The Little Stint: 'San Pedro Tanager'

The first ever photograph of the San Pedro Tanager © Julian Heavyside

I'll start this blog with a bird most people have never even heard of, the 'San Pedro Tanager' from Peru and Bolivia, sometimes also called 'Manu Road Tanager' or given the kickass name 'Kill Bill Tanager': It's a bird that is still lacking an official description, eventhough it's existence is already known since at least 2001. There are quite many birds out there that have been diagnosed by birders to be new species to science and lack an official description yet, such as the famous 'San Isidro Owl' in Ecuador or several species of Antpitta in Peru. However there are striking differences between those undescribed species and the San Pedro Tanager. First off, many of these species are so-called cryptic species. This means that they look just like another one, but differ in such details as ecology, voice and genetics, neither of which is apparent at first glance. However the San Pedro Tanager doesn't resemble any known tanager species. Secondly the former species are often fairly easy to find (of course not always) and birders have staked out the exact places to look for them. Our tanager however is very difficult to find and only extremely few people have ever seen it. And that, eventhough it's a very striking bird species, which immediately calls attention and probably even belongs to a whole new genus. This could be understandable if the bird was to be found in a very remote part of the earth, were you could only get to if you brought lots of time and fought your way through the jungle. But the exact opposite is the case: It was discovered next to the famous 'Manu Road', a place that almost every birder who has visited southern Peru has birded along. There are plenty of wildlife and birding lodges and even lots of research stations along this road and every birding tour company in Peru offers visits to the area. And still the San Pedro Tanager manages to remain off the list of almost all of them. How is this possible?

The picture taken in 2014 by © Alex Durand

Until a few years ago the San Pedro Tanager had only ever been recorded in an area, which lies at ca. 1000m altitude, just a few kilometers away from the infamous Cock-of-the-rock Lodge. The bird was originally described as probably being a bamboo specialist, but that seems not to be entirely true. Here are all the records I could find from Peru:

- October 2000 (or 2001?*): Discovery by Dan Lane and Gary Rosenberg

- October 6th 2003: Seen again by Gary Rosenberg and Dan Lane

- 2004: one bird collected by Dan Lane and Barry Walker

- June 2005: Seen by Juvenal Ccahuana and David Geale

- September 2nd 2013: First picture online, taken by Julian Heavyside

- August 13th 2014: Another picture online, taken by Alex Durand

- March 22nd 2015: heard by Çağan Hakkı Şekercioğlu

Uma Thurman in her yellow jump suit for the movie "Kill Bill"

But in 2013 LSU scientist Dan Lane led an expedition to a place near Apolo, a small town in Bolivia, not far away from the peruvian border. Somehow he must have gotten the info, that the bird could be found here and indeed he and his team found it to be common around their campsite and even along the road, where they collected several specimens for the official description.

This gives a whole new twist to this story. Apparently the San Pedro Tanager isn't very rare and apparently the names it was given don't fit very well anymore. It's main distribution is not around the San Pedro area along the Manu Road, so the names 'San Pedro Tanager' or 'Manu Road Tanager' don't really fit.

The best name so far for it might still be 'Kill Bill Tanager'. This is easy to explain. In 2003 the movie Kill Bill came out. In this movie Uma Thurman walks around in a bright yellow jump suit with black stripes on the arms, similar to the colours of the tanager which was discovered only a few days before the movie started its huge success. Furthermore during the sighting in 2004 a call was heard that was described as sounding like 'killbillykillbillykillbillykillbill'. But will that become its official name?

But have a look yourself, this is more or less what it looks like:

Amateur bird art by me (C) Mathieu Waldeck

The male is a bright yellow bird with a greenish tone to the back and tail and somewhat reminiscent of a female Piranga species. Very striking is the black supercilium reaching from the beak over the eye to almost the back of its head. In some pictures it shows a vividly orange crown, whereas in another picture the crown appears more on the yellow side. The more or less conical bill has a pinkish orange tone. The legs in contrast are a light grey. Further traits that spring to the eye are a small crest on the back of its head, giving it a somewhat angular form and a rather long tail (a bit longer, than in my drawing)

The two locations, where it has been found so far: At 'Tanager Corner' along the Manu Road, near the Cock-of-the-rock Lodge (ca. 13°02'06.0"S 71°31'26.0"W) and near the bolivian town Apolo. Source: OSM

So if you ever find yourself near the Cock-of-the-rock lodge (at a place called Tanager corner) or near the town of Apolo in Bolivia you should try and look for this enigmatic bird, you would for sure be in the first people ever to see this one. And isn't that just what we all dream of?

The Little Stint

Donnerstag, 1. Februar 2018

'San Pedro Tanager'

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