Possible Gray Kingbird - Roatan, Honduras (1 Viewer)

[pajarito]

Attached are three photographs of an apparent Gray Kingbird (one of two birds seen together) that I observed on March 18 in the Keyhole Bay region of Roatan, Honduras. The species is rare in Honduras and unrecorded on Roatan as far as I can discover. Any thoughts on these photos would be appreciated. There were two Brown-crested Flycatchers nearby that were clearly smaller and less robust than the photographed bird. The photo was taken with a Nikon D3000 and a Nikon Ed 70-300m lens under difficult light conditions (bright overcast sky). They have been enlarged and slightly corrected for sharpness and contrast, but not color-corrected.Absolutely no yellowish cast was observed.

 

[Larry Sweetland]

Looks good to me

 

[pajarito]

Thanks, Larry. Pardon my question, but I am wondering if you have first-hand experience with Gray (or Grey depending on where you sit) Kingbird?

 

[njlarsen]

Looks good to me too, and I see them on a roughly daily basis.

Niels

 

[Peter C.]

Looks unmistakably a Gray Kingbird to me - and is certainly not any of the other local "kingbird"-like species (Tropical, Eastern, Fork-tailed).

I don't know your source of information for it being listed as "unrecorded" in Honduras, but whatever it is, I would suggest that it is erroneous. Avibase lists the bird for the "Islas" region of Honduras, and does not mark it as accidental or even uncommon (and Avibase is usually a pretty reliable source); also, there are a couple of eBird checklists on Roatan that include Gray Kingbird, and many more for nearby Guanaja. The Gray Kingbird being such a widespread species (personally, I've seen them on four different islands in the Caribbean), I can't imagine it would not commonly make that short hop from the one island to the other.

Cheers,
Peter C.

 

[pajarito]

Thanks, Peter - I didn't mean to suggest that it is unrecorded for Honduras - I believe I said that it was not recorded for Roatan. Thanks for pointing me to the two eBird checklists - I had missed them in my earlier research (and apparently the authors of the Peterson guide did, too, since they haven't included Roatan in the range map for Gray Kingbird although they do include Guanaja) My sources for that information are the recent Peterson Guide to the region, as well as Birds of Panama, Birds of Belize, and the Handbook of Birds of the World. I agree that it is odd that the species isn't showing up in the literature for Roatan. I don't think that the island is heavily birded, since mainland Honduras is clearly a bigger "draw" for visiting birders. In any event, I am happy to have confirming views on the ID for this bird, as it will make it more supportable when I post to eBirds. Thanks again.

 

[pajarito]

I might add that the Cornell map doesn't show any occurrences for Gray Kingbird in Honduras:

http://neotropical.birds.cornell.ed...yrannus dominicensis&sc=grykin&species=481996

 

[pajarito]

Just to close the loop on this - I have been in touch with Oliver Komar, one of the authors of the new Peterson Field Guide to the Birds of Northern Central America. He agrees that this bird is clearly a Gray Kingbird, and advises that the species has just recently been confirmed as a breeder on Roatan.

 

[Peter C.]

Thanks, Peter - I didn't mean to suggest that it is unrecorded for Honduras - I believe I said that it was not recorded for Roatan.
....
I agree that it is odd that the species isn't showing up in the literature for Roatan. I don't think that the island is heavily birded, since mainland Honduras is clearly a bigger "draw" for visiting birders.

Oh, I knew you were talking about that island specifically, I should have expanded my post to say "the Caribbean territories of Honduras [including Roatan]" since that would be where I would have expected them - so, my fault for being unclear there.

I agree that Roatan itself must be severely under-birded, despite being a bit of tourist "mecca" (I think there are direct flights now, from many places including YYZ?); that's the only reason I can imagine why it has so many fewer eBird lists than Guanaja. (Although who all the people are who are reporting from that latter island, is a bit of a mystery to me.)

 

[pajarito]

There's a birder on Guanaja named "Roland Rumm" who posts a ton of stuff. He calls himself "Roland Rumm - Freelance Birder" on eBird, and he has the longest list for the Bay Islands - by far. He runs a guest house on Guanaja I think. I asked Oliver Komar (who monitors the Honduras eBird reports) about the eBird checklists for Honduras. When you open up the "RARE" species for an area, all of a sudden you get all sorts of species that are not on the regular list. For example, Rufous-tailed Hummingbird shows up as "RARE" for Roatan - but I could find no record of it having actually been seen there. Oliver says that those lists need to be cleaned up a bit, but that they were really designed to help birders find a species easily for reporting purposes, so RARE often means POSSIBLE, I guess. Which is a bit confusing. The total number of species seen on the Bay Islands appears to be 209, according to eBird. And you can fly direct to Roatan from Toronto, Montreal, and Houston as far as I know. United goes from Houston, and Sunwing and Air Transat go from Canada. This is useful because the charter companies (which do not require you to be on one of their package trips) are way chweaper than flying commercial to Teculigalpa and then getting north to Pico Bonito (for example). Once on Roatan, you can hop over to the north coast by ferry or local flight pretty cheaply.