Birds in a Changing World: North Carolina's Serengeti

Up now on the Duke Environment Blog!

Birds in a Changing World: North Carolina's Serengeti

In whose hands lies the future for birds?

Last month Nate Swick, Natalia Ocampo-Penuela and I led the inaugural "Introduction to birding for young birders" trip for the Wings Over Water National Wildlife Refuge. 

south dike of North Pond, Pea Island NWR, photo by Natalia Ocampo-Penuela

We had an enthusiastic group of 7 local area grade school students, most of whom had very little experience with binoculars.

Observation tower at the north pond of Pea Island NWR, photo by Natalia Ocampo-Penuela

Pea Island, with its abundant large and conspicuous birds, is the ideal location for getting youngsters interested in birds.

birding the beach and ocean across from Pea Island NWR visitors center

 Including seabirds spotted on the far side of NC-12 the kids were each able to see at least 50 species.

group shot, photo by mom

A fun morning!

After birding so much in North Carolina, it gets harder and harder to see new birds; with a NC list of 360, I've definitely gone beyond the point of diminishing returns.  Showing birds to younger folks is an opportunity to re-experience the novelty of birding and the excitement of each newly encountered species. 

Besides the future of these birds lies in these kids' hands, right? Let us hope that some among them may become advocates for birds and their habitats. 

Birds in a Changing World: Birding 101

If you every struggle to explain your birding lifestyle--why you have the urge to drop a local green-way during migration or a local pond in the dead of winter, then my latest Birds in a Changing World post, "Birding 101," may be of use.

It's specifically targeted at Duke graduate students, but could be useful reading for any muggle (non-birder) in your life. 

Birds in a Changing World: Birding in North Carolina

Up now on my Nicholas School of the Environment blog: Birds in a Changing World is a post called: "Birding in North Carolina."

It is a primer on the bird diversity of NC written for the uninitiated, but birders of all levels should find it enjoyable.  Check it out!

Birds in a Changing World

This fall I applied and was accepted to a spot on the Duke Environment 'blogging team.' Hooray!

Overenthusiastic team photo

No longer am I a lone wolf (err... lone bird), but now have co-conspirators and an institutional platform from which to spout my bird-brained thoughts.

Don't fear--this does not mark the end of Birds on the Brain; I will continue to post birding stories here. 

But I invite you to check out my new blog, 'Birds in a Changing World,' where I have already begun experimenting with some new narrative angles. Come take a look: my first post, Will our Love for Birds Help Them Survive Environmental Catastrophe, is a manifesto of sorts. 

I hope to put more emphasis on science and hopefully reduce the use of obscure birder jargon, like "passerine," or "Thayer's Gull," or "cloaca" to appeal to a more muggle readership. If you have been enjoying my writing here over the past four years, I'm sure you'll have lots to look forward to in my shiny new (second) home.

I'll be sure to cross-link future posts here as well.  Click them early and often and leave comments (unless you're my mom; Google analytics filters those out) so I don't get cut from the team!

Birds of Colombia: Secretive Skulkers

The feeder birds are as easy in Colombia as anywhere else.  But maybe you came for the tough birds--the 'birder's birds.' 

Well if you read the previous post, then you’ve already seen examples from one of the most notorious of mossy undergrowth skulkers, the Antpittas.  

Unless you go someplace where they’ve been conditioned Pavlov-style to associate humans with free worms they’re near impossible to get a good look at, even when blasting obnoxious amounts of playback.  We found one exception to this rule in the paramo where Tawny Antpittas apparently sit up on fence posts to sing!

Tawny Antpitta, Los Nevados National park

Oddly, the normally invisible Sedge Wren (though this flavor will almost certainly be split out eventually), exhibits similar behavior in this area.

Sedge Wren, Los Nevados National Park

In addition to the aforementioned antpittas, other birds that come to feeders have relatives who do not and can be really tough to see.  Even the bright and in-your-face tanager family contains some timid undergrowth species.   

