Yard Birds 2 - The Tanager Family and more - Dec. 12, 2022

MaryBea Gallagher

12 Dec 2022 • 17 min read

Hello from beautiful Boquete! We have officially transitioned from Rainy Season to Rainbow Season, and we started the month with a double rainbow afternoon - quite dramatic for a kick-off! The double rainbow lasted for over an hour, and cars stopped on the street to admire the view.

Rainbows mean mists, and some days feel like we are sitting in the cloud forest, but the sun breaks through, and we dash outside to look right and left to find the rainbow. Passersby on the street will point one out or nod with approval that I have my phone set up to document the magic.

The slow down of the rainy season also means the start of the winds, so that requires a sun hat with strings, which I found at the Dollar Store. Dollar Store does not actually mean the price will be a dollar, nor even a $1.25, but that the merchandise will be varied and inexpensive. My new hat was $3, is good for walks and gardening and does not fly away from me in the brisk not-as-rainy season. Our temperature is still the same - it just isn't as rainy, but when it rains or mists, the precip has a tilt.

My new straw hat with elastic to keep it on my head and a brim to keep the sun off my head! Notice my deep tan?

As you can see by the just-starting-to-bloom African Lily behind me, the flowers are beginning to recover from the cloudy with a chance of deluge weather of the past few months, so we will be seeing more color in the yard soon. Meanwhile, the birds enjoy the two feeding opportunities in the yard, so I will introduce you to the Tanager Family of colorful contributors. some hummingbirds, and a few other newbies to the hood.

We have two types of feeding options going - open-source and buffet service. You can see one of the two buffet service feeders behind me on the fence. The buffet feeders were made for me by Ameth, the property maintenance Everything Man, under the direction of the landlord, Jorge, as a gift to me. The feeders have wrought iron framing with a bamboo buffet and an overhang to keep the rain out of the bamboo cups. I think the little birds prefer the buffet because it is off the ground and offers fly-up dining, though recently, the larger birds have been interloping on the buffet.

Little birds - mostly the red-legged honeycreepers at the back-fenced buffet before the new fancy wrought iron display was installed. In the buffet-style feeders, I leave papaya and banana or plantain (one or the other, as they will choose the banana over plantain if both are offered) and occasionally a fruity mango peel. The variety is narrow, partly to attract the smaller birds and not the larger ones and partly because I need to keep the pieces small to fit in the bamboo trays.

The new snazzy buffet on the street-side fence, later in the day when the larger birds have settled in for the cleanup. Note the black bird with the orange back - a Tanager family member. The writing on the black iron bar says Aviario Mary Bea; Mary Bea's Aviary.

The Tanager Family of birds is vast and colorful. We met one Tanager in the previous Yard Birds episode, and the orange and black bird in the above photo is my second introduction in the family.

Passerini Tanager: The orange and black bird is a Scarlet Rumped, Flame Rumped, or Passerini Tanager, and he startles with a stark white beak. When you see this guy flicker across the yard, you really notice! Another surprise is that the female is a comparatively dull yellow and grey.

This photo is from the internet - but to see this guy crossing the yard is impressive because the shock of the red-orange is so startling! And that white beak shows up like a beacon, just in case you cannot see the back yet!

This is the female Scarlet Rumped Tanager - way to keep a low profile at a party!

Blue and Grey Tanager: The Tanager we met in episode one of Yard Birds was the Blue and Grey Tanager. Dainty, charming, black-beaked, and Miguel's favorite Yard Bird.

The female and the male look the same and travel in pairs. One stands watch while the other eats.

Here are two Blue Grey Tanagers dining on papaya and banana in an Open-Source spot near the brook. For some reason, the birds that come to this particular open-source spot don't like avocado, won't eat rice doused in fruit juice, and dislike oranges. This open-source spot is about 15 feet from the big site where the same species of birds eat all of those things, and easily within sight! It's like having a fast-food joint on the same block as the white linen restaurant.

Flame Colored Tanagers have flame-gradated bellies and heads with distinctively striped wings. The females are very similar but yellowy flames instead of orange.

Male flame-colored tanager. Thank you, internet for another great photo!

Female flame-colored tanager - apparently, the female's flames are slightly hotter than the males. Thank you for the photo, internet.

