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May was ‘Puerto Rico Month‘ on 10,000 Birds and - hopefully - we managed to provide some quality and interesting content (we certainly tried anyway). I guess we’d probably be fooling ourselves though if we didn’t admit that the most exciting feature of ‘PR Month’ was the offer of a FREE ‘Endemic Dash’ holiday on [...]

Our Puerto Rico Month is almost over (having said that we’ll probably keep it going for a while yet as I’m really enjoying writing about an island I knew virtually nothing about and which turns out be so darn interesting!), and I’m extremely grateful to Mike aka Noflickster, author of the wonderful The Feather and [...]

One of a number of endemic Caribbean vireos (including the Jamaican Vireo V. modestus, Cuban Vireo V. gundlachii, and the Flat-billed Vireo V. nanus of Hispaniola) the endemic Puerto Rican Vireo Vireo latimeri (presumably named by Baird after George Latimer, a nineteenth century US Consul to Puerto Rico) is somewhat similar in both size, weight, [...]

Yes, we’ve procrastinated long enough, and as part of our month-long celebration of Puerto Rico’s biodiversity it’s now time to give away a superb “endemic bird dash” around Puerto Rico worth about 2500USD courtesy of Kevin Loughlin of Wildside Nature Tours (actually we kind of hoped if we delayed for long enough readers might forget [...]

When we starting thinking about Puerto Rico as a possible ‘theme’ on 10,000 Birds we asked ourselves a number of questions: is it an area that might benefit from coverage on a bird blog (there’s not much point in spending a month talking about somewhere well-known that is already all over the internet), are [...]

So far in Puerto Rico Month we’ve looked at some of the island’s wonderful endemic birds (eg the Puerto Rican Tody and Adelaide’s Warbler), its endemic frogs, reviewed Mark Oberle’s wonderful field-guide, the Caribbean’s very own Tai Haku has asked what could fill the gap left by DeBooy’s Rail, and Mike has re-posted three short [...]

The last Puerto Rican endemic species we wrote about was the rather lovely but fierce-looking Puerto Rican Screech-owl Megascops nudipes, and in that account we said that, “Birders on Puerto Rico have a chance of seeing two endemic night birds…” And we were correct, because if you’re a very fortunate birder indeed you might [...]

Our window for birdwatching in Puerto Rico was heartbreakingly brief, but the true reason for our trip was the wedding of our dear friends, Tarra and Evan. Their ceremony was beautiful and the celebration lasted long into the night. The next day, we had time but for a brief visit to Old San Juan and [...]

Isla Verde is OK for casinos and clubs but hardly offers a sufficient survey of Puerto Rico’s amazing avifauna. The birding centerpiece of our brief Puerto Rican trip was a morning excursion to El Yunque Caribbean National Forest. For a country so blessed with avian diversity, Puerto Rico seemed woefully light in the birding tour [...]

Current U.S. Territory and potential 51st state, Puerto Rico boasts 349 bird species, including 17 or so endemics, as well as the second highest alcohol consumption per capita in the world, behind only Russia. Sara and I traveled there in November 2004 for a weekend wedding, but also attempted a whirlwind tour of the northeastern [...]

Birders on Puerto Rico have a chance of seeing two endemic night birds: one, the Puerto Rican Screech-owl Megascops nudipes, is widespread (with another [disputed] subspecies, newtoni, from the Virgin Islands either Critically Endangered or Extinct) and most insomniacs will at least hear its guttural, trilling purr if they try hard enough; the other, the [...]

There are many wonderful things that happen when you join the world-wide community of nature bloggers, but one of the most valuable is that you get to share thoughts and discuss ideas with other bloggers - people who invariably have skills and knowledge that you yourself don’t. ‘Puerto Rico Month’ is proving that to [...]

Whilst the posts in our ‘Puerto Rico Month‘ theme have so far concentrated entirely on the islands’ avifauna, our intention right from the planning stages has always been to cover as much of Puerto Rico’s bio-diversity as possible. The archipelago is home to a huge range of important and threatened animals and plants, and we’re [...]

There are birds that even if you have no idea at all what they look like or where they’re found have names that instantly transport you on a journey into dense forests and far-away places (eg Cherry-throated Tanager or Metallic-winged Sunbird), and there are birds with names that while hinting at something perhaps interesting don’t [...]

How, might readers who think about the hours I’ve spent putting these Puerto Rico posts together (odd how us bloggers ‘talk’ to an imaginary audience that we fondly imagine share in every drop of sweat we exude while putting our blogs online - in the nicest possible way it has to be said that we’re [...]

One of the more intriguing of Puerto Rico’s endemic species (one amongst many actually) is the slightly unhelpfully named Puerto Rican Spindalis Spindalis portoricensis (called Reina Mora de Puerto Rico in Spanish). Even Latin scholars might be hard put to imagine what a Spindalis might look like - the previous name of Stripe-headed Tanager at [...]

Photo left © Kevin Loughin, WildSide Nature Tours

Visitors to Puerto Rico have the opportunity to see two closely-related sharp-billed, beady-eyed cuckoos on their birding holidays: one, the Mangrove Cuckoo Coccyzus minor, is a fair bit easier to see on the island than in coastal southern Florida (as thankless hours spent searching for one while donating [...]

It’s on now, isn’t it? Blossoms are blooming, gardens are greening, and birds are moving, assuming you live in the Northern Hemisphere. If you’re south of the equator, avifauna is still on the march but your world is turning in a different direction. In any case, now is the time to be out and about [...]

Photo left copyright Karoline Mena (karomc80@yahoo.com)

Endemic to Puerto Rico and Vieques (and formerly recorded on the Virgin Islands) the rather lovely Puerto Rican Woodpecker Melanerpes portoricensis (Carpintero de Puerto Rico in Spanish) is one of four endemic species of the Melanerpes genus that occur in the Greater Antilles (the others being the Hispaniolan M. striatus, [...]

When Jon Curson et al published their beautiful “New World Warblers” (Helm 1994) fifteen years ago they followed an accepted taxonomy that described Adelaide’s Warbler Dendroica adelaidae (or Reinita Mariposera as it’s called in Spanish) as a West Indies endemic superspecies containing three “yellow-throated” warblers found in isolated populations: on Puerto Rico D. a. adelaidae, [...]