Xenornis

Darién Montañez spent five days with Brian Beers and Jim Cone looking for Canal Area Specialties. Highlights are as follows: 1st: Stripe-headed (Black-headed) Brush-Finch about 600 meters down Vistamares Trail in Altos de Cerro Azul. 2nd: A single White-eyed Vireo was in a mixed flock of warblers and euphonias on the trees beside the French Canal, all the way to the end of the Gatun Drop Zone. At dusk we had reasonably good looks at two Gray-breasted Crakes, in tall, thick grass 100 meters beyond the ditch/creek. We had not heard many calling as we drove in, but these two birds at least showed some interest in our tape. 3rd: Crummy looks at a single Yellow-Green Tyrannulet high up a tree above Plantation Road, over a mixed flock of antwrens. 5th: Much better looks at Yellow-Green Tyrannulet on Mono Titi Road, Metropolitan Nature Park.

Darién Montañez and Swedish birding pal Mikael Sellin spent the morning at Ciénaga de las Macanas; saw pretty much the usual: about five Glossy Ibis, a couple thousand Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks but no fulvous, and a Mangrove Cuckoo. That afternoon we had a flock of 13 Stilt Sandpipers in the pond to the left of the street at Playa El Agallito. We also had Cinnamon Becard in the mangroves, which is supposed to be there but i had never recorded.

Northern Parula: An adult male in non-breeding plumage was seen by Darién and Delicia Montañez in Fort Sherman. It was with a flock of tanagers and flycatchers bathing in a ditch on the back part of the fort, near the road where the Lined Seedeater weas seen a couple of years ago. When we first saw the bird we were about five meters away from the flock. After a couple of seconds it flew up to a higher bush, allowing us to get closer, as near as about two meters. Total combined observation time was about thirty seconds. Iit was clearly a warbler, slaty-blue above and mainly whitish below. The throat and chest were pale yellow, and there was a faint smudge of chestnut in the middle of the chest. The bold facial pattern, and incomplete white spectacles were very visible, and it had some olive green on the back of its head. The white wingbars were equally conspicuous. This is the first male northern parula I've seen in panama, but i have seen the species in fall and spring migration in...

Binocular-less Delicia, Pedro, Camilo & Darién Montañez managed to i.d. the two dozen boobies fishing with the pelicans right at the surf at Punta Chame as Blue-footed Boobies. A couple of Brown Boobies were also present, for variety's sake.

Delicia and Darién Montañez picked out three different Forster's Terns from the tern flock at Playa El Agallito, Chitré. Also in the flock were about six Caspian Terns.

José Tejada photographed this American Golden-Plover at Costa del Este. He has also been seeing a Long-billed Curlew there regularly since August 29. Both birds have been seen both in the exposed mudflats at low tide, and in the grass fields.

We have second-hand reports that José Tejada saw (for the second day in a row) a Ruff at Costa del Este. A Montañez-Miró expedition to the site produced no results. More details to come.

Rosabel Miró and Tony Nunnery's VENT group found two Gray-hooded Gulls in the flock of Laughing Gulls. Slightly smaller and obviously paler than them, these were easily separated from the crowd by their red bills and legs. The diagnostic photographs taken allow the species to be promoted from the hypothetical bird list for Panama.

José E. Tejada saw and photographed a Nutmeg Mannikin (née Scaly-breasted Munia) feeding with a group of Variable Seedeaters in the grassy area in front of the Gamboa Ammo Dump.

On may 04, 2003, the group of Jose Tejada, Ariel Aguirre and Luis Paz saw a Black Banded woodcreeper while walking halfway the gravel road of the continental divide north of Fortuna. I (Jose Tejada) estimate we were already in bocas when we saw the bird. It flew across the road and landed in a low tree about 4 m. from the ground. The bird reminded us a barred woodcreeper but had a lot of buffy streaking in the breast and a light brown lower breast and belly with very distinct black barring. The bird was large size and the bill reminded the cocoa woodcreeper's bill but somewhat heavier. We saw this bird for about 2 minutes with our binoculars (nikon venturer lx 8x42, zeiss victory 10x42, konus 10x42) as the bird climbed the tree inspecting the mosses.

While scanning the flock of gulls and terns at Paitilla, Rosabel and Karl Kaufmann and Delicia Montañez found a South American Tern, the first record of the species for Panama, which normally ranges down both coasts of, you guessed, South America, from southern Perú and Brazil to Patagonia. The bird, first spotted by Delicia, was the same size as a Sandwich Tern it was standing next to, but had bright red legs and a long, relatively thin reddish bill. Is this the harbinger of a new flurry of El Niño birds? Only time will tell. Later on, they had an albino Neotropic Cormorant standing among about 2,000 normal birds at Costa del Este. This bird was completely white, with yellow legs and bill. [Later analysis proved the bird to be an aberrant elegant tern: A closer examination of the South American (sic) Tern photos showed that some features of this bird, especially bill shape and size and tarsi lenght, were not right. Current consensus has it that the bird was an aberrant Elegant Tern, o...

Eduardo Amengual and Robert Dean, of the Costa Rican Birding Club, spent three weeks birding around Panama. Highlights of their trip included a Plumbeous Hawk early on March 11 on Los Caobos Trail at the Metropolitan Nature Park, a male (and possibly a female) Cinereous Becard on one of the canal maintenance roads near Madden Lake on the 17, two Palm Warblers at Fort San Lorenzo on the 18, two Violaceous Quail-Doves in the forests of Fort Sherman on the 19, a male Rufous-crested Coquette on the entrance to Chorro Macho at El Valle on the 22, two White-throated Flycatchers around the Volcán airstrip on the 24 (as well as another two around the Hotel Dos Ríos on the 25), and a Costa Rican Pygmy-Owl mobbed by a flock of birds on the Volcán-Boquete Trail on the 26.