Category Archives: Bird Behavior

Fulvous Whistling-Duck: Bird #15 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown

As you read this Sneed is eagerly preparing for the Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival (see our recent post Birding Festivals of the West 2026) in Cortez, Colorado. Meanwhile, Braden is birding through east Texas, helping his college friend Ryan achieve his Big Year ambitions. Fittingly, today’s blog post reports on a bird frequently found in Texas—but that Braden first recently found in Southern California. With its discovery, Braden has only 14 regularly occurring species to see on his countdown of ABA Lower 48 birds (see our recent post Lower 48 Life List Countdown: Crissal Thrasher). Enjoy his report!

I haven’t exactly been on top of rare bird reports during the last few years. When I was younger, I subscribed to all the eBird alerts I could: the ABA Rare Bird Alert, the Montana Rare Bird Alert, and even the Missoula County Rare Bird Alert. I also regularly visited birding pages on Facebook, meaning that if a bird in my region showed up where it wasn’t supposed to, I knew about it pretty quickly. Recently, though, I’ve unsubscribed from many of those alerts, and don’t use Facebook as much. So I consider it lucky that I found out about the California Fulvous Whistling-Ducks by accidentally scrolling past an Instagram post.

**My dad saw his first Fulvous Whistling-Ducks in Texas only in 2025, so it felt like a strange coincidence for me to have a crack at them now, a thousand miles away in California.**

According to eBird, the pair of whistling-ducks showed up at the 20,000-acre San Jacinto Wildlife Area in late January, 2026, about a month before I learned about them. Fulvous Whistling-Ducks have a cosmopolitan distribution, being found in both North and South America as well as Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Historically, the species never lived in the United States, but arrived in Florida, the Gulf Coast states and California from the tropics during the nineteenth century. At one point in the early 1900s, Fulvous Whistling-Ducks bred as far north as San Francisco! Following this aggressive colonization period, however, their populations fluctuated wildly, and especially declined on the West Coast. In California, they now only occasionally breed at the Salton Sea (which I did visit last fall to see a Yellow-footed Gull), with no recent breeding records on eBird. The last time the species bred at San Jacinto, according to a local birder, was pre-1950.

**The San Jacinto Wildlife Refuge quickly showed me its importance as a haven for waterfowl. Here, a stunning Green-winged Teal dazzles under full sunlight!**

I’d never actually looked for Fulvous Whistling-Ducks before. The closest I’d been to the species was probably during my trip to Florida with my friend Nick Ramsey in 2022, when we passed one of the state’s most reliable spots for the species: Lake Apopka. Unfortunately, we couldn’t visit Lake Apopka due to the wildlife drive only being open on specific days of the week. I suppose my dad and I also could have seen the species on our visit to Anahuac (now Jocelyn Nugaray) National Wildlife Refuge way back in 2016, but I doubt that the species was even on my radar at the time. The bottom line is that I was shocked to see a pair show up so close to where I was currently working, in Running Springs, California—and I had no choice but to try to find them!

**Tricolored Blackbirds, an endangered species that has suffered catastrophic declines during the past century, were a delightful surprise during my San Jacinto visit.**

February 14th was an unusually foggy day in the San Bernardino Valley, and it seemed to only get foggier as I entered the grassy hills south of Redlands. I’d never been to this area before, and was pleasantly surprised to find dairy farms complete with muddy pastures and flocks of foraging blackbirds. As I entered the wildlife area, the fog gave way to sun and the pastures transitioned to open grasslands, some of the only ones I’d ever seen in California. A Loggerhead Shrike darted across the road in front of my car and I stopped periodically to peer at Mountain Bluebirds, Western Meadowlarks, American Pipits and a variety of sparrows perched on the fencing. The pavement turned to dirt, and I soon spotted wetlands and flooded fields on the horizon. This winter had brought heavy rains to much of southern California, and golden flowers decorated the hills.

In no time, I recognized the value of San Jacinto Wildlife Area to wintering birds. Flocks of waterfowl, especially Northern Shoveler, Ruddy Duck and Northern Pintail, as well as shorebirds and waders like Least Sandpiper and White-faced Ibis, covered the fields and ponds. A Peregrine Falcon alighted on a telephone pole, and I pulled over next to a wire absolutely covered in Tree and Barn Swallows, the first I’d seen this year. Apparently, some of the Barn Swallows that breed in Argentina and Chile spend the winter in the southern United States, and I found a few contenders for austral birds among the flock.

