Nineteen endemic species

Puerto Rican Tanager (Nesospingus speculiferus)

This piece was originally published by the international birding blog 10,000 Birds on February 5, 2026.  The 10,000 Birds editor requests that we do not republish our posts elsewhere for three months.  I am breaking the rules by a couple of months here.  10,000 Birds is such an active blog that, by now, this piece is buried deep.  I highly recommend subscribing.  As an international blog, it offers a world view of birding.

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On January 31st, a post by Corey from New York, birding in Maricao, Puerto Rico. was republished from the archives. I was not reading closely enough and I thought is was a new post and, further, I also thought that our visits had some overlapping dates. I even commented on the post as though it was new. Corey's visit occurred in January, 2017! For some reason, I checked again and thank goodness I noticed that it was archival. Nevertheless, I was very happy to read it now; as well as a couple of other trip reports that Corey provided from Puerto Rico.

For this post I include a few photos and stories to open the door to Puerto Rican (PR) birding. Of note, this was a trip of the big cameras. I guess most birding trips are these days. I have a small camera. I think others who also use small cameras for birding will know what I mean.

Puerto Rican (screech) Owl, (Gymnasio nupides)

The story of seeing the owls is a good one. Thinking we had finished birding Maricao State Forest, we were on our way out when we drove by several stands of enormous bamboo growths. Our guides speaking, more or less, to themselves commented that it looked like a good spot for owls. In a great minds think alike moment, suddenly the van made a U-turn and we were headed back to the bamboo stands. Dušan had a thermal monocular, a compact, handheld device that detects infrared radiation (heat) and converts it into a visible, real-time image. He had used the thermal monocular device the night before for everyone to see the Puerto Rican Nightjar (Antrostomus noctitherus). Once found, and with the aid of high-powered flashlights, we somehow all managed good looks at several nightjars, in pitch darkness, through the spotting scope. For the daytime search for owls, Dušan found the thermal monocular effective as long as it was overcast and the sun was not shining on the subject. It was in this way that he found the owls perched together, way up high, in a stand of bamboo. After our challenging binocular search and locate, came our photo attempts; everyone angling for a clear camera view and, with the help of our guides, smartphone digiscoping. It's hard to describe the degree of difficulty, but I think everyone was satisfied with their views and with their photos. We no longer had any need to go out at night for the owls and a new daytime roost site for the PR Owl was discovered. I was pleased with my camera photos and my smartphone digiscoped images are also nice.

I don't know if a duller-appearing tanager exists, but the PR Tanager (1) is endemic to Puerto Rico and is relatively common at moderate and higher elevations. For family listers, Nesospingidae (1, 2), of which the PR Tanager is monotypic, is also endemic to Puerto Rico. I invite you down a rabbit hole with me. Recent studies have given consideration to placing the PR Tanager amongst the Greater Antillean tanagers in the Phaenicophilidae family. The eBird police show PR Tanager belonging to the Phaenicophilidae family. But other documentation reveals it to still be in its monotypic family. I'm not a family lister and I'm not sure how these decisions are made except by doing genetic studies, followed by papers being written and committee discussions. When I studied photos of Black-crowned Palm-Tanager, Gray-crowned Palm-Tanager, White-winged Warbler and Green-tailed Warbler, all found on Hispaniola and all in the family Phaenicophilidae, I am inclined to agree that the PR Tanager still resides in its own monotypic family, Nesospingidae. Wait, there is more. This is further complicated by the AOS which considers PR Tanager's closest relative to be the family Spindalidae, which is most closely related to the family Phaenicophilidae. Puerto Rico also has the endemic Puerto Rican Spindalis (Spindalis portoricensis). Our group saw the PR Spindalis in the same location as the PR Tanager. The AOS still has PR Tanager in its own family, Nesospingidae. It is not up to me, of course, but I took you down the rabbit hole. There was a family lister on the trip and he was in Puerto Rico to add the PR Tanager and the family Nesospingidae to his list. Based on what I was able to learn, I hope that his current list with Nesospingidae is safe, at least for now(?). Feel free to disagree.

Puerto Rican Tody (Todos mexicanus)

Surely it is no surprise that everyone wants to see a tody. When one is called out, the excitement barometer goes way up—at least it did for this birder. Literally, a little gem.

Elfin-Woods Warbler (Setophaga angelae)

A marvelous little bird that we saw well—male, female and juvenile—and I was shocked to be able to get any photo at all. You must look closely to see it, but the bird's eye is visible.

