Collared Crescentchest Gallery

The Collared Crescentchest, or Melanopareia torquata, is a flagship bird of the Cerrado and is found in the dry savannas of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay. In undisturbed habitat, it can be heard throughout the day giving a simple, repetitive territorial call as it creeps along the ground through tall, dry grass. Similarly furtive in behavior to the tapaculos, the crescentchests are much more often heard than seen, but a little playback will sometimes bring one into the semi open, where it will call from inside a bush. My first encounter with a Collared Crescentchest was a spectacular one, as an individual bird responded aggressively by coming out into the open and hopping along the ground, even feeding right in front of me.

Book Review: Nightjars of the World, Princeton University Press

A long day of birding in the neotropics typically ends with the birder in a state of utter exhaustion. You’ve spent all day on your feet straining your senses to hear and see something fabulous or new, trekking from one site to another through deep mud and stultifying heat. Thirsty, itchy, and aching, you’re secretly pleased in knowing that the day’s efforts are finally over now that the sun has descended. Your mind drifts into reverie as you stagger back to camp, but suddenly your guide drags your attention back to a high whistling call coming from a bush nearby or points out several silhouetted forms overhead diving and darting in the dusk, more bat like than bird. The day’s birding is indeed over, but the night’s has only just begun. Now, it’s time to search out some of the most mysterious, cryptic, and difficult members of the avian world, the Caprimulgiformes, or goatsuckers (this colorful name originated in ancient Greece, where it was believed that the bite of nocturnal birds caused blindness and even death in domesticated animals).

This highly diverse avian order includes nightjars, nighthawks, potoos, frogmouths, and the unique Oilbird, all covered, as well as the owlet-nightjars, in Princeton University Press’s wonderful new guide, Nightjars of the World, by Nigel Cleere. Amazingly, almost all 135 species are depicted in the wild in over 580 photographs taken by some of the most renowned ornithologists, bird photographers, and bird guides (no, none of my photographs were solicited, but thanks for wondering). Except for Antartica, the Caprimulgiformes are distributed over every continent, and the guide’s stunning images range from Australia to the Andes and from Southern Argentina to Far East Asia. After a rich fifty-page introduction that discusses the distribution, taxonomy, and general biology of the Caprimulgiformes, the guide launches into extensive species accounts describing identification features, similar species, vocalizations, habitat, and status of each individual species, including multiple photographs of each bird in the wild.

While no artist drawn representations are included, any birder who’s tried to identify a cryptically plumaged nightjar based on a dense color plate filled with similarly looking species knows that the utility of that type of guide is severely limited. Much more useful is a detailed account of range, habitat, and vocalization, as identifying nightjars is usually more by process of elimination than confirmation. Based on my experience in the neotropics, if you want to find and identify nightjars in the field, then you must be thoroughly prepared with a short list of potential species to be found and an ear that is already trained to their calls. For example, I wouldn’t have been able to identify the Chocó Poorwill on my trip to Playa de Oro in remote northwestern Ecuador if I hadn’t already listened to a recording of its call many times and known that there were no similar species in the region. This hefty photographic guide for me, then, is more of a resource for the den than the field, where I can carefully compare my own photographs with the several presented of each species in the book.



In the book’s forward, Nigel Collar waxes poetic about the rare experience of flushing a nightjar by day: “it glides in offended, elegant silence back into cover, the night’s ghost revealed as a biscuit-toned beauty with a challenging pattern of white, black or buff in its flight feathers.” Hurriedly following the bird to its resting place is usually the most effective way to photograph nightjars, which are almost impossible to detect at their roost during the day. The same is generally true for potoos and frogmouths, which both perch more vertically in trees during the day, looking exactly like natural extensions of branches and stumps with their intricately adapted plumage (the rare Rufous Potoo actually mimics a cluster of dead leafs and can be noticed gently rocking back and forth, much like leafs in the wind). The monotypic Oilbird, on the other hand, roosts in dark caves and narrow ravines during the day, usually in huge colonies. It’s the only nocturnal frugivore in the avian world, and one of the few birds to use echolocation to navigate through the darkness. It can be photographed with relative ease at many well-known sites in the northwestern South America.



Recent molecular studies indicate that the book’s final family, the owlet-nightjars, is actually more closely related to swifts and hummingbirds than Caprimulgiformes, although they are included here on historical grounds. Found mostly in New Guinea and Australia, these birds are also more vertically perching and forward facing than typical nightjars, some with wide bills like the frogmouths and impressive facial bristles used for trapping moths and insects in flight. As I have no birding experience in that part of the world, these latter two families, the frogmouths and owlet-nightjars, particularly fascinate me. I imagine at some point in our careers, my wife and I will be posted somewhere in Southeast Asia, where we’ll finally have a chance to explore the biological significance of Wallace’s Line for ourselves.

