{"id":1474,"date":"2007-12-26T20:57:18","date_gmt":"2007-12-27T03:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/26\/guyana-icterids\/"},"modified":"2014-12-04T11:15:55","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T18:15:55","slug":"guyana-icterids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/26\/guyana-icterids\/","title":{"rendered":"Guyana: Icterids"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here in the northern hemisphere, we tend sometimes to think of the icterids as a rather uniform group of black and blackish birds, the monotony relieved in most parts of the US and Canada by one or at best two species of orioles and a meadowlark.<\/p>\n<p>This exclusively New World family really comes into its own in the tropics, though, where the icterids enchant with their bright plumages, species diversity, and fascinating social behaviors.<\/p>\n<p>Caciques (two syllables, please!) are colonial nesters of forest and forest edge. In Guyana, the most widespread, or at least the most conspicuous, is the gorgeous <strong>Yellow-rumped Cacique<\/strong>, which its builds cities of pendant nests in isolated trees in open country.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/yellow-rumped-cacique-guyana-2007-036.bmp\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The inhabitants of these colonies are bright black and yellow, with beautiful soft blue irides.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/yellow-rumped-cacique-guyana-2007-083.bmp\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Oropendolas, blessed with one of the loveliest names of any bird, are even more outlandish, bigger, louder, flashier. <strong>Crested Oropendola <\/strong>is widespread in the American tropics.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/crested-oropendola-guyana-2007-064.bmp\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Green Oropendola<\/strong>, every bit as bizarre as its name suggests, is a locally distributed bird of extreme northern South America, not easy to find but worth every moment of effort.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/green-orpoendola-guyana-2007-406.bmp\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This one was being mobbed mercilessly by a pack of <strong>Rusty-margined Flycatchers<\/strong>, an indication perhaps of its omnivorous appetites.<\/p>\n<p>The finest of all tropical blackbirds, though, is an open-country species.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/red-breatsed-blackbird-guyana-2007-595.bmp\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This female-plumaged <strong>Red-breasted Meadowlark <\/strong>shows clearly that species&#8217; intermediate position between the meadowlarks and the <em>Agelaius <\/em>blackbirds. The males are even lovelier, and they make any walk through the wet savannahs of Guyana memorable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here in the northern hemisphere, we tend sometimes to think of the icterids as a rather uniform group of black and blackish birds, the monotony relieved in most parts of the US and Canada by one or at best two species of orioles and a meadowlark. This exclusively New World family really comes into its &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/26\/guyana-icterids\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Guyana: Icterids&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,1,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7554,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474\/revisions\/7554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}