#SMaP - White-eyed Vireo (Vireo griseus)… yeeeep, another lifer for me!

Hello, friends of feathered friends—here’s the White-eyed Vireo (Vireo griseus)… yeeeep, another lifer for me!

This is my entry to the #SMaP Show Me A Photo Contest Round 257 hosted by @nelinoeva.

See my excitement! What I can say about spotting this bird is that it was thanks to my mate @muhammadhalim, who dragged me into a tricky mangrove, with the promise of spotting a few species.

Honestly, if it hadn’t been for him I’d never have spotted it — that tiny bird never keeps still. At one moment he said, you got the shot because you won’t get many more chances.

😁 Here’s some more information and its song, in case you’d like to take a look.

Did I say mangrove (manglar)? Of course I did, I always like to take photos of the surroundings where I find myself. Here are a few views I managed to capture before running off, because we saw a greyish mass in the sky moving towards us… it threatened a storm… nah, just one of those little winter downpours.

Oh, what a scatterbrain I am… that day I also saw this bird, which I believe is a Señorita de Manglar or Northern waterthrush (Parkesia noveboracensis). These different names are doing my head in, really… the scientific, the English, the Spanish and even the local nicknames… blimey, there are loads! My poor brain can’t keep up!

Okay, okay, no more whingeing… there are plenty more tales brewing here.

Mouth of the Santa Ana River, here we are. In fact, I had already announced this birding in a previous post, in which I included a video showing us during that activity.

We were just past Santa Fe in Havana, heading towards Baracoa, which is part of Artemisa. The Santa Ana’s well known as an archaeological site, and its name actually comes from a black woman said to have miraculous powers to heal.

I reckon it’s a spot I’ll go back to whenever I can, because it’s lovely. There are even little guano umbrellas by the water, perfect for chilling out to the sound and staring at the horizon. I told my friend I fancied sitting there for a bit… but that didn’t happen, because once we saw what was rolling in, the only thing to do was leg it. We were both on bikes and and we had to part ways at the end of the path, each taking diametrically opposite routes.

And then came my last spot — a kingfisher. It was way off, but with the 45–200 mm lens on I managed to grab a couple of shots. That bird’s a slippery one. Muhammad snapped it on the wing, maybe he got lucky and has a cracking shot tucked away.

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