**It’s impossible not to stop for a photo op when a pair of Cinnamon Teal willingly presents itself!**

I followed coordinates to find the whistling-ducks and they proved easy to locate on a small island as soon as I pulled alongside a large pond. They’re pretty ducks, clad in earthy orange with what appear to be claw marks along their sides. They also stand taller than other ducks, as all whistling-ducks do, and nearby Gadwall, Cinnamon Teal and American Coot provided careful comparison. As I watched them preen through my scope, a pair of local birders walked up to me.

**Hopefully, this pair of Fulvous Whistling-Ducks will pioneer a new, invigorated population of the ducks in Southern California.**

“You see these next boxes?” one of them said, “The refuge has been putting them up in the hopes that this pair will nest here this year.”

“Are whistling-ducks cavity nesters?” I asked.

The birder replied. “I believe they can do both—nest in holes and on the ground.”

While I didn’t have particularly high expectations, I do have to admit that it would be pretty cool to see the first breeding whistling-ducks at San Jacinto in the 21st century!

(Note: according to Cornell’s Birds of the World, there have been reports of cavity nesting, but the vast majority of nests are built of vegetation in “dense floating or flooded emergent (herbaceous) vegetation.” This includes weedy rice fields. Unlike most waterfowl, FUWD pairs form strong long-term bonds and males participate greatly in incubation and the rearing of young.)

Fulvous Whistling-Duck is the last regularly-occurring waterfowl species that I checked off of my Lower 48 life list, and it felt a little surreal to see them standing there on that sparkling day in southern California. The first bird on my life list is a waterfowl, the Bufflehead, and I can still remember it clearly, my dad and I standing in the frigid January cold at Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge, our Sibley guide open as we tried to identify that small, black and white duck. Ducks are gateway birds, easy to see and identify, and the focal species for the protection of so many wetlands around the U.S., especially in the West. To be seeking, once more, a species from the same group of birds that welcomed me to the birding world, is something that made my trip to San Jacinto all the more special.

**FUWDs from Sneed’s April 2025 Texas trip (see post Anahuac Lifer Attack).**

Arenal for Antbirds: Birding Costa Rica, Part 2

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Like all FSB posts, this one is written by REAL PEOPLE. Feel free to share it and support real writers and artists everywhere by shunning artificial intelligence. Despite the hype, AI is not “just a tool.” Its primary utility these days is to increase profits by putting people out of work. Don’t make it easy for the giant corporations that control it and are participating in the greatest theft of intellectual and artistic property the world has ever known.

After our surprising morning birding near San Jose’s Juan Santamaría International Airport (see our previous post), Braden and I wasted no time heading into the heart of the region where we would spend the next nine days—the northern Caribbean slope of Costa Rica. Our first destination? The flanks of Arenal Volcano.

Despite having spent more than two months in Costa Rica back in 1994 (when I was writing my books The Forest in the Clouds and Monteverde: Science and Scientists in a Costa Rican Cloud Forest), I had never before explored this region. During his semester abroad here, however, Braden had thoroughly scoured the country for birds and had put together an itinerary that would give us the most bang for our birding buck. The Arenal area—near the bustling tourist town of La Fortuna—held many avian riches, but Braden and I had one group of birds we especially wanted to see: antbirds.

**The area around Arenal Volcano was the first major destination of our nine-day itinerary. Unfortunately, heavy rains greeted us during this supposed dry season!**

If you’re unfamiliar with them, antbirds are a group of birds that shadow army ant swarms—not to eat them, but to snag the many other invertebrates that the swarms dislodge during their ravenous raiding parties. I had seen many ant swarms during my time in Costa Rica, but again (and tragically), that was before I became a birder and if any antbirds were around, I had cluelessly overlooked them. Braden had, of course, been more alert and seen several kinds of antbirds—but never in the classic “insect-palooza” situation one reads about in scientific narratives.

**Braden and I looked forward to finding an antbird flock as much as any other birds on our trip. Note the army ants below the leaf upon which this Bicolored Antbird stands.**

We got our first shot at antbirds on our second morning in the country when we birded the internationally famous Arenal Observatory Lodge & Trails, a rather pricey destination with a fabulous sweep of nature to offer visitors. Fortunately, you don’t have to book a room to bird the place, but can simply pay a fee to spend the day. Unfortunately, waves of heavy rain greeted Braden and me when we arrived. Don’t get me wrong. We still had an incredible day here, including bird lists totaling more than 100 species and a fantastic sighting of a northern tamandua, a small, incredibly shy species of anteater—a first for both of us. Alas, we got only a brief glimpse of a single antbird—a Spotted Antbird—and encountered no army ant swarms where more antbirds might be plying their trade.

