Rufous-Crowned Sparrow

I was with my son Sam in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona on February 27, 2025. We had hiked almost all the way to the top of Arch Canyon, which was fairly difficult, with some exposure and loose gravel, something I'd not done before. We were about all the way back down when I spotted a small bird above me on a nearby rock. Birds of the World notes that it is locally common in dry hillsides and canyons of the southwestern U.S. and Mexico, but "its shy, secretive habits and predilection for inaccessible, rocky, brush-covered slopes," which we were in, make it "difficult to observe and study..." Its "cryptic appearance, inconspicuous song, stealthy behavior, and remote habitat" contribute to the fact that "little is known about its life history." 

Illustration from Birds of the World.

Range from Birds of the World.

Golden-Crowned Sparrow

On March 30, 2025 we were visiting our son, Sam, in Santa Cruz, California. We took a short, but fun, visit to the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum & Botanic Garden. There I saw a bird I've been wanting to see for a long time, the golden-crowned sparrow, but it was not breeding season, so I did not get to see the signature gold crown, a yellow stripe along the crown.  

The yellow stripe on the crown only shows up during breeding season. It is closely related to the white-crowned sparrow which we get at home and see a lot of.   

Range from Birds of the World. I am surprised that their range is limited to the far west. 

Rosy Starling

I'm currently on a push to document (do a post on) each bird I've seen. As I'm getting close to finishing that effort, I'm doing birds that I've got poor photos of, or no photos of, or that haven't excited me as much as others. Toward that end, I've had kind of a love/hate relationship with starlings. I've always hated the European starling which we have locally and which I've always viewed as an invasive garbage bird. Yet you get to Africa and Asia and the starlings are among the most beautiful of birds and the myna, although not beautiful, is an amazing talking bird, and it is a a starling. I just saw a video recently of a European starling, someone's pet, that was trilling and making amazingly beautiful sounds and I had a begrudging kind of aha moment where I thought, maybe they aren't so bad and ugly (although still horribly invasive). 

The rosy starling is another lifer that I did not get a photo of. It was seen last November in Keoladeo NP in India. 

Illustration from Birds of the World.

Range from Birds of the World. 

Crested Myna

Just like the bird on my last post, the crested myna is a bird we saw in Portugal with Barnardo Barreto of Birds & Nature in June 2022, except this bird was in the Tagus Estuary. Like the crested cardinal (which was introduced to Hawaii from Brazil), a recent post, the crested myna was introduced from somewhere else. In this case the crested myna is from southern China and northern Indochina. In fact, it is also known as the Chinese starling. Wikipedia notes that as "a popular cage bird, it is often transported outside of its normal range and...accidentally released and introduced in a new area." It was "discovered breeding around Lisbon, Portugal in 1997. They are now established on both sides of the Tagus estuary to the west of Lisbon and also on the Setubal Peninsula." I was not able to get a photo of it. 

Illustration from Birds of the World. 

Range from Birds of the World. Note, it does not include the areas where it has been introduced, like Portugal. 

Western House Martin

On July 3, 2022 we were with Bernardo Barreto of Birds & Nature Tours in Portugal in the Sado Estuary. We found what he referred to as the common house-martin and which iNaturalist and Birds of the World refer to as the western house-martin. They had mud nests on the side of a building. There are two subspecies and we saw the nominate ssp. urbicum. 

Illustration from Birds of the World

Range from Birds of the World. 

Great Frigatebird

I previously posted on the magnificent frigatebirds (June 16, 2022) we saw in the Panama Canal and in the Galapagos Islands. We also saw some recently at Caye Caulker in Belize. They are truly "magnificent" and as much fun to watch as any bird I've seen. One of the frigatebirds I saw in the Galapagos Islands, on the north shore of Santa Cruz Island at Bachas Beach, was posted on iNaturalist as a great frigatebird and one identifier has confirmed it. The magnificent frigatebird and great frigatebird are difficult to differentiate and the Galapagos Islands are one of the few places in the world where they overlap. 

In differentiating the two: (a) the great is a little smaller than the magnificent; (b) the male great has a greenish sheen (which is a surface gloss that reflects light uniformly) in sunlight and the male magnificent has a violet or purple iridescence (which is a structural phenomenon where the perceived color shifts depending on the viewing angle) in sunlight; (c) the female great has a white chest and neck extending all the way to the chin and the female magnificent has a white chest with a black throat patch that forms a triangle and looks like a white "M" shape from below; and (d) the female great has a reddish-pink or dull eye-ring and the female magnificent has a bluish-gray eye-ring. 

Illustration of a female from Bird of the World. 

Illustration of a juvenile from Birds of the World. 

Illustration of a male from Birds of the World.

Illustration of a dorsal view of a male from Birds of the World. 

In trying to differentiate, in this case, I believe the key is the back. See above and then see the illustration below of a magnificent frigatebird from Birds of the World. The great has a more brown stripe on the back of the wing than the magnificent. 

Range from Birds of the World. 

Orangequit

In February 2023 we visited Jamaica as part of my exploration of the life of my third great grandfather, Captain George Cannon, a slave boat captain from the Isle of Man, who visited Jamaica a number of times in the 1790s. While in Jamaica I did some birding and we spent a night at the wonderful Hotel Mockingbird Hill followed by time with a birding guide there. I saw many of the birds endemic to Jamaica, including the orangequit, which I did not get a photo of. 

Illustration of a female from Birds of the World. 

Illustration of a male from Birds of the World.

Range from Birds of the World. Note that it is endemic to Jamaica.