Confusing Flycatchers of Guyana

After awhile, you get used to the fact that there are flycatchers everywhere you look in the tropics. We need them to keep the bugs down, for one thing. They've got a big job in Guyana.

Identifying tropical flycatchers can be tricky, as there are a bunch of them wearing the same uniform with different jobs, and different sizes and bills to go with those uniforms. I'll show you a few lookalikes here.

First and usually most obvious is the great kiskadee, which at first light shouts, "Eat your BEANS!! Eat, eat your BEANS!!" in tropical zones from Texas through South America. I always travel with earplugs, especially in the tropics, where my bird-finding brain never shuts off. Here's a recently fledged great kiskadee (see its yellow mouth corners?)I always find the tropics disorienting, because you can see birds feeding young and nest-building in November. In fact, the botanic garden had a flurry of nestbuilding activity. This great kiskadee is building an untidy ball of sticks and grasses in a low leafless tree.
Everybody was doin' it. I can't remember if this is the same bird or not. I think it was, but there were so many lookalike flycatchers that morning, and those kiskadees are such shape-shifters!Flycatcher language can be nonverbal as well as vocal. Here, a couple of flycatchers square off. Even the Science Chimp is not dead sure what species are involved. I thought they were great kiskadees, but I'm not absolutely sure. They might be lesser kiskadees, which look just like greats, but have a finer bill. You see the problem.
The right hand bird is perched lower, but it gets the upper hand with a little display of heretofore-hidden crown feathers.Bada BING he's got the left-hand bird intimidated, and it responds by facing away, a gesture of submission. (I'd never use my sharp bill on you, M'lord!)
Flycatchers and lotus pods. Methinks this is a great kiskadee.And I'm pretty sure, with its fine bill and small head, that this is a rusty-margined flycatcher (whose wing margins aren't particularly rusty in Guyana).Just to add to the identification mystery, social flycatchers and boat-billed flycatchers identically marked with subtly different bills, are in the yellow, black, white and brown mix with the greater and lesser kiskadees, too. It gets kind of kiskadee-ey, and sometimes you just have to let them all go and go find a flycatcher that looks different from the rest.

Any tropical bird with "tody" in its name is guaranteed to be cute. Tody is Latin for "adorable." Here's a spotted tody-flycatcher. It's not spotted; it's streaked, but it's really cute, especially when you see its incongruous, staring orange eye.I talk to my subjects as I photograph them. Very softly. Sometimes they respond.

Can you show me that big ol' bill?You cute thing.

It's such fun taking you all along to Guyana, showing you things you might never get to see. But I hope you'll consider a truly wild adventure in Guyana when you've had a little preview here. (Preview will go on for some time to come). C'mon. Costa Rica's been DONE.