Blog for wandering birders

My inlaws own a huge patch of land around their farm. For the better part it is all swamp with some trees and a small pond, which inevitably contains krobia and some kwikwi, the local, very ugly and tasty freshwater fishes. The first bird to attract attention will be the Wattled Jacana, a noisy high-legged and beautiful bird found near almost every water surface outside the city. It is often accompanied by the striated heron in the same habitat. Along the ditches the white-headed water-tyrant and the pied water-tyrant are abundant as are the yellow-chnned spinetail and the snail kite.

Next an easily scared yellow-headed caracara or a laughing falcon will honor you with their presence. The first looking for easy prey like carrion, eggs or fledglings, the second is a snake-eater. In a tree with hanging nests looking like socks a colony of crested oropendola’s noisily noticed you. The larger male with several females have an unbelievable clocking and gurgling sound. Watch that tree carefully because small flycatchers are bound to be found in the same tree. Just along the road at mid-tree level a small docile bird might watch you, it is a pied puffbird. It builds its nest in a hole in a termite colony and also feeds on termites and other bugs.

This little bird is one of my favorites, it is easy to approach and has a certain contemplating flair about it.

In a fruit tree palm tanagers, blue-grey tanagers and silver-beaked tanagers are fighting for bruised fruit. Just below it a shiny cowbird young is fed by its much smaller southern house-wren parent.

Surely you will encounter several tody-flycatchers, kiskadees, blue-winged swallows, green or amazon kingfishers, red-breasted blackbird, guianan piculet, bronzy or paradise jacamar and several elaenia’s, parakeets, seedeaters, hummingbirds (most likely the black-throated mango or even the green-throated mango) and tanagers. Don’t sit in swampy areas because some little lice will make you scratch your pubic area for days. One of the highlights to me was also a black-collared hawk, a locally abundant fish-eater. Finally the blue-backed grassquit and the bananaquit can’t be missed, the first doing his strange display ritual by flying up and down from the same perch straight in the air while singing, the second is found in every sugary fruit plant or tree. All this from just walking along a zwamp (as the small swampy areas are called). If you return for a few days early in the morning or just before dusk, around a 100 species might cross your path.