Xenornis

José E. Tejada saw and photographed a Nutmeg Mannikin (née Scaly-breasted Munia) feeding with a group of Variable Seedeaters in the grassy area in front of the Gamboa Ammo Dump.

On may 04, 2003, the group of Jose Tejada, Ariel Aguirre and Luis Paz saw a Black Banded woodcreeper while walking halfway the gravel road of the continental divide north of Fortuna. I (Jose Tejada) estimate we were already in bocas when we saw the bird. It flew across the road and landed in a low tree about 4 m. from the ground. The bird reminded us a barred woodcreeper but had a lot of buffy streaking in the breast and a light brown lower breast and belly with very distinct black barring. The bird was large size and the bill reminded the cocoa woodcreeper's bill but somewhat heavier. We saw this bird for about 2 minutes with our binoculars (nikon venturer lx 8x42, zeiss victory 10x42, konus 10x42) as the bird climbed the tree inspecting the mosses.

While scanning the flock of gulls and terns at Paitilla, Rosabel and Karl Kaufmann and Delicia Montañez found a South American Tern, the first record of the species for Panama, which normally ranges down both coasts of, you guessed, South America, from southern Perú and Brazil to Patagonia. The bird, first spotted by Delicia, was the same size as a Sandwich Tern it was standing next to, but had bright red legs and a long, relatively thin reddish bill. Is this the harbinger of a new flurry of El Niño birds? Only time will tell. Later on, they had an albino Neotropic Cormorant standing among about 2,000 normal birds at Costa del Este. This bird was completely white, with yellow legs and bill. [Later analysis proved the bird to be an aberrant elegant tern: A closer examination of the South American (sic) Tern photos showed that some features of this bird, especially bill shape and size and tarsi lenght, were not right. Current consensus has it that the bird was an aberrant Elegant Tern, o...