Other random observations about a few Puerto Rican birding experiences include: Gray Kingbird (Tyrannus dominicensis) is a beautiful flycatcher and they are everywhere you are. Puerto Rican Bullfinch (Melopyrrha portoricensis) vocalizes freely, but prefers not to reveal itself. Try getting a good photo. Puerto Rican Parrot (Amazona vittata) is a very fun bird to chase. The Yellow-shouldered Blackbird (Agelaius xanthomus) is also a fun bird to chase and does not always have yellow shoulders. Many wintering neotropical warblers were seen; Prairie Warbler (Setophaga discolor) being the most common. Clapper Rails (Rallus crepitans) can behave comically when seen well in the open as we saw them. White-cheeked Pintails (Anas bahamensis) are beautiful ducks. The pintails and West Indian Whistling Ducks (Dendrocygna arborea) made up the bulk of our waterfowl sightings. We missed Plain Pigeon (Patagioenas leucocephala), now very rare in Puerto Rico. We heard, but did not see Key West Quail-Dove (Geotrygon chrysia). The Puerto Rican Nightjar was thought extinct from 1888 to 1961. Still classified as endangered, its range now seems to be expanding (Raffaele, Petrovic, et.al. page 110) (3).

It's fair to say that Puerto Rico is a very small island known mostly for its beaches but, not being a beach person, I found the birding to be great. Chasing and finding all of the endemics and seeing them so well was such good fun. Many of the endemics are not easy to see. As a tribute to our guides we saw them all and saw them well, even the nightjar. This was my first visit to Puerto Rico. In fact, aside from Cuba in 2006, it was also my first visit to any Caribbean island. There is non-stop air travel from my home city to San Juan and I'll be visiting again. There are still so many areas I would like to explore and still much to see. It is also a fantastic escape from winter, especially considering the winter I am experiencing now.

Need the Puerto Rican endemics for your list? I recommend Island Birdwatching and Alcides Morales (2) as your local guide—wonderful person with remarkable eyes and ears. Please note the Birds of the World author of Puerto Rican Tanager in the second citation below.

Cover photo: Royal Tern (Thalasseus maximus). Even though we went to three different beaches, we saw remarkably few gulls and terns. Shorebirds were also scanty, but wading birds were fairly well-represented. 

1. Bird Families of the World, Puerto Rican Tanager Nesospingidae. Monotypic Nesospingidae recognized in 2013.
2. Cornell Lab: Birds of the World. Puerto Rican Tanager Nesospingus speculiferus, Family Phaenicophilidae by Alcides L. Morales. Updated October 25, 2025.
3. Birds of Puerto Rico and The Virgin Islands, Herbert A. Raffaele, Clive Petrovic, et.al, Princeton Field Guides, copyright © 2021 Princeton University Press.

Winter trip

I have been so negligent with my blog this winter.  The frigid weather, the snow and snow shoveling, along with a new responsibility added to my life in November, all conspired against me and kept me off balance in a number of ways.

Finally, I am able to add the one, and likely only birding thing I'll do this winter.  I was surely sad when the trip was finished; I knew what I was returning home to.

Puerto Rico, Forgotten Greater Antilles, 11th January to 16th January, 2026 - Trip Report. 

The trip report was written by the Rockjumper trip leader, Dušan Brinkhuizen.  We also had an amazing local leader named Alcides Morales.  His website Island Birdwatchers is linked.  A quick Google search reveals that Alcides is connected to many options for birding in Puerto Rico.  

I have some photos of my own which I'll later add to this post.  Puerto Rico is close, easy to travel to, not particularly exotic, but the birding was great.   So was the weather!

For now, here is one of my photos of a bird that I don't believe has a photo in the trip report.

Adelaide's Warbler (Setophaga adelaidae)

Winter

The winter solstice and Christmas have both now come and gone.  My family are not great holiday celebrators and so both days are ones that, each year, I am relieved to have behind me, especially the winter solstice.  I live in an area where winter always brings cold, gray and dark weather.  Going forward now, each day will slowly and imperceptibly become slightly less dark.  We will begin to be able to appreciate the longer days around mid-February, so still many weeks away.  But this makes February my favorite winter month.  February is also the month when the male Cardinal begins singing again.  It is always a pleasure to hear.

In a couple of weeks I am traveling to someplace warm which I have never visited before and so, hopefully, I will have some new content for my blog.  In the meantime, I hope to get out locally for an update or two.  I've been negligent these past couple of months.  Readers, thanks for your patience and Happy New Year!

The West Wind

 It's Tuesday mid-afternoon and I am just sitting down after a very challenging week.  The whole week has not been challenging, just most of it.  Over the past weekend, as now, I have felt depleted.

On Sunday, I was driving in my car and listening to the NYT The Daily interview podcast.  The interviewee was Anthony Hopkins, of movie star fame and now 87 years old.  If he is as he sounded in his interview, he seems to be a completely lovely man.  He, apparently, continues to act and keeps a full schedule.  When asked, by the interviewer, what he does when he is not working he replied, "Oh I don't know, read, play the piano."  At the end of the interview, he was asked to read this poem.  He went to fetch the book and he read so beautifully.  It might be considered a masculine poem, but I don't care.  Beauty is beauty and we all need beauty in our lives.  The other thing about this poem, it's an honest poem.  We all need honesty in our lives, too. 

There is a lot about birds, bird song, the land, flowers and, as always, so much more, especially the wind.  I loved the poem and loved hearing Anthony Hopkins read it.  I think it fits well on this blog and, even if it doesn't, it fits well in my heart.  Though unrelated to my current conundrum, the words will give me courage to say words of my own to end a thirty plus year friendship.    

