White Eared-Pheasant

A medium-sized woodland-dwelling kingfisher with a blue tail and flight feathers, dark brown back and shoulders, gray-brown streaked head, and dark-tipped reddish bill. In flight it has distinctive cinnamon underwings. Singles and pairs inhabit woodland, riverine forest, forest edges, and cultivation. Calls a short descending “ki-ti-ti-ti-it”. Gray-headed Kingfisher is similar but has a chestnut belly, grayer head and dark, and white-and-rufous (not all rufous) underwings in flight.

Distinctive and attractive, but a rarely seen denizen of fresh and brackish wetlands, especially with shallow water and low to knee-high grasses; also found on lakeshores with taller reeds and rushes. Occasionally seen feeding quietly at edge of vegetation, but mostly seen when flushed from close range. Flies up silently with stiff flicking wingbeats and brief glides, long legs trailing, and drops back to cover usually not far away. Note bold white spots on wings and droop-tipped bill. Related to jacanas, not closely related to the typical snipe.

A trogon of lowland rainforests, almost always found in the forest interior, away from forest edges. Males and females have distinctive bare yellow facial skin below their eyes and between their eyes and bill. Both sexes have green backs and uppertails, red chests and vents, and finely barred wings. The species often calls motionless in the subcanopy, giving a series of 6-10 sad, descending coo notes, repeating these series 2-3 times per minute. Similar to the larger Narina Trogon, but Bare-cheeked Trogon is told apart by its song, its closed-canopy forest habitat, and the purely green tones on its head, back, and uppertail.