Map quiz 2 - answer

Map Quiz 2 - Answer

This is clearly a widespread Tropical species. Even with relatively little data in South America, this species is showing up from almost all the areas that we have data. Other than Chile, which has lots of data but no records of this species, this is a species that has been reported from every South American country. In Middle America, this species is numerous too, although it appears to be mostly absent from the highlands of Mexico and the Central Mexican Plateau. The United States distribution is telling. This bird occurs in reasonably high frequencies in south Texas and Southeast Arizona, but has scattered records from almost the entire Pacific Coast, as well as scattered birds elsewhere in the United States as far northeast as Massachusetts!

Many birds that reach the USA in South Texas are widespread in the tropics (such as Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl and Tropical Parula), but many of these are also non-migratory and do not occur as far-flung vagrants.

Tropical Kingbird in fact ends up being the only species that makes sense. This is a bird that is regular in southeast Arizona and colonized south Texas in 1991, but has now become regular and locally common there. It has increasingly been detected as a far-flung vagrant, and is annual in small numbers along the California coast and accidental as far north as southern Alaska! On the East Coast there are a number of records, and careful attention to yellow-bellied kingbirds there in recent years has produced records for the Carolinas, Maryland, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Just recently, Delaware got its first.