Jamaican Endemics, Part 1
An endemic bird species is one that is only found in a limited area and nowhere else. There are 28 endemic species in Jamaica so by definition if you’ve never been to Jamaica before, every endemic you see is a Lifer. The goal of our Field Guides guide Jay Pendergast was to find all 28 Jamaican endemics for our group and he succeeded! During our trip to Jamaica we got 28 Lifers from endemics and 15 more from other birds that we hadn’t see before.
I was able to get good pictures of most of the endemics, some bad pictures of a few of them and didn’t get any pics for three of them (but saw them). Today is the first of three posts with pictures of Jamaican endemics.
We saw the Ring-tailed Pigeon on two of the six days of our trip. A large pigeon and you can clearly see the top half of the ring around the base of the tail.
The Jamaican Pewee was seen several times on Ecclesdown Road, an old “transit” road which would be very difficult for vehicles to use today because it is so overgrown and narrow. It’s a popular birding destination – we saw 43 species there that day.
It seemed like the group saw an Orangequit every day – except me. Jay would call out “Orangequit” but I just couldn’t find it. Finally, on the last day, I had some great looks at these sharp-looking birds.
The Greater Antillean Grackle was seen on three of our six days there. This one was on the grounds of our first hotel, the Mockingbird Hill B&B.
Another endemic we saw many of the days was the Sad Flycatcher. Jay explained that its song sounds “sad”, hence the name.
Another popular birding location was the San San Forest Preserve. We got good looks at the Rufous-tailed Flycatcher there.
More Jamaican endemics soon!
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