Crimson Backed Tanager: Another pretty bird, the Crimson Backed Tanager drops by often, but the females seem to spend more time in the yard than the males. The males (below) are brighter and have a whiter under-beak. The females have the same coloring but a bit more greyed. They are fruit eaters and mid-sized birds like the other Tanagers, so our open-source feeding stations are right up their alley.

Crimson, black, and an elaborate make-up job for the runway!

Open-Source Dining: What is the difference between the Buffet style and the Open-Source feeding stations? There are four open-source stations, and I try to keep a wider variety of fruits at the open-source stations. If we have avocado, mango, watermelon, rice bathed in fruit juice, strawberries, oranges, or most fruit, then I put it into the open source fruit areas - primarily the big one in the portico area, and spread it to the smaller sites. The larger birds and a more extensive variety of birds eat there, and they eat a larger variety of foods. All the birds love papaya, and the little birds love banana and plantain, but not everyone likes avocado or watermelon, rice or oranges. In the open-source areas, I can spread the food out more so that the big birds don't fight over it as much, and the little birds are more likely to get in some nibbles. I also put out big pieces because if I put out smaller pieces, the big birds just tug them away and munch on them in private. I use papaya and watermelon as bowls and cut fruit into small pieces to fill the bowls - no one can haul away big chunks, and the bowl is too big to leave the area without help.

Papaya, avocado, mango, and banana. All spread out, there isn't as much competition between the large and small birds. Still, a couple birds are waiting their turn, or for less competition on the fence top or in the cyclone diamonds.

This is the largest of the open source areas, but after several hours, there is not a lot left. You can see that a couple of the papaya bowls are still there, and a couple of avocado peel bowls are awaiting clean-up. There are also several birds waiting on the fence in case I am dropping more off, and a few hummingbirds waiting in the cyclone fence for me to leave so they can get to the hummingbird feeder in the white bougainvillea as soon as I am not looking.

This is the smallest open-source site, much more private and undercover, and I made it for smaller birds. They like mango and the occasional orange but are not very adventurous about watermelon/sandia or avocado. Over-ripe strawberries were welcomed!

My Flame-Rumped Tanager friend in that photo reminded me I have several of his family still to introduce!

Lemon-Rumped Tanager: This gentleman looks a lot like a Flame-Rumped Tanager, but yellow. The females look approachable - not quite as formal or formidable - the male's white beak looks a bit spooky. We don't see as many of the Lemon-rumped as we do of the Flame-Rumped, but it might be a family territorial rivalry. You stick to Boquete, we're taking Volcancito!

Female Lemon-Rumped Tanager. You might at least match these two at a dance.

White-lined Tanager: The black males may have prominent or no white markings on their shoulders and black or white bills. The females can range from coppery to bronze. The females are bossy and pushy when it comes to food. Interestingly, the juveniles are mottled in both black and brown colors until they get close to adulthood, and then they choose a stripe!

Most of the White-Lined Tanagers in our yard have white beaks and no shoulder markings, but not all - the white beaks remind me of reverse-Goth. Our yard females tend toward bronze over copper-colored. If there is papaya, banana, or plantain around, they will shun bread or rice, even if we add fruit juice to make it more enticing!

A juvenile White-Lined Tanager, not yet committed to gender-based coloring

Summer Tanager: This is a migratory bird. In Panama's summer, Summer Tanager comes south, and in the east coast's summer, Summer T. heads north. Apparently, Summer Ts are really a type of cardinal that got misclassified as Tanagers, and they range from red, to mottled, to yellow. The yellow Summer Tanagers come to my yard and to this area of Panama regularly.

That ends the list of Tanager Family members in my yard, though there are many other birds across the Americas that carry the Tanager name. I do have some birds in the yard that I haven't yet identified, and I suspect that most of them are female, which keep a lower profile and don't get photographed as often so that marauders don't recognize them in the wild.

Newcomer: One newcomer to our yard is the national bird of Costa Rica, next door. The Clay-colored Thrush, or Clay-Colored Robin is well-known throughout Central America and eastern Mexico, but considered "vagrants" in some neighborhoods of Texas, per HTTP://sdakotabirds.com :

Clay-colored Thrush: This bird is big, non-descript in color, loves papaya, and in 1977 was elected the national bird of Costa Rica because of its song. Pretty song or not, it chases other birds away from the food and steals any food small enough to drag off to eat by itself. The female looks just like the male - twice the camouflage!