Black-backed Bush Tanager, Los Nevados National Park

This Black-backed Bush Tanager (aka Black-backed Bush Finch, the only member of the genus Urothraupis) was unusually cooperative. Usually they stay hidden.

 

And hummingbirds, when they aren't after nectar, hide ocassionally as well…

Greenish Puffleg nest, Tatama National Park

…like when they’re sitting on eggs!

But the point of this point is introduce some of the tougher brownish and blackish birds that exist only in the neotropics and often get outshown by the colorful and conspicuous.  Two large groups comprise the bulk of the diversity: 1) the thamnophilids, popularly known as Antbirds (or “ant-things,” as Will likes to call them since they include antbirds, antwrens and antshrikes); and 2) the Furnariids, sometimes called “ovenbirds,” despite the fact that only one small subgroup actually constructs ovens.  

We saw 13 species of Antbirds, but unfortunately the most cooperative one was also the most boring, the well-named Uniform Antshrike.

Uniform Antshrike, Chestnut-capped Piha Reserve

The rest stayed true to form and avoided camera lenses and sunshine.

Summing all our woodcreepers, spinetails, foliage-gleaners, treerunners, et al. yields 29 furnariid species for the trip.  The foliage-gleaners usually aren’t much higher than eye level, but this Buff-fronted sat out in the sub-canopy where it went to work on some sort of insect larva. 

Buff-fronted Foliage-Gleaner, Chestnut-capped Piha Reserve

Spinetails are generally hard to see at all, but we got a few great looks at these Azara’s.

Azara's Spinetails, Valle de Cauca

Once again up at 3500 meters altitude in the paramo where the vegetation gets sparse some of these birds get a lot easier.  

Stout-billed Cinclodes, Los Nevados National Park

This Stout-billed Cinclodes didn’t seem to care about much of anything but sitting on this fence post. 

Another difficult group familiar to us northerners are, of course, the owls.  Normally I have terrible luck with tropical owls, but on this trip we had some of the best owling I’ve ever experiences anywhere. 

As a group we saw (yes, with our eyes!)  five owl species: Tropical Screech-owl, White-throated Screech-Owl, Colombian Screech-Owl…

Stygian Owl, Chetnut-capped Piha Reserve

…and this Stygian Owl, which was among our favorite encounters of the trip.  

The Stygian Owl was right outside the lodge at the Chestnut-capped Piha Reserve, unfortunately Mark was sequestered away laundering his socks.  We couldn’t find him and so he missed it—tragic, given his love for owls, as demonstrated by his owl conservation work in North Carolina for New Hope Audubon Society. 

Not 15 minutes after getting over Stygian Owl euphoria, we stumbled upon this Mottled Owl…

Mottled Owl, Chestnut-capped Piha Reserve

…which I was thrilled to be able to remove from my ‘heard-only’ list.

We’ll end this post and this Colombia series with a bird group that in the modal human consciousness is probably most-associated with the tropics: parrots!

“But wait!” you’re thinking. “Parrots are brightly colored and don’t skulk and hide.”   Yes, but they’re brightly colored green.  It isn’t an accident that green is also the color of leaves!  So they are either: 1) surprisingly well camouflaged in the canopy, or 2) silhouettes screeching and flying high overhead identifiable only to genus level unless you can sort out their screech notes.  While we recorded perhaps a dozen psittacid species, the number that gave soul-satisfying views could almost fit on one hand.  

 

We were lucky in that among the handful that cooperated were some real gems:

Golden-Plumed Parakeet, Vulnerable Colombian endemic, Rio Blanco Reserve

Golden-plumed Parakeets are notoriously difficult and this was a lifer even for Natalia who has spent extensive time in appropriate Andean habitat. 