**On our first day of antbird searching, we saw only a single Spotted Antbird that didn’t happen to be following any army ants. Still, a gorgeous creature, verdad?** **(Note: the featured image at the beginning of this post shows a female Spotted Antbird!)**

Still hopeful, the next morning we headed to another nearby spot, a combo nature area and zip-lining destination called Sky Adventures. And guess what? It was again pouring down rain! After spending the previous day pretty much soaked, neither of us looked forward to another day of damp garments and soggy boots. A ray of hope was that one of the Sky Adventures guides told us that he had seen antbirds only the day before and even told us where to look.

**Braden wondered if he would see any life birds on this Costa Rican adventures, but quickly spotted this Black-headed Tody-flycatcher, the first of FOUR lifers he would collect this day!**

In this kind of weather, we had the trails pretty much to ourselves, and we realized that there was no shortage of birds around us. I should backtrack a bit and explain that while more than a third of the Costa Rican birds I was seeing were lifers, Braden had already seen so many birds in the country that he wondered if he’d get any lifers on our entire trip. That question got answered pretty quickly as we began crossing a spectacular hanging bridge over a lush ravine. Almost immediately, Braden said, “Black-headed Tody-Flycatcher!” Sure enough, on a branch hanging over the bridge, we spotted one of the cutest birds in the tropics—and a lifer for both of us! In fact, a huge variety of amazing birds seemed to be hanging out around the bridge, and before long a yellow and black bird landed just below us. Braden got even more excited by this one. “Black-thighed Grosbeak!” he exclaimed. Ka-ching! His second lifer in ten minutes!

Braden’s second life bird of the day, a Black-thighed Grosbeak, put in a leisurely appearance just below the hanging bridge. Look closely and you can even see the black thighs—though this is still one of the worst bird names ever!

Still, we hadn’t forgotten the antbirds and pressed across the bridge and up a winding trail. And at a sharp left, suddenly, there they were. Antbirds!

I confess that it took both of us a few minutes to embrace exactly what we were looking at. Columns of army ants marched along both sides of the trail, and the antbirds skittered and skaddled all about us.

**Braden, looking happily in shock at finding his best antbird mixed-flock ever!**

According to Vallely’s and Dyer’s Birds of Central America, Costa Rica hosts nine species of antbirds and we recognized four working the ant columns around us. These included Bicolored, Spotted, and Zelodon’s. It also included the one we both most wanted to see. “I’ve got an Ocellated!” Braden shouted with glee—his third lifer of the day.

**One of our top targets of our entire trip, Ocellated Antbirds gave us extensive, if very quick, looks for our full ant swarm visit.**

Why were we so excited about this bird? All antbirds are subtly beautiful, but Ocellated has the most distinct patterns of any Costa Rican species. It sports gorgeous blue, black, and rufous colors around the face and eye, and a remarkable scalloped pattern of feathers down its back and chest. As thrilled as we were to find it, we were even more thrilled to watch what the antbirds were doing.

**Only a single female Zeladon’s Antbird joined the ant swarm, and apparently these do not usually follow mixed flocks, and are not obligate ant swarm feeders. Males are black instead of brown.**

Back and forth they darted snagging insects, spiders, and other arthropods that were startled by or fleeing from the army ants. Braden and I paced back and forth, mesmerized by this performance. At least fifteen or twenty antbirds surrounded us, the most abundant being the Bicolored, who were also the least shy. WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW!

Antbirds, though, aren’t the only birds that join in on following army ant columns. As we watched, we also saw Wedge-billed Woodcreepers, Northern Barred-Woodcreepers, and Fawn-throated Foliage Gleaners. As a bonus, the rain had let up by now, letting us fully enjoy what might be for me a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. In fact, we spent at least half an hour with these remarkable birds, trying to grasp exactly what they were doing and just appreciating that things like this could still happen in the world. Finally, as the trail’s foot traffic increased, we moved on.

**Woodcreepers can be intimidating birds to identify, so I relished spending time with several species at the ant swarm, including this Northern Barred-Woodcreeper.**

We, of course, saw many more species on this outing—including Braden’s fourth lifer of the day, a White-throated Shrike-Tanager—but it was the antbirds that would stay with us as we headed to our next, equally spectacular destination, Caño Negro wetlands.

