Rufous Hummingbird and vagrancy
This past weekend I was able to briefly visit and photograph a vagrant hummingbird from the west at an undisclosed location in Connecticut. I was told of the sighting by two experts who had documented the bird a couple hours earlier, confirming via observations and photos that this was a Rufous Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus), and not the very easy to confuse Allen’s Hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin) which would have been even more rare. The bird pictured below is an immature female. She paused only briefly in the tree being otherwise occupied and somewhat anxious, zipping back and...
Read MorePurple Gallinule (Porphyrio martinicus) by Scott Kruitbosch
Record shot of a Purple Gallinule (Porphyrio martinicus) in my Connecticut neighborhood that I found 7 years ago today. What a bird. It’s a great time for spring “overshoots”, especially in this weather pattern. Keep your eyes and minds open.
Read MoreWhite-tailed Kite (Elanus leucurus) by Twan Leenders
Here’s one for Throwback Thursday, a White-tailed Kite (Elanus leucurus)! Well, sort of. Back in 2010 I had the honor of hosting thousands of birders for nearly 2.5 months from across the continent as they came to Stratford Point in Stratford, Connecticut to see the state’s first White-tailed Kite when Twan and I worked for Connecticut Audubon Society. I learned more about that individual than I ever could have imagined as I observed it for hundreds of hours nearly every day. It was the first for New England since the only other recorded occurred 100 years earlier at...
Read MoreWood Thrush territory
On Thursday, December 12, during the first banding session at Cabo Blanco Nature Reserve we caught a Wood Thrush, one of our Neotropical migrants. What’s special about catching this species is it’s supposed to be a Caribbean slope migrant and at Cabo Blanco we’re on the Pacific slope. The other intriguing thing is that it’s only supposed to be a passage migrant, meaning that by early November it’s supposed to have left Costa Rica. This is the third year in a row we have witnessed this. It draws attention to the fact that we are still very unaware of where...
Read MoreScaly-breasted Hummingbird (Phaeochroa cuvierii) by Sean Graesser
We arrived in Costa Rica yesterday and got right to work today. We woke up this morning to our hummingbird feeders being visited by over 200 individuals. We have set all of our traps and research begins tomorrow. This Scaly-breasted Hummingbird (Phaeochroa cuvierii) got caught when we were setting up today. We have already observed two out of range species at the feeders.
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