Oh look! It’s yet another yellow, black and white flycatcher! WC warned you: there are a lot of flycatchers, and many of them look a lot alike. This is a Lesser Kiskadee, Philohydor lictor, a smaller cousin to the Great Kiskadee. The Lesser Kiskadee has the same basic coloration as the Rusty-margined Flycatcher and the Social…

As WC has noted before, there are bird feeders and then there are bird feeders. If you put out birdfeeders, and attract songbirds in any numbers, you are also going to attract critters that eat songbirds, like Cooper’s Hawks. This is a sub-adult by eye color and feather pattern; it’s a male by size (among…

Last week we looked at a Social Flycatcher, and WC warned that it could be tough to tell the Myiozetetes flycatchers apart. Meet the Rusty-margined Flycatcher. At first glance, they look identical, but note the slight cinnamon/rufous color along the edge of the wings, and the even fainter yellow-greenish coloration across the back. The black mask…

There are a truly bewildering number of species of flycatchers. There are more than 400 species of Tyrant Flycatchers alone, and Tyrant Flycatchers are just one of the five New World families of flycatchers. Think of it: 400 consecutive weeks of Tyrannidae. WC won’t do that, but we’ll have a look at some of the…

There is another family of big-billed New World birds that are related to the Toucans and Toucanets you’ve seen in recent weeks. The New World has about 15 species of Barbets. Unlike Toucans and Toucanets, Barbets are found in the Old World as well, although they are not close relatives.. You can see the family…

A surprising number of the birds WC has photographed turn out to be banded or tagged. “Wearing jewelry,” as one of WC’s birding buddies put it. It’s kind of a joke with Mrs. WC. This was in 2002 when WC was just considering taking up bird photography, influenced by the three nature photographers in our…