Birds you will encounter in Ecuador.
Before we get into the nitty gritty of the birds we will encounter in Ecuador, maybe we need primer on birds and how to identify them.
More content will be added soon. However, the open access book attached below gives a great introduction to bird speciation and other relevant topics. Although it is not assigned, many of you will find parts of this book interesting and relevant. The bird morphology chapter posted next to it offers a shorter, but relatively comprehensive, discussion on bird morphology that may be helpful as well.
More content will be added soon. However, the open access book attached below gives a great introduction to bird speciation and other relevant topics. Although it is not assigned, many of you will find parts of this book interesting and relevant. The bird morphology chapter posted next to it offers a shorter, but relatively comprehensive, discussion on bird morphology that may be helpful as well.
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Tips for Identifying Birds: Characteristics to Consider
Bird-watching becomes a lot more fun when you know the species of bird you’re looking at. Without taking the time to identify the bird, you may end up looking at a rare species without even realizing it. Following these tips for identifying birds will Will help develop your skills.
APPEARANCE
So many things/aspects go into bird appearance, just like in humans (not all the same in humans, of course).
- Color pattern: The first thing people often look at to determine a bird’s species is its color. Consider the overall color as well as any unique patterns or markings it may have.
- Size: Assessing a mystery bird’s size by comparing it to that of other familiar birds may make it easier to identify.
- Shape: No two bird species share the exact same shape. As such, assessing its shape is especially beneficial when determining which species it belongs to.
- Tail: A bird’s tail may be curved, forked, or pointed. It may also have a unique pattern or color that will help distinguish the species.
- Bill: The size, shape, and color of a bird’s bill is often indicative of its species.
- Wings: The length of a bird’s wingspan and the color of its primary and secondary feathers are often particularly telling of its species. As such, take a bird’s wingspan into special consideration when trying to determine the species.
The figures above cover almost the entire external anatomy of a bird (with the second one showing more zoomed in views). This plays an important part in identification, as you may have guessed.
- Head: Crown and Nape are key parts of the head that help in identification.
- Auriculars: Are the specialized feathers related to opening of the ear, extending backward or towards the eye. These are also called “Ear Coverts”.
- Eyering: The ring around the eye. Also called as ‘Orbital Ring”. Along with it, the color of iris serves as an important field mark.
- Lore: If present extends from the base of narials (feathers present at the base of nostrils) to the eye.
- Bill: It is a bony outgrowth from the skull which is made up of upper mandible and lower mandible. Often the shape, size, curvature of bill act as important field marks.
- Throat: Starts from below the chin up till the forking of ventral feather tract. In some birds it’s differently colored than the rest of the plumage and often marked with stripes, spots, and lines. Malar Stripes run along the throat of some birds and act as fantastic ID agents.
- Breast: The area below the throat that extends all over the breast muscles.
- Belly: It extends from the bottom of the chest and reaches up to vent (the area around the cloaca). Feathers of belly overlap with undertail coverts.
- Undertail Coverts: These are the contour feathers behind the vent which also cover the base of the tail. These are also called “Crissum”.
- Uppertail Coverts: These form a single semi-circular row of feathers which also cover the base of tail. In some birds, these feathers extend way beyond the tail like in Indian Peacock.
- Tail: A single line of feathers covers the anatomical tail. Tail’s length, shape, color and the way it is positioned are important markers to be kept in mind while observing birds.
- Rump: It is the patch positioned low on the back and above the tail.
- Back: Often the most easily noticed part of a bird, given the bird is in the right posture. Running from the base of nape up until the rump, it is usually broad and often distinguished from the rump, nape, and wings through some markings.
- Primaries: These are the feathers present on tip of wings, as in covering the digits and hand portion of wings.
- Secondaries: These are present a little above the primaries and represent the forearm part of the wings.
- Scapulars: These are the feathers that cover the shoulder of a bird.
