Chestnut-bellied Nuthatch

A gray and brown bird with a long, wispy tail restricted to the Perijá Mountains along the Colombia-Venezuela border. Separated from Streak-backed Canastero by having a plain back, no orange chin patch, and a longer tail with thinner feathers. Inhabits dense thickets at high elevations near and above tree line. Gives a series of piping notes that quickly rises in pitch and then speeds up into a trill.

A powerfully built terrestrial bird of remote northern Chinese and Siberian taiga. Male massive, with glossy black head and chest, white-spotted brown wings, and fiery red stripe above the eye. Female smaller, with brown head and neck and black-striped body. Male displays with neck stretched upward and broad black tail tilted up and fanned. Males engage in fierce battles on leks during courtship season.

A very small nondescript sunbird with a short orange-based bill that curves uniformly along its length; easily mistaken for females of other sunbirds. The only features on the olive upperparts are indistinct paler eyebrows and lines running under the eyes, and yellow edging to the wings. Although often hidden, the male has yellow or whitish (not red) tufts at the shoulders. Singles are local and inconspicuous at the edges of lowland and riverine forest, sometimes entering secondary growth; it joins mixed-flocks and is frequently attracted to epiphytes in mossy clumps. Calls a high-pitched “tseeep” and trills. Little Green and Fraser’s sunbirds are similar to Bates’s but brighter, with straighter bills and more distinct yellowish eye-rings; Ursula’s Sunbird has a long decurved bill and grayish face and underparts.