Indeed, one shouldn’t discount the power of the awesome photographs in this guide to inspire a profound sense of wanderlust for the remotest corners of the world, from Tasmania to Tanzania to Tierra del Fuego. And if you regularly bird somewhere less exotic, like Texas or Tennessee, simply knowing what awaits you after daylight hours should be enough to help you catch a second wind the next time you're ready to call it a day.

Chapada dos Veadeiros, Goiás: April 28, 2012

I’ve been working at my new job for a month straight now, and I actually like it enough to simply relax on the weekends and reset my sleeping deficit. I haven’t been feeling as much anxiety during my leisure time to get out and accomplish things, a sentiment that plagued me in Ecuador and Tanzania, where I felt like once Friday evening came, it was time for me to start really living, leaving the house at 4am on Saturday morning to bird the Choco lowlands or to arrive at Makumi National Park in time to catch the Black-Backed jackals before they called it a day. Maybe I’m slowing down a bit in my mid 30’s, or maybe Central Brazil is less inspiring than my previous two host countries. Regardless, I turned back the clock on Saturday and headed out to the Chapada dos Veadeiros region well before the sun had even thought about rising.

My destination was the Pousada dos Anoes, where on my previous visit the final bird of the day was a magnificent Black-and-White Hawk-Eagle with a fresh kill in its talons. Bradley Davis of Birding Mato Grosso originally recommended this excellent private reserve to me, which contains a variety of well-preserved Cerrado habitats, including mature gallery forest and rolling grassy plains. The pousada is located about two hour’s drive from Brasília on the way to Alto Paraiso, and the rough, two-lane highway passes through many long kilometers of monoculture, mostly corn and soybean. If the destination weren’t as inspiring, and the birds that awaited me as alluring, then I would have been depressed by the drive. The Cerrado is the world’s most biodiverse savanna, but it’s being trashed at an alarming rate. With over a third of the biome already converted to agriculture and less than 2% protected in federal reserves, the outlook is bleak.

But it’s problematic to criticize Brazil, which is currently converting much of its natural environment into arable land, similar to how the United States did in the 19th and 20th centuries. Who am I to question the country’s development strategies as I speed along in my imported, gas-guzzling SUV fortunate enough to have a post-industrial perspective on the world? Given Brazil’s position in the tropics though, the environmental loss, at least measured in terms of biodiversity, is much greater than what occurred in North America. And it’s particularly frustrating to witness the Cerrado go unprotected after the country has dramatically slowed deforestation in the Amazon during the last decade, although these gains have just recently been threatened as Brazilian lawmakers last week passed a liberal revision of the forestry code. So what is Brazil’s fate, I wondered, perhaps a little fatuously, as I sped past Turquoise-Fronted Amazons gathering to raid crops and Red-Winged Tinamous squashed dead in the road.

I arrived tired and more than a little annoyed, as the sun was already too high in the sky. I made straight for the first section of campo limpo beyond the gallery forest section of the reserve, hoping to catch the end of the dawn chorus, in which the usually furtive birds of the open grasslands are more active and can sometimes be seen singing in the open. Spotting a perched male Black-Masked Finch in the distance, I scrambled to piece together my audio equipment, but was dismayed to find that I had forgotten to bring a screwdriver to open the speaker and replace the battery. There was no way I was birding all day without playback, so I smashed the speaker open on a rock and cradled the circuit board gently in my hand for the rest of the day. This is a great area for Sharp-Tailed Grass Tyrant, a unique and tiny flycatcher of undisturbed grasslands, and I was soon onto a group trying for better photographs than I had previously managed (they’re responsive to playback, but don’t approach close enough; their small size doesn’t help, either).



After lucking onto a pair of Grass Wrens, I figured it was too late in the day to lure nothuras and tinamous into the open, and instead I headed towards some of the reserve’s gallery forest. Stopping along the way for some of the more emblamatic birds of the Cerrado, including the White-Rumped Tanager and Horned Sungem, I finally made it into the cool shade of the forest, where a pair of Saffron-Billed Sparrows awaited me feeding out in the overgrown road (I’ve waited for months to see these boldly patterned but inconspicuous birds). Indeed, one of the charms of birding this particular reserve is driving around on its narrow, rough dirt tracks. This is the same type of driving I did many times while on safari last year in East Africa, although those tracks sometimes passed through treacherous black cotton soil, which could stop a Hummer if it dared tread. Here, there is little need to fear, whether driving or on foot, and the birding is better too, I think.



