Xenornis

Last week I joined three different birding journeys in the western side of the country. We began by returning to the Velasquez farm on two occasions with several members of SAP looking for Azuero Parakeet, and got some more pictures, videos and interesting details about this seldom seen endemic bird. During my visit in April there were hundreds of Brown-throated Parakeets in the forest edge and trees in the pasture, the same area that the Azuero Parakeets are using now, however we could only see a single Brown-throated Parakeet in the area. Itzel Fong pointed that some birds have a white eye ring while other have a browner eye ring. I also noted some birds with brown irises and some few had brilliant orange iris. One of the birds had a tiny blue spot in the forehead right above the bill. There were about 60 birds feeding at the fig tree; 4 times more birds than the previous week. The parakeets were doing a lot of grooming and pair bonding activities which we filmed. I also spotted wh...

Bill Porteous sent in this report: On Thursday 25th January 2001 I was birding the north slope of Filo Riscó, which is reached on a road that leaves the new Punta Peña -Almirante road at Km 61, when a single Olive-throated Parakeet flew into roadside vegetation. It was a small parakeet, about the size of Brown-throated. The entire head, including the sides, was green. The very prominent white eye-ring was slightly broader in front of the eye than behind it, and the bill was creamy white, with a grey horizontal band on the culmen just below the nostrils. The mantle, back, rump, upperwing coverts and tail were green, the tail with some subterminal blue shading. The flight feathers were blue, the secondaries with prominent green margins. The underparts, from throat to belly, were uniform yellowish olive. The bird was watched for about 15 minutes at down to about 5m range with 7x42 binoculars as it climbed about in the vegetation and fed on 'balso' flowers.