts.  This was easily among one of my top 10 most wanted for the trip.

Maybe an hour later we would have been able to see the red bill but we weren't going to complain.

Interesting birds continued to appear as we alternately walked and rode in the back of the flatbed halftruck with new becards and woodpeckers for the trip such as this One-colored Becard.

 There were several birds we heard on a daily basis, such as Bright-rumped Attila and Brown-capped Tyrannulet but this was the group's first visual on the ever-excitable Attila

As the sun rose so did activity.  Can you spot the bird in this next pic?

here it is a little more zoomed in, still not easy to see.

It's a Mustached Antwren, a canopy special that a couple of us glimpsed last year.  It's essentially the size of a winter wren but with a heavier bill and no tail.  Black-and-white striped upperparts combined with a lemon yellow belly made for a fairly unique bird.

We saw a number of raptors as we bumped down the road, including the first perched Swallow-tailed Kites that most of us had ever seen, as well as the ever-present Roadside Hawks and a couple Double-toothed Kites with their distinctive dark central throat stripe.

Fun birds continued all morning but I'm going to save the second half for later...

Ow-OW, Wow, KaPOW, WOW

or something like that.

Harpy Eagles weren't the only thing we saw at Rancho Frio in Darien National Park.  Red-throated Caracara was another memorable bird that was quite common here.

It's a fairly unique bird to look at; it's a crazy bird to hear.  If a parrot could get high on meth and then channeled its inner OutOfControlLittleLeagueDad, it might sound something like this...

 I never managed to video one squawking out of control, but they were something else once they got going.

Stripe-throated Wren was another vocal species.

Tropical wrens are just a bear to see, they're a lot more satisfying to learn by ear.

It'd be hard to learn this next bird by ear.

It's a Golden-crowned Spadebill.  They have fairly nondescript insect-like calls that go along with their tiny size.

We had a bonus Gray-cheeked Nunlet appear amidst a little mixed flock

Finally some Black Vultures above Canopy Camp ending a memorable day.