Tumbes Chat-Tyrant

Small bird of foothill forests. Males have a pale buffy body with black head, wings, and tail; females are much more drab, with a grayish-green head, pale bluish-green back, and yellowish underparts. In good light, both sexes show blue in flight feathers. Found in foothill forests and edge habitats, dry valleys, and in humid forest around the bases of the tepuis. Usually observed at fruiting trees, often in pairs or small family groups, from lower levels into canopy. Calls are indistinct chips and twitters. Plumage pattern of male is distinctive; females are more confusing but are seldom seen without males, facilitating identification; note contrasting gray head and (at close range) blue in wings.

Gangly wader with a long bicolored bill. Breeding plumage is dark brick-red below (male) or pale orangey (female); nonbreeding plumage is overall gray-brown with white belly; compare to Black-tailed Godwit. In flight shows rather plain upperwings with only a faint whitish wing stripe; white rump and finely barred tail. Mainly coastal away from tundra breeding grounds. Often in flocks feeding on mudflats and in brackish coastal lagoons, roosting in adjacent freshwater habitats. Feeds by probing its long bill into the mud.

Thickset, short-winged, pot-bellied gull. Adult has dark gray back and wings, intense pink legs, and an especially large white “crescent” (white tertial edges) near the wingtips when perched. Breeding adult white-headed; nonbreeding birds have variably heavy brown streaking on the head and upper breast. Takes four years for immatures to progress from mostly brown to fully white and gray adult plumage; intermediate plumages are often mottled and messy. Often looks rather frosty by the first winter; starts to develop a gray back and whitish eye in its second year. Primarily an Asian species, found in coastal regions from Japan and South Korea to Russia. Regularly occurs in western Alaska, but very rare elsewhere in North America.