Our Sky Adventures checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S303092147

The Birds in the Oaks (Book Review by Scott Callow)

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Braden and I head to Costa Rica next week, but before we go I am delighted—yes, delighted—to share the following guest book review by my buddy, Scott Callow. I predict you’ll enjoy his passionate, humorous review as much as the book itself! We challenge you to read it before our next post. And now, heeeeeeeeere’s SCOTT!

Sneed asked me to write a review of The Birds in the Oaks: Secret Voices of the Western Woods by Jack Gedney (HeyDey Press, 2024) before I completed reading it. Consequently, It was impossible for me to finish the last chapter without constant rereading because I became anxious and distracted, wondering how to share all the great things about it. For those of you who only read headlines or first paragraphs of news stories, let me present a few crafted comments that summarize my experiences, being careful not to exaggerate.

**Order Jack Gedney’s *The Birds in the Oaks* by clicking here or on the above image.**

* If you live near oak woodlands, you have no claim to being “interested in birds” if you do not read this book.

* The Birds in the Oaks is overflowing with interesting ecological details that will keep me rereading chapters, and I expect I will mark the pages with notes like a seeker underlining sections of the Bible on the journey to become a better person.

* The Birds in the Oaks is a superb example of well-crafted nature writing that mixes extensive and accurate observations with poetic prose, and mixes personal experiences with quotes from historical bird authors.

Last fall, I was fortunate enough to accompany Scott to one of his favorite “oaky birdy” locations, Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in Sonoma County, where we saw a great variety of classic oak woodland species including Oak Titmouse, Golden-crowned Sparrow, and Nuttall’s Woodpecker. **(See post World Series Birds in the Golden State.)**

This book, admittedly, is personal for me. I live within walking distance of California oak woodlands. I volunteer at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park which is dominated by oak woodlands and mentioned in the book. The author’s former Wild Birds Unlimited store lies only 24 miles from me. Most importantly, I know these birds. I have learned so much about each of them from Gedney’s book that they have become even more familiar (emphasis in “family”). I will admit only here, amongst birders, that I sometimes say “Hey, buddy!” when I see my first Oak Titmouse of the day, and “Hey-hey-hey” when I see a White-breasted Nuthatch.

**Scott apparently has been known to converse with White-breasted Nuthatches. I can’t blame him as I talk to these guys myself!**

Each curiously titled chapter is organized around a species. Each begins with key characteristics. Many chapters start with song and call, which I appreciate since I’m late in life to learning bird sounds. (Thank you Merlin.) Example:

“I still hear the bird, steadily whit-whiting away as if mocking my inability to follow.” (A Bird at Our Level – Bewick’s Wren) (“whit-whit bew-wick” – record to memory)

As someone who seeks to be entertained by bird behavior and science, I enjoyed how Gedney explains bird ecology.

“… to learn all the secrets of the woods, one must know … the birds beneath the oaks.” (Discontented Shadows – Spotted Towhee) (Cool we’re on a treasure hunt, I tell myself.)

The ecological details too elaborate to be found in a guide have already enriched my birding. Even if you don’t regularly see Acorn Woodpeckers, every birder should learn about their unique extended family groups and their cooperative food hoarding strategies. I also believe every birder should wonder how the Bushtit, weighing as light as a nickel, can engineer such an elaborate sock-shaped nest, insulate it, camouflage it, and then use it for such a short nesting cycle, all on a diet of insects too tiny to see, even with the help of binoculars.

The ultimate oak woodland bird, the Acorn Woodpecker, deservedly attracts abundant attention from birders, both for its stunning good looks and fascinating behavior that features cooperative breeding and storage of thousands of acorns. Isn’t that, ahem, nuts?

But this book is not written by or for the scientist. Gedney is not afraid to add his own appreciation of a bird or personal experiences or poetic descriptions. This at first raised my anthropomorphic alarms since I was trained to reject human sentimentality by my vertebrate bio prof, surprisingly an ornithologist who once said “birds are stupid; their behaviors are mostly determined by genetics; they have small brains.” (These prejudices were spoken decades before contradictory scientific information was shared in The Genius of Birds and several other books on bird intelligence.)

The Birds in the Oaks is very accessible, humanly so. It is so well written that you just might re-imagine your own feelings about birds and get all warm-like inside. You just might be heard saying “Wow” when learning something new about one of the birds. You might just slow down and spend “an inordinate amount of time” observing a bird in one location. Maybe, maybe not. But I will risk one bold prediction: If you get this book, several times you will imagine walking through the woods with the author himself.

No oak trees were harmed in the writing and publishing of this review.