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BANANAQUIT Coeroba flaveola
Anybody who has birded the northern Neotropics will be more than familiar with the Bananaquit, an inquisitive, shameless little character with a penchant for nectar. A popular and common inhabitant of gardens, they frequent hummingbird feeders and steal from flowering bushes by piercing the corollas at the base, extracting the goods without having to pay the price of bearing the pollen load. But despite their familiarity further north, the Bananaquit has historically been a rare bird in Paraguay. The natural humid forest that blanketed the Orient was seemingly an impenetrable barrier to them, and only now that deforestation has reached worrying levels is it beginning to invade the towns and cities of the eastern and southern Orient.
Click on the images to enlarge them.
FIGURE 1 - Adult, Encarnación, Departamento Itapúa (Paul Smith August 2007).
FIGURE 2 - Adult ventral, Encarnación, Departamento Itapúa (Paul Smith June 2007).
FIGURE 3 - Adult ventral, Encarnación, Departamento Itapúa (Paul Smith June 2007).
FIGURE 4 - Adult,  Encarnación, Departamento Itapúa (Paul Smith August 2007).
FIGURE 5 - Same individual feeding (Paul Smith August 2007).
FIGURE 6 - Adult, Encarnación, Departamento Itapúa (Paul Smith August).
FIGURE 7 - Same individual upperwing (Paul Smith August).
FIGURE 8 - Juvenile, Encarnación, Departamento Itapúa (Paul Smith December).
FIGURE 9 - Same individual upperwing (Paul Smith December).
VIDEO - Same adult as Fig 3 foraging (Paul Smith June 2007).
Bananaquit is historically a rare bird in Paraguay that appears to be expanding in the south and east of the country as a result of deforestation. The juvenile in Fig 8 and 9 provided the first evidence that the species may breed in the country.
FIGURE 1

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 2

FIGURE 2
FIGURE 3

FIGURE 3
FIGURE 4

FIGURE 4
FIGURE 5

FIGURE 5
FIGURE 6

FIGURE 6
FIGURE 7

FIGURE 7
FIGURE 8

FIGURE 8
FIGURE 9

FIGURE 9
 
Coeroba flaveola
1 Song - song variation 1 recorded Encarnación, Departamento Itapúa (Paul Smith August 2007).
2 Song - song variation 2 recorded Encarnación, Departamento Itapúa (Paul Smith August 2007).
3 Song - recorded Encarnación, Departamento Itapúa (Paul Smith August 2007).
Click the links to hear the calls. Longer versions of this call can be downloaded from the Paraguay page of our partner website Xeno-Canto - the largest collection of freely downloadable Neotropical bird calls available online.