- Feet: Feet includes toes, talons (or claws), and the hind toe. The orientation of toes and size of talons are also important markers used for identification.
BEHAVIOR
Appearance isn’t everything when it comes to identifying a bird. Its behavior can tell you a lot about which species it belongs to and help you narrow down its classification. Pay close attention to the way a bird flies, walks, feeds, and behaves around other birds to determine its species. The following behaviors may help you narrow down the species of a bird.
Mating or Courtship Behavior
Courtship behaviors, such as songs, displays, and dances, are a way for birds to show off their strength, health, and ability to produce offspring. Female birds invest a great deal of energy in forming and laying eggs and incubating them so it is important that she chooses a mate who will give her healthy chicks. Courtship behavior can also help birds distinguish between different species or even sexes, and can reduce the aggression normally displayed when defending territory.
So what do these behaviors entail? They may include things like
So what do these behaviors entail? They may include things like
- Song as a means to bond.
- Courtship feeding like what happens with robbins and cardinals
- Dancing, like the case with Blue Footed Boobies, as seen as part of displays that may include other behavior like dives, wing flaps, head nods and intricate steps.
- Plumage displays like the case of peafowls (peacocks). Bright plumage and flamboyant displays of colorful feathers will show how strong and healthy a bird is.
- Nest building
Typical Behavior
Are they active or slow in movement? For example, pipits and larks may seem very similar at first, but their movements are very different. Pipits are very active in their movement and stand upright. Larks are often slower and have a crouching stance. Similarly, warblers tend to slouch while flycatchers prefer to be upright even though they are almost of the same size. Notice whether they hop like sparrows, or walk like pipits, or climb like woodpeckers? Do they perch from branch to branch? Or do they return to the same spot again and again? Also notice whether the bird bobs its tail or wags its tail. Movement of tail also opens up new doors of identification.
Nesting Behavior
Feeding and Foraging Behavior
Foraging is the simple act of gathering food, either for immediate consumption or storage for the future. This act is anything but simple, however, and bird bills are highly evolved with different shapes and lengths to gather preferred foods best. Birds have developed a wide variety of ways in which they forage and consume their food. Bird tongues, senses, talons, and flight abilities also play great roles in how they forage, and there are many different ways birds can gather food. Also, what do they do with their prey once it’s caught? If you see a bird near a river, beating something that’s caught in its beak on a rock again and again and then swallowing, you can be almost sure it’s a kingfisher.
- Scratching: This involves birds using one foot or both feet simultaneously to remove or loosen debris from the ground to reveal seeds, bugs, or other food. This is a common foraging behavior for many ground-feeding birds, including sparrows, grouse, quail, and towhees.
- Gleaning: Birds use careful, meticulous picking of food from a surface such as a tree, branch, grass, or leaves. Nuthatches, chickadees, and tits glean in trees; warblers often glean from leaves, and thrushes often glean from the ground.
- Hawking: With hawking, birds snatch food, usually insects, with the bill while in flight and consuming it without perching. This is the most prevalent feeding method for swifts, swallows, martins, and nighthawks, but many warblers and flycatchers also practice hawking.
- Sallying: For sallying, birds catch insects in the air but return to a perch to feed. They often return to the same perch between several consecutive feedings. This is a common foraging behavior for many flycatchers and rollers.
- Scanning: Birds watch an area carefully for prey before suddenly attacking to pursue it. This is common for raptors that soar or hover over an area while looking for prey, and when they find it, their dive is swift and sudden to take it by surprise.
- Probing: Probing involves Inserting the bill into a crevice or beneath the ground's surface to seek out and extract food. This is common on beaches with sandpipers and other shorebirds, while woodpeckers probe trees in forests and hummingbirds probe flowers in gardens.
- Lunging: For lunging, birds dart quickly after prey to strike at it rapidly, often with pauses between hunting forays. This is typical foraging behavior for roadrunners and plovers, as well as for wading birds such as herons.