Thanks, Internet, for the photo! This big, bold, and bossy bird is also called the Clay-colored Robin because it has a pretty song. But robins prefer to eat bugs, and this bird likes to eat sweet fruit - perhaps with bugs on the fruit, but it is often first in line in the morning and doesn't wait for the bugs to settle in.

Hummingbird Feeders: Our landlords, Jorge and Luly, had hummingbird feeders in the orchid tree before we moved in, and the birds ignored them. Two weeks ago, they presented the feeders to me along with the packaged food mix and the story that there used to be hundreds of hummingbirds in the yard, and now there seem to be very few. They had purchased the feeders with the hope of drawing the birds back, without success.

So, I boiled a lot of water (there is no hot running water in the sinks) and cleaned the feeders with vinegar water; the feeders had been hanging for almost two months in the tree and were dirty, but surprisingly, not visibly moldy; they deserved a good cleansing. I know that hummingbirds like to have feeders near landing places and near flowers. I learned that hummingbirds are competitive, so because there are a bunch of different species of hummingbirds in Panama, it is better to put feeders out of sight of one another.

I made up some food and put one feeder in the front yard in the white hanging bougainvillea near the biggest open-source feeding area at the portico. The hummingbirds like that the bougainvillea flowers hide them; they can cling to the flower vines, or zip over to the cyclone fence about six feet away to await their next turn or rest between sips as there is no resting bar on the feeder. When the wind is strong, the vine-like flowers whip about, and it is more difficult for the birds to feed, but it only took a few hours for the hummingbirds to find the feeder and invite their friends, and even with the wind, the food is gone in 4 days.

I watch the portico feeder from the living room or dining room table. The first thing we do in the morning is to throw open all 6 doors in the house to let the breeze flow through, and I can watch the hummingbird feeders all day long! The hummingbirds don't care much about the bougainvillea as a source of nectar, but the fact that the plant offers blooms attracts the birds to the feeder as well as offers camouflage - you can barely see the little guy's head near the left side of the feeder - and that is the way he likes it!

The second hummingbird feeder is in the backyard near the buffet feeder along the cyclone fence, between two Chinese hibiscus plants just returning to bloom. A few blooms and leaves are out now; enough to have hummingbirds checking in, and they were delighted to find the feeder, so it was an immediate success.

There is a small orange tree behind the cyclone fence and two Chinese Hibiscus plants on either side of the feeder. Every cyclone fence in Central America has barbed wire across the top for the birds to rest on, so I hung the planter on the barbed wire. The hummingbirds zip between the orange tree and the hibiscus, then check on the fruit buffet to the left and their feeder, resting in the cyclone fence and on the wires between drinks from the variety offered. This feeder empties in 3-4 days and brings in the widest variety of hummingbirds.

What types of hummingbirds are we attracting? I have identified five types, but with three sizes and over 40 known hummingbird species around Boquete, I have a ways to go. One problem is that I cannot get close enough to easily tell the species apart. Another is that some of the species use camouflage - they flatten their feathers and show dark black, grey, green, or blue most of the time, then when they need to attract attention, they raise their feathers, iridesce, and flash us while they buzz off to lead the predators away, and those flashing colors is how I would identify them - except I don't see the threatened birds, my phone isn't always at the ready, and I am never close enough. Here are the five species I know for sure and one possibility.

Rufus-Tailed Hummingbirds: The easiest to identify are the Rufus-Tailed because they have dramatic reddish tails that they show off, especially when they are happy, or if they want you to know that it is THEIR turn!

Rufus-Tailed Hummingbird. This is a medium-sized hummingbird with maybe a three-inch body. Thanks, internet, for the dramatic photo, as the Rufus don't let me close enough to get a good picture with my bright red phone.

Talamanca Hummingbirds are identifiable by their tiny size and the males by their consistent green color. If you have a photo, you can identify them by their eye make-up - that white eyeliner flare. Talamanca are pretty bold, perhaps because they have to be, and maybe because they are so small and fast that they can zip in and out of anywhere before you can grab them or snap their photo to put up at the post office. For the pictures below, I am grateful to the internet.