I’ve had the most success birding the gallery forest along the Caminho do Silêncio, which is a wide path that runs alongside a creek fed by several natural springs. There are always a few interesting mixed flocks to be found here, regardless of the time of day, and it’s an especially good area for spotting the Rufous-Capped Motmot. I finally ticked the Planalto Woodcreeper, which was in small a flock with a pair of Large-Billed Antwrens; an inquisitive male Black-Goggled Tanager also came in close in response to playback of the woodcreeper’s plaintive call. Helmeted Manakins are common along the path, and there’s always seems to be a Greenish Schiffornis nearby (these are two calls are worth learning to distinguish before your first birding trip to the Cerrado). The best find of the afternoon was a Rufous-Capped Motmot that I surprised as it was burrowing into the side of a ravine. It didn’t flush far, and I was able to sneak a few photographs and some video as it nervously flicked its long tail back and forth like a grandfather clock.



I took a short nap in the car before returning to the open grasslands of the reserve, where I tried to turn up something new. I’m starting to doubt that I’ll ever see a Red-Legged Seriema or Cock-Tailed Tyrant, both flagship birds of the Cerrado that I probably won’t encounter until I finally visit Emas National Park, a massive and treeless savanna on the border between the states of Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul. Activity picked up as the sun set though, and I enjoyed Toco Toucans flying overhead, more social Sharp-Tailed Grass Tyrants, and a combative collection of territorial Gray Monjitas. Eventually as the sun set, the Red-Winged Tinamous started to call, and I made a valiant attempt to see one, at one point sprinting down the track to cut one off in the direction that I though it was headed. Perhaps the birds are ventriloquists though, as the closer I thought I approached, the further they seemed to move away. Driving home at night after a long day of birding is never fun, but it was almost better to enjoy the stars overhead than to witness those empty fields again.

Notable birds seen: Greater Rhea, Brazilian Teal, Buff-Necked Ibis, White-Tailed Kite, White-Tailed Hawk, Blue-and-Yellow Macaw, Turquoise-Fronted Amazon, White-Vented Violetear, Horned Sungem, Glittering-Throated Emerald, Fork-Tailed Woodnymph, Rufous-Capped Motmot, Rufuos-Tailed Jacamar, Toco Toucan, Andean Flicker, Lineated Woodpecker, Planalto Woodcreeper, Pale-Breasted Spinetail, Sooty-Fronted Spinetail, Rufous-Fronted Thornbird, Plain Antvireo, Black-Capped Antwren, Large-Billed Antwren, Campo Suiriri, Sharp-Tailed Grass Tyrant, Pearly-Vented Tody-Tyrant, Sepia-Capped Flycatcher, Yellow-Olive Flatbill, White-Rumped Monjita, Gray Monjita, Long-Tailed Tyrant, Greenish Schiffornis, Helmeted Manakin, Curl-Crested Jay, Grass Wren, Yellowish Pipit, Masked Gnatcatcher, Rufous-Browed Peppershrike, Flavescent Warbler, Burnished-Buff Tanager, Black-Goggled Tanager, Shrike-Like Tanager, White-Rumped Tanager, Black-Throated Tanager, Plumbeous Seedeater, Black-Masked Finch, Wedge-Tailed Grassfinch, Grassland Sparrow, Saffron-Billed Sparrow.

Yellow-Shouldered Grosbeak Gallery

The Yellow-Shouldered Grosbeak, or Parkerthraustes humeralis, is a distinctive but seldom seen inhabitant of the canopy of terra firma forests of the western and southern Amazon basin. Despite several trips to the Ecuadorian Amazon, I hadn't seen it until recently while birding from the new observation tower at Cristalino Lodge in Mato Grosso, where our guide Jorge Lopes taped a pair in that was foraging with a mixed flock (he digiscoped the second and third photographs using Aimee's camera). The monotypic genus honors the legendary neotropical ornithologist Ted Parker, who is long overdue for a biography, in my opinion.

