Day 16 – 365 Days of Photography

1-16-2014

Once again, I ventured over to the neighborhood park at the Hollows, Palmiste Gardens in search of something apt for today.  Today I took with me an assistant (my mother), and my eyes fell on these beautiful tree stumps, laying next to each other.   I stooped and photographed it from different angles and she ran and sat on one of them posing as a model for me.  I stepped back, mounted my wide angled device and took a few shots of the scenery around.  I looked up and my mother was on a trail above signaling me.  I grabbed my camera back pack and walked over to where she was, where she pointed up into the trees at some birds flitting around each other.  She had the delight of a child on her face, having found a prize.

I have jested that I am not a bird photographer, so today’s capture will make one person in particular smile, and I purposely chose this shot for today’s display.

The Boat-billed Flycatcher (Megarynchus pitangua) is a passerine bird. It is a large tyrant flycatcher, the only member, monotypic, of the genus Megarynchus.

It breeds in open woodland with some tall trees from Mexico south to Bolivia and Argentina, and through to Trinidad.

The nest, built by the female, is an open saucer of sticks. The typical clutch is two or three whitish eggs heavily blotched with brown. These are incubated mostly by the female for 17–18 days with a further 24 days to fledging.

Adult Boat-billed Flycatchers are one of the largest species of tyrant flycatcher, measuring 23 cm (9.1 in) long and weighing 70 g (2.5 oz).^[2] The head is black with a strong white eyestripe and a concealed yellow crown stripe. The upperparts are olive-brown, and the wings and tail are brown with only faint rufous fringes. The underparts are yellow and the throat is white.

The massive black bill, which gives this species its English and generic names, is the best distinction from the similar Great Kiskadee, which also has more rufous tail and wings, and lacks the olive tone to the upperparts. The call is a strident trilled nya, nya, nya.

Boat-billed Flycatchers wait on a concealed perch high in a tree and sally out to catch insects in flight. They will also take invertebrates off the foliage and eat some berries.

I took several shots of the birds at different angles, so I was able to determine that the head did indeed have white stripes.  I even have a shot with an insect in its beak.  My initial thought was that this was a kiskadee, but avid bird enthusiasts informed me that it was a boat-filled flycatcher and thus I have to update my initial post.

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