Another parrot, the Rufous-fronted Parakeet, a Vulnerable Colombian endemic, was one of our primary targets for our trip to the paramo of Los Nevados.  After an unsuccessful morning of searching we were ready to call it a miss. Fortunately Jacob had gotten into the habit of skipping lunch to beat for the bush for extra birds and in this instance his fast paid off for the whole group. When he came sprinted up the road screaming about parrots everybody ditched their café y huevos con pancito and tore after him.  

Rufous-fronted Parakeet, Los Nevados National Park

It was well worth letting breakfast and coffee get cold to see a flock of nine of these odd, cute parakeets!

This will be my last Colombia post until the next trip (in case you missed the last two: part 1 and part 2) and I’ve still just scratched the surface, really.

So many awesome things had to be left out, like the Black-billed Mountain-Toucan; or the vagrant Near-Threatened Orinoco Goose that we found at the Sonso wetland two Andean cordilleras west of its expected range; or this awesome skulking Tody Motmot that Jacob finally found for us after an hour of unsuccessful searching for the source of the vocalization.  

Tody Motmot, Antioquia

Well I guess that last one made it in!  

 It’s been a few weeks now, but I’m still feeling the effects of withdrawal.  Hopefully some fall migrants this weekend can shake off the post-neotropical birding funk.

Birds of Colombia: the joy of tropical bird feeding

This is another post about birds I recently saw in Colombia.  For the first, most important installment, click here.

Here birdie, birdie, birdie!

Where would birding be without backyard feeders?  Birder or not, most people in the US become familiar with birds as the cute little feathered things that eat seeds out of a tray in the backyard.  

Bird feeding is not as ubiquitous in the tropics as it is in the states,  but where it happens, the results are often spectacular.   

Blue-necked Tanager, Chestnut-capped Piha Reserve

Safflower and thistle won’t get you far here; it’s all about the bananas!

Silver-throated Tanager, Chestnut-capped Piha Reserve

Bay-headed Tanager, Chestnut-capped Piha Reserve

Every elevation offers a slightly different assemblage of tanagers.

Golden Tanager, Tatama National Park

Colombian Chachalaca, Chestnut-capped Piha Reserve

What?! Get out of here you chachalaca!  These bananas aren’t for you.  

Of course not all the tanagers go for bananas.  This young Multicolored Tanager (Vulnerable Colombian endemic) seemed to prefer the worms offered up by its parent.

immature Multicolored Tanager begging mom for food, Otun Quimbaya National Park

Yum!

And then there’s the nectar-feeders.  Yeah, a few lucky folks in southern Arizona might enjoy a regular hummingbird spectacle, but the diversity down here is off the charts.  We saw a whopping 50 species, including some real stunners: 

young Violet-tailed Sylph, Tatama National Park

Black-thighed Puffleg, Los Nevados National Park - Near-threatened

Blue-headed Sapphire, Valle de Cauca - Colombian endemic

Imagine if people in the US could see this array from the kitchen window.  I reckon the outlook for Neotropical birds would be much rosier.

Sadly, habitat loss threatens far too many Colombian bird species.  About 5% of the species we saw are listed as threatened (or "near-threatened") by the IUCN, including the critically endangered Munchique Wood-Wren, which is known from just one mountain ridge in Tatama National Park. 

In addition to the Cauca Guan and Chestnut-capped Piha shown in the last post, I also got decent photos of these threatened species:

Gold-ringed Tanager, Tatama National Park - Vulnerable Colombian endemic

Buffy Helmetcrest, Los Nevados National Park - Vulnerable Colombian endemic

White-mantled Barbet, Chestnut-capped Piha Reserve - Vulnerable Colombian endemic

In some places you can even feed the endangered species.  Antpitta feeding was invented by Angel Paz in Ecuador, but it has been emulated since by other reserves throughout the Andes.  At Rio Blanco reserve our antpitta whisperer, Alvero, drew four species to us with worms.  Including the beautiful, but not endangered Chestnut-capped Antpitta...

Chestnut-capped Antpitta, Rio Blaco Reserve

...and the less-beautiful, but vulnerable and Colombian endemic Brown-banded Antpitta.   

