Xenornis

Euclides Campos sends in some noteworthy records from the first half of 2012. A White-eyed Vireo  was seen at Bayano Lake on February 16th. This bird was calling.  On February 25th, leading a group at Las Lajas Beach, Chiriqui; We saw a hundreds of Blue-winged Teal, three American Wigeon and my lifer, a male Cinnamon Tteal . This bird was seen through three scopes. We managed to take some shots but not so well. Yellow-bellied Tyrannulet : heard at Cuesta de Piedra on February 27th 2012. Sounds like the other Ornithion we have in Panama but slightly different. On June 1th, a pelagic trip using the hot spring trail of Coiba Island as a starting point, 32 miles SSE. We saw two Wedge-tailed Shearwaters , one Sooty Shearwater, two Black, three Least Storm Petrel, two Nazca Boobies , eight Parasitic Jaegers and plenty of Wedge-rumped Storm Petrels.

A spontaneous visit to the Cerro Punta area in late April yielded the following notable observations in Parque Internacional La Amistad. On 29 April, near the lowest point on Sendero El Retoño, at about 2170m I had an extended intermittent sighting through tangled foliage of a Streaked Xenops , behaving very similarly to the familiar Plain Xenops, including hanging upside down. I noted the obvious streaking, supercillary and malar stripes of the same colour compared with those of different colour of the Plain Xenops and with the supercillary only of the larger Ruddy Treerunner seen the previous day, also hanging upside down. I had another brief sighting of Streaked Xenops (maybe the same one) the following day in tangled foliage just below the park entrance, at about 2100m. These altitudes are higher than the range quoted by Angehr. At the spectacular cascade which is the destination of Sendero La Cascada, at about 2400m, on 30 April, I saw an Ochraceous Pewee , on an exposed perch ...

Venicio Wilson found a flock of eight American Avocets at Salinas de Aguadulce on May 15. These are different birds from the ones at Costa del Este, which are still hanging around.

Gwen Keller went shorebirding at Costa del Este yesterday afternoon and as the tide was coming in she spotted maybe 30+ Marbled Godwits, 9 American Avocets , some with rufous plumage, and a number of short billed dowitchers among the usual cast of characters.

Marianne Akers found this Capped Heron yesterday at Summit, wading in the crocodile pond (no crocodile present).

Kevin Easley and some other avid birders from Costa Rica visited the Western Azuero and Coiba with me. On 3 May we went to Changuale (East of las Flores) to try and find the Azuero parakeet. Wer did not find it, but saw many King Vultures circling above us while walking along the Pavo river.  We left for Coiba on 4 May. Between Santa Catalina and Coiba we saw Red-necked Phalaropes , Brown Noddies , a juvenile Red-billed Tropicbird and a Parasitic Jaeger . On the Las Pozos trail on Coiba we found the Coiba Spinetail and the Brown-backed Dove . There was also a male Indigo Bunting in breeding plumage (The Angehr guide does not mention that Indigo Buntings occur on Coiba). Furthermore, for the last three weeks, our hummingbird feeders are daily visited by a juvenile mango. I have attached a (small) picture of the bird. I think it is a Veraguan Mango .

Panama Records Committee Chair George Angehr chimes in on Venicio’s odd Butorides from Las Bóvedas : Interesting bird. However, I showed it to heron expert James Kushlan and he said that Lava Heron has a thicker bill and thicker legs. Photos on line also seem to show that Lava Heron has a yellow eye. Kushlan thought it was just a melanistic Green/Striated.

Yesterday while walking Casco Viejo with a friend I spotted this "very dark" Green Heron on the rocks below Paseo Esteban Huertas at Las Bóvedas. I was looking at the picture I made with my cellphone and my binoculars (Binophonescoping) and the bird looks very similar to the pictures of Lava Heron from Galapagos Islands. With the high number of ships and sailboats crossing the Panama Canal there is a small chance for an accidental Lava Heron?

Zeke Jakub photographed this pair of Green Ibis near the bridge over Río Cascajal at Nuevo Tonosí, near Portobelo.

And, as promised, here are better photos of the  American Avocets at Costa del Este by Osvaldo Quintero. Justo Camargo went looking for them yesterday afternoon and he reports seeing at least eight individuals. Avocets are a rare winter visitor to Panama, and this is the first record of a flock. Have you gone looking for them yet?

While on a routine visit to Costa del Este this morning, Dr. Osvaldo Quintero discovered not one or two, but four American Avocets at the mouth of Río Matías Hernández. He checked a while ago and they are still in the area, so if any of you need this extremely rare winter visitor to Panama, go for it. Better photos to come, for sure.

Greg and Eileen Meyer of Santa Cruz, CA were recent visitors to Isla Colon. Greg had contacted Pat Wade, a resident of Boca del Drago, through Birding Pal about doing some birdwatching during their stay on Isla Colon. While boating down the old banana canal between the Drago cut and the Changuinola River on Feb. 17 they sighted and photographed a Bare-throated Tiger-Heron. The bird was seen about 1 km from the entrance of the canal. According to Angehr and Dean's field guide, there has been only 1 other report of this bird on Panama's Atlantic coast, and that was from the easternmost part of the coast.