The Cuban Emerald feeds on flowers and insects and is sometimes found flycatching. They inhabit a broad range of habitats.
The Cuban Gnatcatcher is a small, energetic, gray-and-white bird that tends to waggle its long tail.
The Black-whiskered Vireo is a small but stout-bodied songbird with a straight rather thick bill with a sharp hook which you can see clearly in these images.
The Cuban Tody is an incredibly beautiful bird endemic to Cuba. A small, gemlike, woodland species that is usually found in pairs. The rather large head, long bill, and short tail create a unique profile. Also note its shimmering green upperparts and red throat and sides.
Another bird we observed in Cuba was the Crested Caracara. A bird we often see on birding trips to southern Florida.
A bird that is often seen and heard along the forest trails of Cuba is the Red-legged Thrush.
We have just returned from our third trip to Cuba, this time staying again on Cayo Coco. Again, I was fortunate enough to bird with Paulino Lopez Delgado.
The Clay-colored Sparrow’s buzzy song is a signature sound of the vast shrublands of the northern prairie and Great Plains. Though they’re not brightly colored, their pale tones and overall clean, crisp markings help set them apart from other sparrows—especially useful on their wintering grounds, where they often flock with other species.
The Song Sparrow is found throughout most of North America, but the birds of different areas can look surprisingly different. Song Sparrows of the Desert Southwest are pale, while those in the Pacific Northwest are dark and heavily streaked.
The Vesper Sparrow inhabits grasslands and fields across much of the northern United States and Canada.
A crisp, pretty sparrow whose bright rufous cap both provides a splash of color and makes adults fairly easy to identify. Chipping Sparrows are common across North America wherever trees are interspersed with grassy openings.
Swamp Sparrows provide sweet accompaniment to spring mornings in boreal bogs, sedge swamps, cattail marshes, and wet brushy meadows. Their clear, mellifluous trills resonate through wetlands from central Canada to the eastern United States, where Swamp Sparrows are fairly common but often hidden among aquatic plants.
The Savannah Sparrow’s name sounds like a nod to its fondness for grassy areas, but this species was actually named by famed nineteenth century ornithologist Alexander Wilson for a specimen collected in Savannah, Georgia.
A colorful standout in a family of mostly streaky brown birds, Nelson’s Sparrows have bold yellow-orange faces, gray cheeks, and a neat band of yellow across a finely streaked breast.
If a male Field Sparrow survives the winter, it usually returns to breed in the same territory each year. The female is less likely to return to the same territory, and young sparrows only rarely return the next year to where they were born.
The dainty Lincoln's Sparrow has a talent for concealing itself. It sneaks around the ground amid willow thickets in wet meadows, rarely straying from cover.
Fox Sparrows are typically seen sending up a spray of leaf litter as they kick around in search of food. Fox Sparrows are dark, splotchy sparrows of dense thickets.
The White-throated Sparrow is the bird that got me interested in birding. We were camped at McGregor Provincial Park back in the late seventies when I was awakened early morning by the beautiful call of the White-throated Sparrow. The bird was perched on a limb right behind our tent singing its heart out. So, I bought the Peterson Field guide to birds and a pair of Tasco bins from Canadian Tire, which were huge by todays optics, and a small pair of Bausch and Lomb to take on canoe trips. Both of which served me for years.
The Northern Harrier is distinctive from a long distance away: a slim, long-tailed hawk gliding low over a marsh or grassland, holding its wings in a V-shape and sporting a white patch at the base of its tail.
The Townsend’s Solitaire is an elegant, wide-eyed songbird of western-mountain forests. Their drab gray plumage gets a lift from subtly beautiful buffy wing patches and a white eyering.
Lapland Longspurs breed in tundra habitats across the arctic. Their name refers to the Lapland region of Scandinavia, which is partly in Sweden and partly in Finland.
Peregrine Falcons catch medium-sized birds in the air with swift, spectacular dives. I was happy to get this image recently of a Peregrine just after it captured a Mourning Dove.
Red-necked Grebes are boldly plumaged waterbirds with pale cheeks and a daggerlike yellow bill that contrasts with a sharp black crown.
The Pied-billed Grebe is common across much of North America. These small brown birds have unusually thick bills that turn silver and black in summer. These expert divers inhabit sluggish rivers, freshwater marshes, lakes, and estuaries. They use their chunky bills to kill and eat large crustaceans along with a great variety of fish, amphibians, insects, and other invertebrates.
A couple of years ago I had the chance to photograph a Western Grebe in Lambton County. The Western Grebe has a black-and-white plumage with a yellow bill and red eye.
Familiar to most North American birders in its black-and-white winter plumage, the Horned Grebe is more striking in its red-and-black breeding feathers which we usually see when they pass through our area in the spring.
Ruddy Ducks are compact, thick-necked waterfowl with seemingly oversized tails that they habitually hold upright. Breeding males have a sky-blue bill, shining white cheek patch, and gleaming chestnut body.