- Dabbling: Birds tip up while swimming to immerse the head, neck, and upper body to get at aquatic foods such as algae or other vegetation. Many ducks and geese use this behavior in shallow water.
- Dipping: With dipping, birds dip briefly into the water for food that is often seen rather than felt. Submersion may be partially or completely under the water, and gulls and dippers are experts at dipping while feeding.
- Diving: For diving, birds swim completely under the water to forage on vegetation or pursue prey such as fish or crustaceans. Mergansers and several types of ducks forage by diving, as do loons, anhingas, and penguins.
Sea-anchor 'soaring' by storm-petrels -- As described by Pennycuick (2008), storm-petrels have a unique method for picking up food from the water's surface. They glide into the wind with their body clear of the surface, but with their webbed feet in the water, helping to 'anchor' them. Aerodynamic (or air) drag on on wings (friction drag) and body (parasitic drag) push them backward through the water so that the feet tend to slowly move backward through the water, and that creates forward-directed hydrodynamic (or water) drag. When this water drag balances the aerodynamic (air) drag, the storm-petrels remain in place, suspended above the water's surface at a height that allows them to pick small food items from the surface (Photo source: Wikipedia).
Here is a 20 second video showing storm petrels exhibiting this behavior (walking) on water. Ever wondered why a woodpecker never gets brain damage from all that pecking? Woodpeckers are known to drum hard woody surfaces of trees at a rate of 18 to 22 times per second with a deceleration of 1200 g (humans can lose consciousness at g-forces as low as 4 to 6 g). Woodpeckers have four structures that help absorb mechanical shock and prevent brain damage: (1) a hard, but elastic, beak, (2) a hyoid apparatus that rigidly supports the tongue, (3) an area of spongy bone located at the contrecoup position from the beak, and (4) skull bone with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).
Flocking Behavior
Flying style or form
SONG
Most birds have a unique song and call. Listening to recordings of birds you expect to encounter before embarking on a bird-watching excursion will help you identify a bird’s species—even if you never actually see it.
Though not practiced by many birders (because it requires practice and dedication of next level), listening to calls and songs of birds is an extremely amazing way of identifying birds. Do you know that song and call are two different things? A call is a fairly simple brief sound like a squeak, a peep, a chirrup, or a squawk etc. A song, on the other hand, is a beautiful composition of melodious notes strung together and often associated with courtship. Keep this point in mind though- just like we have dialects, so do the birds. Sometimes you might encounter different variations of the same song by the same species of bird.
Though not practiced by many birders (because it requires practice and dedication of next level), listening to calls and songs of birds is an extremely amazing way of identifying birds. Do you know that song and call are two different things? A call is a fairly simple brief sound like a squeak, a peep, a chirrup, or a squawk etc. A song, on the other hand, is a beautiful composition of melodious notes strung together and often associated with courtship. Keep this point in mind though- just like we have dialects, so do the birds. Sometimes you might encounter different variations of the same song by the same species of bird.
HABITAT
Although birds’ habitats often change throughout the year due to their mobile nature, the environment in which you spot a bird is still a good clue to consider when you’re trying to narrow down its species. Where you find a bird (ground, level of tree, type of tree, near or on water, roof of a house, etc), and when you saw it (season, time of day, etc) is very important.
other characteristics
Great resources for bird identification
Videos of bird behavior
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THREATS TO BIRDS
Text to be added
LEARNING OBJECTIVES : CHURUTE MANGROVE FOREST CANOEING TRIP.
At the end of the Churute Mangrove forest part of our tour, students will be able to:
At the end of the Churute Mangrove forest part of our tour, students will be able to:
Assigned Readings for this part of the trip
The few hours you spend watching these documentaries will help you understand some of the complex issues we will discuss on the trip. Spend the time, it's worth it!
Other Interesting Resources (not assigned)
- All about birds Academy (and games!)
- Beginner's Resources for Birding
INFO - Birding Tips | |
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