 

Brown-banded Antpitta, Rio Blanco Reserve - Vulnerable Colombian endemic

Also seen was the Vulnerable Bicolored Antpitta and Slaty-crowned Antpitta.

There’s no shame in feeder watching in Colombia where there are endemic and threatened birds to see!

In some places all you have to do is throw the compost out the back door and you’ll have rails running up to your feet.  

Blackish Rail, Tatama National Park

The previous Colombia post caused some people to reevaluate their lives and birding lifestyles.  I sure hope this one didn't ruin your enjoyment of cardinals and chickadees!

Next time we will peer through undergrowth and darkness in search of skulking species.  Hope to see you there (unlike most of the tapaculos).

Welcome to Colombia, Birdiest Country on Earth

My retinas are still scorched from gaudy tanagers and glittering hummingbirds; my ears still ringing from exuberant antshrike and tapaculo songs; and my brain still trying to comprehend how this guan, once overhunted in dwindling forest fragments to the point of presumed extinction, sat in a tree in front of me to be photographed.

Cauca Guan, Otun Quimbaya National Park - Endangered Colombian endemic, less than 1000 mature individuals remain

This wasn’t my first time around the block in South America, but I’m not sure I’ve sustained such a fast and hard birding pace over so many days before anywhere.  Natalia Ocampo-Penuela assembled a dream team of eight natural scientist friends, planned an optimal route from Cali to Medellin, and collectively we managed to log nearly 500 of Colombia's 1900+ bird species (making it #1 in the world) in just 12 days in the Colombian Andes.  

the Dream Team atop a peak in Tatama National Park

 

To put that in perspective, I’m still waiting to tick my 500^th species for the United States, the country where I’ve lived and birded for over a decade.  

For hardcore listers, that’s the magic of birding the neotropics—one can see in 12 days the avian diversity that it might take 12 years to experience in the temperate zone.   For the more aesthetically-minded, it offers the chance to see some of the most bizarre and beautiful creatures on the planet while wandering through primeval landscapes. 

Golden-crowned Tanager, Los Nevados National Park

And birds are just the tip of an iceberg for the entemologically-(or botanically)-inclined.

Will (our team lepidopterist) making the most of a midday bird lull

Our trip took us from the Pacific lowland rainforests of San Cipriano, where we rode Brujitas (“little witches” is a literal translation for the name of the motorbike-powered rail platforms used there for transport) up to the open Paramo of Los Nevados National Park. And we covered the breadth of cloud forest elevations between all over the Western and Central Andes. 

Trip Route

We saw so many birds and bird families, but I always get asked, “which was your favorite?” So let’s start there.

I struggle with favorites, especially with so many to choose from, but one of them has to be the Red-ruffed Fruitcrow, a hawk-sized monster in the cotinga family and one of New World’s largest passerines.    

Red-ruffed Fruitcrow, Otun Quimbaya National Park

Red-ruffed Fruitcrow, Otun Quimbaya National Park

We did well on cotingas on the trip, spotting 8 members of this diverse family including one that rivals the Cauca Guan in terms of absolute rarity, the Chestnut-capped Piha.

Chestnut-capped Piha (look at that cap!), Chesnut-capped Piha Reserve - Endangered Colombian endemic

An estimated 750 to 1250 Chestnut-capped Pihas remain in existence.  Not surprisingly the species is endemic to Colombia and is listed as endangered.  We saw ours in the well-named “Chestnut-capped Piha Reserve,” essentially the only place they are known to persist.

Also included with the Cotingas were three fruiteater species we saw, the most common and cooperative of which was the Green-and-black Fruiteater.  

Green-and-Black Fruiteater male, Tatama National Park

Green-and-black Fruiteater female, Tatama National Park

Natalia’s favorite bird of the trip was also a cotinga, this Black-tipped Cotinga of which we saw several in San Cipriano.  While most tropical birds are either colorful or camouflaged, this bird is one of the few in the forest that is almost entirely white.  