Everything below was copied from Your Daily Poem.  Thank you to Your Daily Poem.com.

The West Wind by John Masefield Next

It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries; I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes. For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills. And April's in the west wind, and daffodils. It's a fine land, the west land, for hearts as tired as mine, Apple orchards blossom there, and the air's like wine. There is cool green grass there, where men may lie at rest, And the thrushes are in song there, fluting from the nest. "Will ye not come home, brother? ye have been long away, It's April, and blossom time, and white is the may; And bright is the sun, brother, and warm is the rain,-- Will ye not come home, brother, home to us again? "The young corn is green, brother, where the rabbits run. It's blue sky, and white clouds, and warm rain and sun. It's song to a man's soul, brother, fire to a man's brain, To hear the wild bees and see the merry spring again. "Larks are singing in the west, brother, above the green wheat, So will ye not come home, brother, and rest your tired feet? I've a balm for bruised hearts, brother, sleep for aching eyes," Says the warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries. It's the white road westwards is the road I must tread To the green grass, the cool grass, and rest for heart and head, To the violets, and the warm hearts, and the thrushes' song, In the fine land, the west land, the land where I belong. This poem is in the public domain.   John Masefield (1878-1967) was an English poet, author, and playwright. Both his parents died while he was a child, and at the age of thirteen, annoyed with John's "addiction" to reading, the aunt in charge of caring for him sent him off to train for a life as a sailor. Although his experiences at sea provided much material for the stories and poems he would later write, John soon tired of that harsh life and, on a voyage to New York, he jumped ship. For two years, he worked at odd jobs in that city, using his free time for reading and writing. He eventually returned to England, married, had two children, and established himself as a significant literary talent. As his stature as a writer continued to grow, John became an internationally successful lecturer and was appointed as England's poet laureate, a position he held for nearly forty years. He actively wrote and published until he was 88 years old. John Masefield wrote the poem "The West Wind" in or before 1902, the year it was published in his first collection of verse, Salt-Water Ballads.  Buy on AmazonBuy on AmazonBuy on AmazonBuy on Amazon

Writing leads to other writing

It's October 1st and we are enjoying a wonderful prolonged summer. Only I know that it's really not summer.  I'm a four seasons person—would not change that for anything—so when the warm, sunny weather leaves us I will move on to real autumn.  Still, the fine weather is lovely and should be enjoyed.

I was recently walking around the neighborhood and reflecting on how I had actually spent my summer.  It would be easy for me to say that I didn't do much.  But that wouldn't be exactly correct.

When I returned from my Finland and Norway trip at the beginning of June, I spent the next four weeks writing about it on this blog.  It was a great trip and writing about it, episode by episode, was such an enjoyable activity for me.  Then writing about F/N, lead to writing about our brief and distant sighting of a Terek Sandpiper for 10,000 Birds titled:  There's a Shorebird on the Roof.

The July ABA Magazine article titled Lost on the Frontier by Brad Meiklejohn led me to write:  Missing the Gray-headed Chickadee.

Then I listened to Nate Swick's prologue on the ABA podcast about the new documentary film by Owen and Quentin Rieser titled Listers and I was inspired to write:  To list or not to list.  I'm waiting for Quentin Reiser's book to arrive in the mail today.

I enjoyed remembering my experience in the Andaman Islands in March of 2023 and contributed to a collaborative post titled Our 6 Rarest Birds Seen So Far.  My bird is the Ruddy Kingfisher.

Finally, having nothing to do with birding, I finished reading Nightingales:  The Extraordinary Upbringing of and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale by Gillian Gill, published in 2014.  I'm a slow reader so it took me a while to finish.  It will be the best book I read in 2025 and I felt compelled to attempt to write a review.  This is a review of the sort that I do not feel qualified to write, but it turned out okay, I think.  But then I was reading a 10,000 Birds blog post and I was reminded that I had left something important (to me anyway) out of my review.  So I wrote:  Florence Nightingale and her Little Owl.

I have other writing ideas for the 10,000 Birds blog.  It is a fun blog.  It's an international site, has a very engaged editor who is also a birder, and I encourage others to look it up and subscribe.  You will see photos of birds you have no hope to see in real life, read of very different birding experiences, read about birding guides and lodges from all around the world, and perhaps be inspired to make a contribution of your own.  After all, none of us can watch, listen or read about politics all day.  Now is not a good time to put our heads in the sand (unfortunately, I have never been able to put my head in the sand, despite having examples all around me of how to do it), but even still it's important to have a diversion.

So this summer I wrote.  You could argue that this also means that, true enough, I didn't do much.  But this is not true.  Writing about birds has helped me find the strength to pay attention to our Democracy and not put my head in the sand.  I can't write if I have my head in the sand.  

As the new posts I write come out, I'll also publish them here. 

  Yes, someone is in there.  Enlarge to see.