Brown-Bellied Swallow

In March 2023 Judy and I visited the Montezuma Rainforest Ecolodge and Tatama National Park near Pueblo Rico Colombia with our granddaughter, Savannah. The year we visited it had more bird sightings per e-Bird than any other area in Colombia and was only surpassed by three other areas in the world, one in Peru, one in Brazil and one in Ecuador. It was an incredible area and I had a great guide - Fernando Largo. I saw brown-bellied swallows and was unable to get photos. It is usually found above 8,200 feet. The top of Montezuma Hill is about 8,530 feet. There are three subspecies and ssp. murina, the nominate ssp., is found in the Andes of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. 

Illustration of a male, ssp. murina, flying, from Birds of the World. 

Also an illustration of a male from Birds of the World. 

Range from Birds of the World. 

Spanish Sparrow

We spent several days in Malta, March 19 and 20, 2024, with Judy's sister and brother-in-law, Chris and Stan Jones. One of the few forms of wildlife we saw, but very common, was the Spanish sparrow. There are two subspecies and we saw the nominate ssp. hispaniolensis, found on the Iberian Peninsula, Sardinia, Greece and Balkans, western Asia Minor, eastern Atlantic islalnds (Madeira, Canary and Cape Verde) and northwestern Africa (Morocco east to northeastern Libya); it is non-breeding visitor to northeastern Africa and southwestern Asia. 

Illustration of a female from Birds of the World. 

Illustration of a male from Birds of the World. The male is particularly handsome.

Range from Birds of the World. 

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.