Cook's Petrel

A unique, slender magpie-like bird with a long narrowing tail and a chunky bill. Adults are uniform glossy black; immatures have black-tipped pink bills. Resident in open savanna with palms, in cultivated areas, and in rural villages. Forages on the ground in groups, often near larger mammals including domestic stock, walking on the ground or riding on the back of the mammal. Also perches in treetops and palms when roosting or resting. Loaded with character. Groups sometimes become garrulous when calling to each other, mostly giving piping high-pitched starling-like “cheeet” calls.

Very small owl of humid evergreen forest in tropical lowlands that is active during the day. Favors forest canopy where it is rarely seen, but sometimes hunts low at forest edges. Most often detected by its tooting call, given at any time of day but mainly early and late. Like other pygmy-owls, presence often revealed by mobbing bands of small songbirds. Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl favors more open habitats, is seen much more frequently, and has pale streaks (not spots) on the crown and a slightly different tooting song.

A small, nondescript, streaky gray-brown seedeater with a lemon-yellow rump, white tail tips, and a variable dark throat (more obvious in the male). Pairs and flocks frequent thorn scrub, broadleaf woodland, scrubby patches in upland grassland, cultivation, and gardens, where they forage on the ground and in small shrubs and grass. The song is a complex collection of whistles and warbles, and calls include a simpler melodic one- or two-note “soooe-sweee.” The similar Reichenow’s Seedeater and Yellow-rumped Serin differ from Black-throated Canary by lacking a dark patch on the chin and throat.