Neotropical bird families? (1 Viewer)

[nkbj]

Hi.

My wife and I will visit Ecuador including The Galápagos Islands in July. It is our first visit to the neotropical region. I have Freile and Restall "Birds of Ecuador" plus Fitter, Fitter and Hosking "Wildlife of the Galápagos", but I am looking for a text that could give me a short overview of the neotropical bird families (including how to recognise each famlily) before I look at the particular species. Does such a text exist?

Regards Niels Kristian

 

[James Jobling]

The Birds of Ecuador. A Field Guide. Vol. II, by Robert Ridgely & Paul Greenfield (Helm 2001), contains brief family headings and all the colour plates. Equally bulky but on a global scale, so probably not for you, are: Bird Families of the World, by David Winkler, Shawn Billerman & Irby Lovette (Lynx/Cornell 2015), and The Handbook of Bird Families, by Jonathan Elphick (Natural History Mus., 2019).

 

[Welsh Peregrine]

Birds of Tropical America by Hilty may be worth looking at; it puts the families (as recognised when it was published) into their ecological context.

 

[Welsh Peregrine]

Also bear in mind many of the Passerine families are diverse; Galapagos Finches are genetically Tanagers, but you are not going to identify them by DNA analysis! (Although maybe we should; fancy collecting Pooh samples from known individuals?)

 

[jurek]

Hi Niels,
Better look at common names. Bird taxonomy is now, unfortunately, messed up, For example, Red-capped Cardinal is officially a tanager Thraupidae, and Hepatic Tanager is a cardinal Cardinalidae.

For me, when I am going to a completely new region, the best is to collect up to 5 places I am going to visit (or simply one: "Ecuador"), go to ebird and get "bar charts". From these, I pick birds which are commonly seen in the locality and look at these. So I familiarize yourself with the commonest birds locally - an Ecuadorian equivalent of starlings, blackcaps and collared doves. If you want to bird individually, you can also listen to calls of common birds, and look at recent photos in the ebird gallery and back-identify birds with your guidebook.

You can also save ebird barcharts from your sites and have them on your phone. It helps especially on urban and farmland birding. There you expect relatively few bird species which adapted to destroyed habitat, and e.g from 10s of Ecuadorian hummingbirds there is only 1 to 3.

In the Neotropics distribution maps and habitat matter a lot. Most landbirds are sedentary, and often related species are separated by range and habitat - one hummingbird occurs east of Andes, another only west of Andes, one in the South, another in the North, one in dry forests, another in wet mountain forests etc. So, looking in the book, you are confused that birds painted on one plate are never confusable in the field, because only 1-2 occur in every one locality.

Enjoy your trip!

 

[nkbj]

Thank you for all your input. I think I will try ebird as suggested by jurek.

Regards Niels Kristian