Book Review: Parrots of the World, Princeton University Press

While long popular as pets, parrots are certainly among the world’s most frustrating bird families to observe in the wild, especially for visitors to the humid lowland forests of the neotropics. Usually glimpsed far overhead in noisy flight, they are generally seen in poor light conditions and their screeching, metallic calls are notoriously difficult to recognize. Unless you’ve already spent many days in a region becoming deeply familiar with the avifauna, many parrot species will typically look and sound alike, and you’ll probably need the help of a guide to distinguish between an Orange-Winged Parrot and a Mealy Amazon, for example. Even when a pandemonium of parrots luckily descends into the crown of a fruiting tree nearby, they’ll disappear incredibly into the green of the leaves with their well-camouflaged plumage. For these and other reasons, parrots have been somewhat ignored historically by ornithologists and birders, although that trend has changed in the last few decades, highlighted with the recent publication by Princeton University Press of Joseph M. Forshaw’s Parrots of the World.

The comprehensive field guide takes a practical approach, dividing the diverse family into three geographic regions: Australasian, Afro-Asian, and Neotropical (parrots are distributed throughout the southern hemisphere). It boasts 146 spacious color plates, presenting subspecies where appropriate as well as helpful images of the birds in flight, remarkably from both below and above (imagine yourself birding from the top of a 50m canopy tower or from the cliff edge of a tepui to understand the utility of the latter feature). Species accounts are conveniently located on the facing page, including color distribution maps and a list of localities where each species can be found (these are especially helpful for birders trying to track down one of the many highly localized parrot species, such as the Orange-Headed, or Bald, Parrot in Brazil). Although I have yet to use the guide in the field, it has all the characteristics of a user-friendly field guide, including being compact enough to carry comfortably in a backpack for quick reference.

So what explains the growing interest in parrots? Disturbing news of their worsening status accounts for much it (unfortunately, “let’s see them while we still can” has become a rallying call for birders). Over one fourth of all parrot species in the world are now threatened, primarily because of habitat loss but also in part due to the live-bird trade. Consequently, many parrots have become flagship birds for conservation efforts, including the Orange-Bellied Parrot in Australia, the Kakapo of New Zealand, and Lear’s Macaw in Brazil. Of course, many parrots are also among the world’s most spectacular birds, and as access to their remote habitats improves, they would have attracted increased attention regardless of their status. A notable combination of these two phenomena is the magnificent Hyacinth Macaw, which is the largest parrot species in the world and one of top target species for birders visiting Brazil. Although the population sank to 1,500 in the 1980’s, thanks to the cooperation of cattle ranchers in central Brazil who have constructed nest boxes and promoted certain types of palms on their property, it is now one of the first ticks visiting birders make to the Pantanal.

Although I have yet to bird in Australasia, where arguably the world’s most impressive parrot species reside, parrots still feature prominently in my best birding memories: sneaking up on a pair of feeding White-Breasted Parakeets, or White-Necked Conures as Forshaw labels them (his deviation from Robert Ridgely’s English common names for neotropical species is one of my least favorite features of this book), near the Bombuscaro Entrance to southern Ecuador’s fabulous Podocarpus National Park; watching hundreds of Cobalt-Winged Parakeets descend to a clay lick in a blur of greens and blues in Yasuni National Park; gazing down at sunset from the privileged viewpoint of an observation tower on a group of Scarlet Macaws flying impossibly steady over the canopy at Sani Lodge on my first trip to Amazonia; nearly driving over dozens of endemic Yellow-Collared Lovebirds that were feeding on the ground while we were on safari in Tarangire National Park in Tanzania. Come to think of it, I haven’t really been on a birding trip where I didn’t record seeing at least one parrot species.

The field guide isn’t indispensable if you’re heading out on a birding trip somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere (whereas a country or regional field guide of all bird species is), but it’s certainly a valuable companion text, especially when planning a trip or studying beforehand. The detailed treatment of subspecies makes it particularly useful to biologists, bird guides, and anyone who has a healthy interest in taxonomy (I admit that I’m not quite there as a birder myself). For someone who hasn’t invested in the Handbook of the Birds of the World and already come to grips with the remarkable diversity of parrots, the text will also open the eyes of the reader to some fantastic birds, such as the black cockatoos, blood-red lories, racquet-tailed parrots, and elegant rosellas (aside from the large Ara macaws, there are few truly eye-catching parrots in the neotropics, with a few exceptions, including such as the Red-Fanned, or Hawk-Headed, Parrot). Indeed, thanks to Parrots of the World, I’m already scheming how to move to Australia, “Land of the Parrots.” The guide ends poignantly with a section on extinct or presumed extinct parrots, including North America’s own Carolina Parakeet, making it clear that now’s the time to pursue parrot conservation and tourism.