Iceland arrives here

 It's been a few years since I've seen an Iceland Gull so I was pretty excited to see that the 1st winter whitewing on the south pier had a dark bill.  It played hide and seek for a while as it rested offshore, but eventually headed in to the beach.

Where he displayed some manners that, well, I'm not sure I want to go to Iceland...

Is everyone from Iceland that mean?

Pretty enough though as it cycled around off the beach.

The bird overall was pretty pale, in life it looked lighter than these pics, but there's a little bit of dark pigment on the dorsal secondaries.

I'm glad we don't have to separate them from Thayer's anymore since this one certainly isn't the lightest Kumlien's.  I don't know how much variation there is on the east coast or if this one would get thrown in the intermediate zone based on the darkness in the secondaries.

Blackwater paddle

 A lot of times on birding trips the evenings can be somewhat of a struggle.  A person is hot, tired, likely borderline dehydrated, and quite possibly a bit overwhelmed by all the sights and sounds of the day.  That being said, the Sani Lodge evenings were some of the most enjoyable evenings of any of the birding trips I've been on.  

Because all we did was paddle!  And by we, I mean our guides.  The rest of us just sat in dugout style canoes and watched exotic birds appear along the edges of the blackwater lagoons. 

Who wouldn't enjoy some (not so aptly named) Red-bellied Macaws screeching about their day?

Waterbirds were of course plentiful.  These are Capped Herons. 

The book says they're in the same family (though a different genus) from our Green Heron, but I don't really appreciate much structural resemblance.

There was a Rufescent Tiger-heron nesting right next to the boat dock, this is probably one of the adults from the dock pair

Amazon Kingfisher.  Who wouldn't want pics of a green bird with a green background (more of those coming soon!)

This is White-chinned Jacamar, now a green bird against a white background!

Finally a Red-capped Cardinal

And since there really isn't an actual difference between cardinals and tanagers we won't worry that its name might be a lot better off as Red-capped Tanager

Frosty the Redhead

 It's been a few years since I've had a chance to really bird January 1.  But I had the chance this year (at least until a sputtering ice storm sent me home midday).

Tiscornia was pretty quiet, though there were a lot of Red-throated Loons.  A kestrel at the nearby Paw Paw canoe launch was the first raptor of the year.

A flicker on an opposite snag was the first woodpecker of the year, and then a group of Common Redpolls beat Junco onto the year list!

Paw Paw Lake was as birdy as I've seen it with both black-backed gulls and good numbers of ducks.  Most of the swans were Mute, but eventually a group of Trumpeters appeared.  There were 2 young birds and 3 adults.  One of the adults had possibly a radio collar?

The other two adults were unbanded.  This is one of them.  I find it difficult to separate Trumpeter from Tundra based on the cheek feathering, and this bird even has a hint of the yellow pip that Tundra shows prominently.  Its bill is too long for Tundra though, and all the birds were the same size.

The forehead feathering works better for me (if you're relatively close to it); Trumpeter has a pointy forehead if it's looking at you (like the bird on the left).  To the naked eye I thought the juvies were mutes initially.  I'd forgotten (or never knew?) that they can have some pale mosaic color to the bill.

Finally the odd redhead that the title refers to.  Eider crossed my mind for half a second to the naked eye.  You can see how the trailing hen has the usual slight frostiness to the foreface.  The lead hen practically has a white head, I don't think I've ever seen this effect.

eye of newt, tooth of ... chameleon??

 These pics are from a night walk we took about 2/3 of the way through our January Ecuador trip, in the Amazon basin around Sani Lodge.  We had a lot of success at Shiripuno (see Nocturnal Curassow!) so we were excited to try here as well.  The jungle was pretty active.

I tried googling this frog without a lot of success, but it looks cool.

I assume this is an anole of some sort.

This newt doesn't look like much, but check out that side wound tail!  I wonder if some are Right-tailed and others Left-tailed.

How many different snail species are found in the Amazon?

Finally a chameleon! (I think)...

peregrine vs eagle

Hopefully it hasn't been Peregrine vs Purple Sandpiper; I've never had Purple Sand on a CBC and there's been one (or more) around.  Unfortunately, possibly my first December Peregrine also showed up at Tiscornia yesterday and was actively hunting along the pier.  It forced a few RB Mergs under water, played merry hell with the gull flock, and made a long tail chase after some buffleheads, one of which was forced to bail into the water from about 3 feet up.  A scaup repeated the same Drop-Like-A-Rock evasive maneuver.  

I don't know if the Peregrine succeeded in capturing breakfast or lunch, but it wasn't playing favorites. If it flew, it was chased.  Even if it was a Bald Eagle.

It made a few passes at the eagle.

Eventually the Eagle pulled a barrel roll to offer its talons at the falcon as they continued to the horizon

Last yearbirds?

 We'll see if the CBC's have anything to say about that!

Earlier in the week both Purple Sandpiper and Snowy Owl (along with a continuing kittiwake) were at Tiscornia.  The morning I was there the Purple was walking along the edge of the pier.  The owl flew out from where it was probably hunkered down from behind the lighthouse and flushed it.

The owl eventually grew bored of the pier and flew in to the shoreline.  It might be the first Snowy I've had flying low over the lake so I figured a montage was in order

It teed up on the gazebo a little north of the overlook

Finally a look at the Purple Sandpiper in pretty dim light.

The next morning SW winds scoured the algae off the pier and not surprisingly I don't believe the bird was seen again

Dot-backed Antbird

 I honestly hoped that we would see more antbirds in Amazonian Ecuador.  Dot-backed Antbird was a nice exception.  We heard it making an alien little buzz and I asked the guide what it was...  

The bird popped up with a little bit of playback.  It was SUPER dark (and backlit), so these pics are lightened a bunch, but turned out well all things considered.  The bird's a mouse, super tiny, no tail, and really like just about nothing else I've ever encountered.