The Anhinga above is one of four darters in the World, separated from cormorants by their straight, sharp, pointed beak for spearing f ish. The right one below contrasts to the cormorants, and both hold their wings out to dry, and perhaps rid their feathers of mites.

Female Anhingas have a brown neck and head while males are black. They are pretty good fliers and many migrate from the US to the Tropics. It’s cool seeing a flock headed south down Smith Point, at the Hawkwatch Tower. Cormorants and Anhingas fly with their neck outstretched for balance while dagger-billed waders do not.

Young Anhingas are adorable, with their fuzzy white robes and monster feet. They can swim quite well but I’m not sure if they are yet old enough to chase down fish. I don’t think so. They and cormorants are like pelicans in having fully webbed (totipalmate) feet, but they somehow sit on limbs with little difficulty.

Amazon Kingfishers are fairly common in Central Amer ica, as well as South America, and one made it across the US border a coupla years ago. They resemble Belted a little bit but make a series of cranky noises. Kingfishers have sexual dimorphism but the females are more colorful in some species.

Here’s an Amazon KF about to plunge bill first into the Rio Frio for minnows, paying no attention to the big guy sitting on the bank with his camera. It is so fun watching birds dive headlong into the water, like the Forster’s Terns at San Luis Pass. Kingfishers were split off from kookaburras and radiated over most of the Earth.

Ringed Kingfishers are the largest in the New World and really make a splash when they hit! They live well up into Texas and well south into the Tropics. Obviously they have more red below than Belted and a massive bill to boot. There are also Green Kingfishers in Texas, make it a four-KF state. Listers, did I say that right?

Isn’t the red in the wings beautiful? Kingfishers have broad, long wings for excellent lift, as they have to rise off the water with their piscine prey. You can also see the tiny legs on their large torso, as perching is their only chore. Also interesting is the banding in the primaries and tail, and the rounded primar ies.

Black-necked Stilts are aplenty in the Tropics, with their bubblegum legs and sharp contrast. Their family (includes avocets) is found over much of the World and is named for the upturned beaks some have (Recurvirostridae). This family eats the tiniest little animals in the water, as well as sucking up microscopic life.

Boat-billed Herons are stocky “owl-herons” with thick bills and short legs like their BCNH lookalikes. They usually hang out in small flocks over a waterway by day and become active along shorelines after dark. Most birds that feed by night have unusually large mouths, giving them an advantage for grabbing food.

Tiger-herons are hefty predators which can take down some creatures like large snakes other waders might pass on. This is the Bare-throated, and you can see the yellow skin on the throat, making the ID easy. The Fasciated T-h is found on rocky rivers while these are the generalists, p referring muddy rivers and most lakes, swamps and marshes.

While there is an entire group of kiskadee-like flycatchers in the New World Tropics, this pair is the real thing: Great Kiskadees. (Be sure to notice the two that are upside down in the water.) Those big bills on kiskadees are useful for more than bugs. I have seen them take out several vertebrates, and that nail on the bill does an effective job killing.

Green Herons are a summer resident in most of North America, meaning there are the motherload here in the Tropics in winter. Despite their small stature, they have an oversized bill and the innate ability to drop lures in the water to trick fish up to the surface. One I saw as a child pooped off a log, wheeled around, and nailed fish that were interested in the stuff.

An easy bird to call a Snowy Egret, this immature Little Blue Heron searches for food in a slow, ponderous way. Note the leg color and two-toned bill, and very often they will walk with their necks outstretched at a 45-degree angle. This species goes from light to dark while White Ibis changes the opposite way.

Least Bitterns breed over much of North America but return to the Tropics in fall. This is an immature, getting very close to adult plumage. There seems to be two sizes of the World’s bitterns, this and the next bird. The bitterns are famous for “freezing,” as predators come near them, but they are also voracious predators.

This huge Pinnated Bittern creeps through the marsh grass completely lateral, eyeing a frog for lunch. They are lighter and less well-marked as our American Bittern, a bird that doesn’t usually leave the North American Continent. Worldwide, bitterns are basically brown, but with lovely colors and patterns.

Bitterns have a habit of hiding in the marsh and sticking their head and neck up in the air, mimicking the reeds around them. Never saw that? Must work! These Pinnated Bitterns are rare to most people but in truly healthy marshes, they can be quite common. A marsh is a wet grassland, typically without trees, quite different from a swamp.

Bitterns are like herons and egrets in that they fly with their necks pulled in. However, at the moment they take off, their necks are outstretched like ibis and cranes. Notice the huge feet bitterns have, as well as the long toenails. I am still mulling over the black flight feathers, as they do so little flying! It almost seems like a waste of energy, but I’m sure I’m missing something.

Limpkins are distant relatives of cranes, with only one species Worldwide, basically in the Neotropics. (That said, those in Florida are doing well, thanks to the celery industry, which attracts snails for the Limpkins.) They crack through the operculum of the apple snail and yank out the meat. Some have been seen carrying huge snails in their beaks, just escargot.

You might notice the vague resemblance of a Limpkin to a rail. The order Gruiformes encompasses all three mentioned groups, p lus coots, gallinules and moorhens. Orders are usually large assemblages of birds having some things in common, and they all end with –iformes. Most (but not all) have longish bills, but not daggers like the heron group.

Limpkins do walk with a jerky gait at times, perhaps leading to their rather unusual name. Notice the point on the bill for hammer ing through the operculum of the snail, the hard cover over the opening. In the ocean, one of the chief predators of snails is starfish and, curiously, snails are one of the chief predators of bivalves.

Muskovies, the hated duck of our urban lakes, are really wild birds in many areas of the Tropics. This one is near Los Chiles, near the Nicaraguan Border, feeding with jacanas along an inland, marshy waterway. This is the female, as the male can be quite grotesque, with huge bumps all over their faces.

Purple Gallinules are found throughout much of Central and northern South America, in addition to nesting in summer in the eastern US. The fact that they can bisect the Gulf of Mexico in spring and fall, along with Least Bitterns, is almost astonishing. Moreover, the way immatures, just a few months old, stay well past their parents in fall, living in places such as Brazos Bend and Anahuac, is really neat.

Rails do have dark meat, like ducks and dove, and that indicates greater myoglobin, that makes the muscles more efficient. Like other heavier birds, they fly with their long neck outstretched, and this bird is making some pretty good time. Note the vertical bill of the coot, moorhen and gallinules.

One of the great finds on the Rio Frio was this Sungrebe, actually not a grebe at all. They are a family of swimmers called “finfoots,” with one species here in the Neotropics. The toes are lobed, like coots, true grebes and phalaropes, and I’ve seen them exit the river and clamber out onto the hilly bank. That’s an odd sight, especially with their strongly black-and-white banded toes and legs.