Science

Reader Mark Joseph recently sent in some bird photos from his friend Cliff’s April 2024 trip to Belize; part one was posted here, and this is part two.  I am not sure who wrote the captions, but they’re indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Hooded oriole (Icterus cucullatus) – male:

Hooded warbler (Setophaga citrina) – male:

Least sandpiper (Calidris minutilla):

OK, this one is a bit of a story. Cliff called it a house wren, which is what I would have called it too, but when I went to look up the binomial to use in this post, I found out that the “house wren” has recently been split into *8* different species! So, this is now a Northern House Wren (Troglodytes aedon). Besides this common North American bird, the “Northern” group now has five area-specific Caribbean island species. There is also now a “Southern” group, the Southern House Wren and one erstwhile subspecies, Cobb’s Wren:

Limpkin (Aramus guarauna):

Prothonotary warbler (Protonotaria citrea):

Roadside hawk (Rupornis magnirostris):

Rose-throated becard (Pachyramphus aglaiae) – female, if I’m not mistaken:

Russet-naped wood rail (Aramides albiventris):

Rufous-tailed hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl):

Vermilion flycatcher (Pyrocephalus obscurus) – male:

White-faced ibis (Plegadis chihi) – non-breeding plumage:

 

While looking through Cliff’s pictures of his trip to Belize, I see that he also did a nice series of six pictures of the Northern Jacana – Jacana spinosa (aka the Jesus bird, as it can walk on water); the comments with these pictures are Cliff’s:

Northern Jacana are very attractive birds that live pretty much on floating vegetation in freshwater marshes, ponds, etc:

They are very colorful in flight, squawking the entire time aloft.

These birds are interesting in that the female mates with several males, then the male raises the young (newborn Jacana can walk, swim, and feed themselves from birth):

 

Even the young birds have the famed Jacana ridiculously long toes for walking on floating vegetation:

 

This is one of my favorite images from the entire trip (so far)…

I’ve been a runner—on and off—for over 25 years. For years, my goal was qualifying for the Boston Marathon. But I was never quite fast enough for my age group. At one point, I figured if I could just hold my best marathon time for another 20 years, I’d eventually “age into” a qualifying time. Unfortunately, my musculoskeletal system has other plans. […]

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