The Little Stint: Enigmatic

This is the story of the mysterious Kinglet Calyptura, which has managed to elude the ornithologists and birders of humanity for over 100 years:
Some of the smallest birds of the world live in Latin America. The Bee Hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) of Cuba with only 5 to 6 cm and 1.6-2.6 g is likely the smallest of them all, shortly followed by the similarly tiny Short-tailed Pygmy-Tyrant (Myiornis ecaudatus) which is the smallest passerine: It measures 6.5cm, weighs 4.2g and lives throughout much of the continent.

Some readers might have seen these. But I doubt any reader has ever seen the Kinglet Calyptura (Calyptura cristata). At 7.5-8 cm it's not much bigger than the aforementioned species, being even smaller than e.g. the eurasian Goldcrest (Regulus regulus) (9cm) or the north american Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa) (8-11cm). With its yellow-green colouration, two white wingbars on the blackish wings, a stubby tail and especially its black-bordered large orange-red crown patch it actually looks a lot like these two.

Specimen of Kinglet Calyptura (Calyptura cristata), probably a male
taken in Brazil, probably prior to 1890.
Special thanks to the 'Landesmuseum Natur und Mensch Oldenburg',
where these pictures were taken. ©Mathieu Waldeck

Only a very tiny handful of people have ever set eyes on a living Kinglet Calyptura in recent years. Back in late October 1996 the observation of a pair on the edge of Serra dos Órgãos National Park, ca. 60 km north of the city of Rio de Janeiro resurrected the species from the dead for three days and put them back on our radar:

The Kinglet Calyptura was first described to science by Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot in 1818 from a specimen taken in Rio de Janeiro. It was certainly not as rare back then as it is today. Over 55 specimens can be found in museum collections. But it vanished for more than a century after the last specimen was collected in 1890. Many ornithologists believed it to have gone extinct and only few people knew much about it, when suddenly on October 27th local ornithologist Riccardo Parini found what appeared to be the "most anxiously awaited" rediscovery of South America.

After calling some friends and describing what he had just seen they returned the next day to confirm its existence and exclude a misidentification. Bad weather prevented them to find the birds on this day, so on October 29th they returned once again and at 6:30 in the morning a tiny little bird popped up for a few seconds ca. 150-200 m away from the expected place in significantly taller trees than two days earlier (second growth atop some fairly dense, 3-4 m high trees), but soon vanished into a nearby treetop. Hastily the search party relocated to a better viewing spot and after a short search they finally got the views they had hoped for. Four observers had the great luck of being the first observers in over a hundred years of the enigmatic Kinglet Calyptura. After a while they noticed, that there were actually two birds, which they observed on the next day again. Even though professional video and sound-recording gear had been brought no footage could be obtained, as the birds quickly disappeared after their anxiously awaited appearance. Two more people saw the bird this time, while three people missed their chance of seeing it, probably forever, when they decided to walk a little bit down the road and search there.

What they noticed in addition to the known key field marks (size & colouration) were two things that differed from what they had expected: The orange-red crown was held erect like a crest and the bird sat rather upright. This disagreed with the way that Kinglet Calypturas has always been depicted in books before. Unfortunately the birds would not call or do anything other than repeat a routine of flights, with brief pauses to rest on specific treetops. The upright posture actually makes some sense, if you consider that the Calyptura is most closely related to the members of the genuses Platyrinchus and Neopipo, forming a basal branch of the tyrant flycatcher family, which have a fairly erect posture too.

The following 30 days the group returned nine times, but to no avail before the observation was finally announced to the general public in late November. Remember that this was before the era of cell phones, the internet and instant news.

For most people that have heard the story of the Calyptura this is already where it ends. The birds are most probably still out there, though their diminutive size, unknown calls and likely small population has hindered another rediscovery. But there are three more unconfirmed sightings from the general area that bear some credibility:

A report from July 1990 by Tomas Sigrist describes a pair following a mixed flock in subcanopy at Picinguaba near Ubatuba in Sao Paulo. It’s interesting to know that this report (proceeding the sightings from 1996) already mentions the male raising its crest, something that was an unknown behaviour at the time. However it wasn’t published until 2005, which is somewhat surprising given the noteworthiness of this incredible sighting.

A second report on 27^th March 1997 by Ladd Hockey from a place near Ubatuba Experimental Station goes into detail about several key characteristics that were noticed, but unfortunately the observations was short (5 s) and his wife Petra was birding apart from him at the moment and thus couldn’t confirm the observation. Again the raised crest is mentioned.

And finally on 4^th March 2006 Martin Schaefer reported that he and his wife had observed a Calyptura in subcanopy near Ubatuba, again with a mixed species flock. Again the description fits well with Kinglet Calyptura, but some key characteristics like the size or the short tail are left unmentioned and at least one of the accompanying species mentioned (Red-legged Honeycreeper) does not occur in the area.

Recently a two-month survey by Frank Lambert from mid-september to mid-november 2006 sadly ended fruitless, as did another 15-day expedition in search of the enigmatic Calyptura in October 2010 by Luciano Lima. But I’m convinced that it is still out there and will eventually be re-rediscovered!

Further reading:

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

The mysterious Kinglet Calyptura

'San Pedro Tanager'

Further reading: