Suriname, 22d day, hummingbird and macaw

This video says about itself:

The making of a sculpture of Barack Obama, by the well-known Surinamese Artist, Erwin de Vries.

Also about Erwin de Vries: here.

One of the background sounds of the video is the call of the great kiskadee, a common bird in Suriname, also in Paramaribo city.

Suriname, 24 February 2009.

After coming back from eastern Suriname yesterday, this is our last day.

In the afternoon, we will go to the airport.

But in the morning, still the last opportunity to look for birds around Leonsberg.

And it would turn out that this was the best birding day of all in Leonsberg; in spite of interruptions by a few rainy showers.

On this morning, rusty margined flycatcher and tropical kingbird on a wire.

On a shrub: a blue-black grassquit.

In a ditch: tri-coloured heron, catching a fish.

Male and female wing-barred seedeater.

Black vultures.

Great kiskadee. Buff-throated saltator.

At the ferry: twelve black skimmers together, hunting for fish near the water’s edge.

Two green-rumped parrotlets sitting on a pole in the water.

Semipalmated sandpiper.

Blue-winged swallow. Little blue heron. Snowy egret.

Blue-grey tanager. Tropical mockingbird.

Orange-winged parrots flying overhead.

A whimbrel near the Suriname river.

White-lined tanager.

Then, in a leafless tree, a yellow-headed caracara. Not a very unusual bird around Paramaribo. However, that a blue-and yellow macaw sits below it is really unusual. This species occurs naturally in the coastal regions of Suriname. But catching them as cage birds has really diminished the blue-and-yellow macaw numbers, certainly around Paramaribo.

Is this an escaped cage bird? It calls. Other macaws, who are certainly in cages, call back. The bird in the tree calls back again. Then, it flies away.

This is a video about macaws, both in captivity and in nature.

Then, a much smaller and less brightly coloured bird, much more common about Paramaribo, but beautiful nevertheless: a pied water-tyrant.

A short-tailed swift high in the air.

Ruddy ground-doves.

A turkey vulture, driven away by a roadside hawk.

A pale-breasted thrush on a wire.

A grey-breasted martin.

A wattled jacana in a ditch.

The rufous crab-hawk sits on his usual tree again.

A black-collared hawk flying.

Two brown-throated parakeets in a leafless tree.

In another tree, a snail kite.

Snail kites in Florida: here.

In yet another tree, a ringed kingfisher and a scaled pigeon.

A smooth-billed ani on a wire.

A common tody-flycatcher.

A boat-billed flycatcher on a wire.

A plain-breasted ground dove on the road.

On another leafless tree, a slender-billed kite. A great kiskadee tries to drive it away, but the hawk is not impressed and stays on the branch. The great kiskadee seemingly gives up, and sits down above the slender-billed kite. Maybe realizing that, though a bird of prey, this kite eats snails, not baby kiskadees.

A monarch butterfly.

Two tropical kingbirds on a palm tree.

A plain-crested elaenia.

Two crested oropendolas just behind the swimming pool.

A pygmy kingfisher diving from a branch into a ditch.

Near the sluice, teju lizard and green garden lizard.

Twenty-five black skimmers resting on the muddy Suriname river bank.

A wattled jacana.

A house wren singing from an electricity pole.

A green-throated mango hummingbird sitting on a branch, quite close.

Then, as last Leonsberg bird, a species that we have not seen before: blood-colored woodpecker. Male and female on a small tree.

From the bus to the airport, near Onverwacht: a cattle egret.

After Onverwacht, a swallow-tailed kite.

The last bird of Suriname, which we see at Zanderij airport, is also a swallow-tailed kite.

March 2010. A brightly coloured, new subspecies of Mountain-Tanager has been discovered in Colombia. It was first found in the Serranía de los Yariguíes Mountains, near ProAves‘ Cerulean Warbler Bird Reserve in 2005: here.

Cock-tailed tyrant (Alectrurus tricolor): here.

Related articles

• Conservationists in Suriname, Guyana, Cook islands
• A great birding week part 3

• Sixty new wildlife species discovered in Suriname (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Suriname to Host Next Caribbean Week of Agriculture (repeatingislands.com)
• Scientists Discover 60 New Species in Remote Mountain Forests of Suriname (scienceworldreport.com)
• New species found in Suriname’s ‘Tropical Eden’ (nbcnews.com)
• Sixty new species found in Suriname (theguardian.com)