Black-tipped Cotinga, San Cipriano - totally blown out white in this photo

At the other end of the size spectrum from the fruitcrow lies the Black-capped Pygmy-Tyrant, which is the world’s smallest passerine species.

Black-capped Pygmy-Tyrant, San Cipriano - world's smallest passerine

This cute guy belongs to the much maligned tyrant flycatcher family, the most diverse bird family in both Colombia and South America.  Birders like to hate on tyrant flycatchers because “they all look the same.”  While that’s true of some groups (I’m looking at you elaenia!), we stumbled upon several of the more distinctive and attractive examples among more than 50 flycatcher species encountered on the trip.  

Fork-tailed Flycatcher is a bird that if it should appear in North Carolina might inspire psychotic birders to drive hours in chase, whereas in Colombia it’s kind of a ho-hum yard bird.

Fork-tailed Flycatcher, near Cali

Same goes for the most brilliant of all tyrannids, the Vermillion Flycatcher.

Vermillion Flycatcher, near Cali

Cinnamon Flycatchers, as cute as they look, are “trash birds” of the cloud forest.  Even the birders that scream “eagle!” at every passing Black Vulture quickly learn to ignore this ubiquitous tyrant.

Cinnamon Flycatcher, Montezuma

Unfortunately my photo of one of the cutest flycatchers of all, the Rufous-crowned Tody-Flycatcher came out blurry…

Rufous-crowned Tody-Flycatcher, Rio Blanco Reserve

…so take this Black-headed Tody-Flycatcher instead.

Black-headed Tody-Flycatcher, Antioquia

Let's take an interlude here for a quick, old-fashioned, near-death-experience story:

About halfway into the trip I learned about one of the risks that comes with birding in the tropics.  At night at the Montezuma Lodge in Tatama National Park, thousands of moths and other nocturnal insects would swarm at the lights over our dinner table.  A kaleidoscope of unimaginably ornate, delicate things crashing into the walls, lighting on shirt sleeves.  As I stooped to examine some sort of behemoth rhinoceros beetle that had just bounced off the ceiling when I felt a sharp pain in my neck.  Ouch!

I reflexively reached for the pain and felt nothing but a rapidly forming welt.  As my companions sitting around the table recounted the day’s dozen hummingbirds, I felt my head grow hot as if swelling.  My lips began to inflate and face grew tight.  My body itched everywhere.  Was I being bitten by bugs?  No.  I was going into anaphylactic shock!

Our team doctor, Mr. Mark K. (not an actual doctor) administered antihistamine, which may or may not have saved my life.  I spent the next couple hours wheezing, trying to will my throat not to seal itself shut.  The closest hospital was at least 6 hours away on rough roads, so a medical evacuation was never even worth considering.

This condition presented a novel conundrum for me: I figured I should try to come up with some profound and choice last words, but at the same time I didn't want to waste any breath on speech.   

Anyway, since you’re reading this, I obviously made it through.  In fact I was out birding the first thing the next morning.  But sometimes there’s a balance between chasing lifers and staying alive.

---

 
So where were we?  Right, we covered a couple of the perch-and-sally-types, the Cotingas and Flycatchers.  Let’s talk about the ducks for a hot second and call it a day!

Ducks in the tropics?  Indeed.

During our morning at the Sonso wetland down in the Cauca valley between the central and western cordilleras, we spotted Fulvous and Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks, Cinnamon and early migrating Blue-winged Teal; and in Los Nevados we spotted four Andean Teal and an Andean Ruddy Duck.  

But the best duck of the trip (if not of all time!) came at a random roadside stop on the way to Otun.

Torrent Duck family, Risaralda

I had seen Torrent Ducks before, but never a whole family all together battling the rapids!

Enjoy the video.  

In the next post we will explore the joy of tropical bird feeding (expect colorful Tanagers and Hummingbirds!).

Stay tuned and stay safe!