Author: Rick Wright

The very word “cotinga” evokes the tropics like no other. I haven’t seen a great number of species in this group, but those I have been fortunate enough to encounter have certainly made an impression, especially the large, colorful species known as fruitcrows.

Purple-throated Fruitcrow has a wide range in southern Central and South America, and for a trpoical bird, it’s fairly easy to see. I was interested to find them mostly fairly high in the trees in Guyana, while in Panama I’ve several times enjoyed them at eye level.

Clear out at the other end of the scale is the apparently rare, and certainly little known, Crimson Fruitcrow. Males such as this one certainly live up to the name; this is a big, bright bird. We eventually saw two, both males; the females are duller and probably even easier to overlook.

The males are said to have a parachuting display in which they rise 10 meters above the canopy. More significantly to Guyana’s burgeoning ornithotourism industry, they are also rumored to be creatures of habit, often using the same perch for long periods of time. If individuals like this turn out to be reliably findable by tours, the species will be a major draw to visiting birders from around the world.

I’ve always loved swallows, and increasingly I think of that group as an exemplary one for the purposes of “birder education”: the family Hirundinidae shows a good diversity in habits and behavior, and provides excellent illustrations of a variety of identification features, from plumage characters to flight habit. Name a topic birders are interested in, and the swallows provide an instructive example.

And besides that, they’re beautiful, as this White-winged Swallow shows.

The rivers of Guyana left this boy from the prairies, one who has ended up in the desert, with his mouth agape and his eyes disbelieving. Our boat travel along the Essequibo took us to several stretches where the river was 5 kilometers or more across, the opposite shore a green blur on the horizon; a few of the islands in the river, I was told, are larger than Bermuda.

Sandbars and beaches provided great habitat for a number of really fine birds. Our landing strip at beautiful Rock View Lodge hosted a Collared Plover, and Pied Lapwings, beautiful creatures that in appearance bridge the gap between the “ringed” plovers and the larger lapwings, were familiar and confiding all along the river.

Black Skimmers were very common, too, and with them we found the occasional Large-billed Tern, a bird I had long dreamed of seeing.

There was a mild sense of vindication when I finally saw my first of this species. Many of you will no doubt remember the Memorial Day Large-billed Tern at New Jersey’s Kearney Marsh. I don’t remember where I was the day that that bird arrived, but I do know that I was not at home, and so my phone rang off the hook all day–and I didn’t find out about the bird until hours after it had departed. A shame: now that I have seen the tern, I really wish I hadn’t had to wait so long!