Hi All! What seems like a really long time ago now I wrote a bit about my recent bird experiences in Peru. I’ll talk a bit more about the kinds of birds you can see there with some accompanying videos as I don’t have much in the way of photos.
Last time I mentioned Tinamous, Parrots, and Trogons. Let’s move on and discuss a few other classic neotropical birds (the neotropics refers to the region from southern Mexico and the Caribbean down to the southern tip of South America.
Guans, Trumpeters and the Infamous Hoatzin. These are fairly large and, in areas without hunting at least, fairly easy to see birds. Birds whose memory keeps you from giving up in despair as you stare deeply into a bamboo thicket. Trumpeters are relatives of Cranes and Rails. They are highly social ground living birds the size of a goose. They are easily tamed if captured as chicks and they can be most easily living near the villages of Indigenous people.
Guans and their relatives Chachalacas and Currasows are a family of birds largely endemic to the neotropics (one species gets to southern Texas). They are closely related to birds such as chickens, grouse and so on. Guans and chachalacas are mostly tree-living birds while currasows are more terrestrial. They are a good source of protein so they tend to be hard to see in places with hunting but in protected areas they are fairly easy to find being large and noisy.
The fabled hoatzin is one of the most bizarre birds of the Amazon region. Its relationships with other birds are a bit obscure but it may be related to cuckoos. I have written an entire Dawn Chorus about them in the past. They are leaf-eating birds that live in colonies in vegetation along the edges of ox-bows lakes and slow moving rivers. They are very noisy and not very afraid of people so they are easy to find if they are around.
The Amazing SubOscines. The order Passeriformes (passerine birds) is the largest group of birds, containing about 60% of all the bird species in the world. The passerine birds can be divided into two major groups: oscines and suboscines. The oscines are the “true” song birds having a complex vocal apparatus and include many familiar birds such as warblers, sparrows, finches, thrushes, blackbirds, tanagers, jays, crows, swallows, and so on. The suboscines have a less complex vocal apparatus. The vast majority of suboscines are found in the neotropics. Only a single family of suboscines (flycatchers) gets into North America. There are three small families of suboscines in the old world, all restricted to tropical regions.
Above is the Social Flycatcher, a common species throughout the neotropics. It is relatively recognizable, only closely resembling a dozen or so other species.
The abundance and diversity of suboscines give the new world tropics their own unique bird flavor. There are five* main types of suboscines in South America: flycatchers, ant birds, oven birds, woodcreepers, and the manakins and cotingas. The flycatchers consist of about 5 billion species that all look exactly the same and can only be distinguished by making sacrifices to the elder gods. At least they tend to sit around in the open. Ovenbirds have funky nests that look like little clay ovens. The woodcreepers are like North American brown creepers on steroids. There are quite a few species varying considerably in size as well as length and shape of the bill.
The manakins and cotingas are frugivorous birds, that is they have a diet that consists largely of fruit. Frugivory is a very common way of life among animals in tropical forests. Although many temperate birds eat fruit there are very few birds that are fruit specialists in temperate regions for the simple reason that fruit isn’t available year round. In contrast, fruit is abundant in tropical forests as many tropical trees have animal-dispersed seeds. Frugivory seems to be an easy way to make a living which has some interesting social consequences. Male parental care seems to be unnecessary and females raise chicks on their own. As a result, scientists think this has “freed up” males to evolve all kinds of wild traits associated with mating. See videos below.
Manakins are small birds that form leks, areas where males display and females come and check them out. Some places, like here in Panama, they are relatively easy to see. In dense forest you can often hear them but just get a brief glimpse as they vanish.
This was a cotinga we saw several times.
I’ve only ever had a brief glimpse of an umbrella bird. They are the closest thing to a bird of paradise, in terms of bizarre plumage that we can see in the new world.
At the opposite end of the showiness scale is the Screaming Piha, a very non-descript bird with a very loud call. The call is one of the signature sounds of the Amazon.
Lastly let’s discuss the ant-birds, one of the most diverse groups of birds in the tropics and, for a few days, the bane of my existence. Army ants are common in new world tropical forests. Unlike popular fiction they do not devour large animals but do move through the forest in highly mobile colonies that scare up small animals as they go. A large number of bird species will follow army ants around in the forest and grab insects as they are scared up by the ants. Woodcreepers are one type of bird that does this. A very large group of suboscines are known as the ant birds because they dominate these mixed species flocks that follow army ants. They are small, usually somberly colored birds that hang out in dense vegetation. Seeing them requires a lot of patience and skill with binoculars. Typically we would find them late in the morning and stand around staring into a thicket hoping for a glimpse while lunch was getting cold back at the station.
The white-browed antbird was a relatively cooperative and attractive species, I got a couple of good looks at them.
Barred antshrikes are relatively conspicuous and very widespread.
We didn’t see this antbird (not that I remember) but it gives you an idea of a typical antbird experience, but with better lighting and the bird moving shorter than average distances between perches.