Talamanca Hummingbird - Male. These are just as itty-bitty as they look in the photo. Their bodies are 1.5 - 2 inches long.

Talamanca Female; more brightly colored than the male for a surprising change, and slightly smaller. Can you imagine the size of the eggs she lays? Interestingly, the juvenile Talamanca is all black - sounds just like teenage angst, doesn't it? Wednesday Addams Talamanca

Mountain Violet-Ear: A medium-sized hummingbird, about 3 inches in body length, that ranges from Costa Rica to southern South America, it likes the mountains, and it doesn't need earrings. This one was easy to recognize.

Stripe Tailed Hummingbird: These cuties are medium sized (about a 3 inch body) and have a distinctive brown stripe in the wing, and the males have a white underbelly. The females have less white in the underbelly. No stripes in the tail that I have seen in the yard, or in photos, so I think someone is misidentifying the wing blur, or afraid to say "underbelly" in polite company, unlike the less polite many-rumped Tanager family! Unless the birds sit still and turn their wings to you, it is all a blur at the feeder, so bring your binoculars!

Black Bellied Hummingbird: Once again, the name just describes the males, and from the back, they look a lot like the Striped Tail hummingbirds. That reddish brown patch on the wing and the green-fade-to-black rear view made me wonder if these were the same birds at two ages, but the Black Bellied are so much smaller and have white tail feathers that are way more dramatic than the white underbellies of the Stripe Tailed hummingbirds - when you can get them to stop blurring. The Black Bellied (below) have white under-tail feathers that flash distinctively. The females have a white belly to go with their white under-tails. These tiny hummingbirds love coffee plantations and moist mountain air - Boquete is paradise for Black Bellies!

Male Black Belly Hummingbird - when he is happy and preening, or trying to appear bigger than his 1.5 - 2 inch body size, he puffs up and looks like a black fuzzball.

Male in flight - shows off those white tail feathers

Some females have a white belly, from beak to tail, but the ones in my yard have a white patch from breast to tail - they don't really look black-bellied. This photo does show how tiny they are. Thank you, Internet, for the great photos!

Violet Sabrewing Hummingbird?: There is a giant type of hummingbird that visits, and it has been suggested it is this one - a subspecies of Giant Violet Sabrewing that loves mountains, banana and plantain plantations, and coffee. Known to be aggressive, it is said to chase other hummingbirds away from feeders, but our giants aren't especially mean. They are about 5 inches long, which makes them MUCH larger than the other birds at the feeders, so I expected trouble, but they don't cause much. Perhaps they are spoiled for choice in Boquete, or maybe these aren't the Violet Sabrewing subspecies, or perhaps they didn't get their coffee this morning (though there is a few acres of coffee planted right across the road, so that would just be lazy).

Violet Sabrewings in the more northern Mexico, Nicaragua, and Guatemala neighborhoods are bright iridescent blue, and violet with a lot less black. Our southern version is a bit more forest-camo-ready.

Investment: You might ask what it costs to keep these birds in papaya, bananas, and all of the other goodies that I leave around each day. Good question! Less than going to Starbucks, and that is less than my daily Venti refresher daily for around $5. We spend aboud $11 every three days on fruit, and on a watermelon day, that will jump to $14. The fruit truck and fruit market vendors charge us $2 to $2.50 for papaya based on weight, bananas are $1 for 5-8 based on ripeness, mangos and avocados are $1 - $2 each, and other fruits are inexpensive as they come available. We don't buy much that isn't local. Ameth brings us some fruit from his parent's farm/finca, mostly plantains; the birds like very ripe plantains for breakfast, just as Miguel does, but Miguel prefers his fried then topped with honey. I figure it costs us $4 a day to fruit both us and the birds - and we are all happy. The local fruit vendors are happy, too!

Birds and Beas love Rainbow Season: It took me two days to get all this down, so I thought I should show you today's rainbow to close the post. The birds are more active when the mist is moving, and since it is always 70-something degrees when misting, it might be the delight of a warm misting shower that doesn't require that the birds hide under eaves or leaves. I love to step out on the balcony and chat with the birds while taking in the rainbow(s), sometimes for an hour or more - I cannot take my eyes away! Perhaps rainbows excite the birds, too!

Until next time!

MaryBea y Miguel

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