Smooth-billed ani on palm leaf - closeup, Uraba, Colombia

A common and confident bird. As with most black birds, you can see that when looking up close, they rarely are all black. Only back home did I see the blues in this ani.

comments (3)

Christine Young

Lion

Wow, that blue is such a beautiful detail. Posted 7 years ago
1. Ferdy Christant
  
  Lion
  
  To me the most spectacular case of an all-black appearing bird that turns out to have quite a lot more to it, is a very common bird:
  
  https://www.jungledragon.com/specie/73/common_starling.html Posted 7 years ago
2. 1. Christine Young
    
    Lion
    
    Agreed! Starlings are beautiful! People revile them here in the US. Strangely, I think they were first introduced here in NYC by a group that wanted to introduce all the birds that had ever been mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare. Odd. Posted 7 years ago

The Smooth-billed Ani

The smooth-billed ani is a large near passerine bird in the cuckoo family. It is a resident breeding species from southern Florida, the Bahamas, the Caribbean, parts of Central America, south to western Ecuador, Brazil, and northern Argentina.

Info 22 0

Similar species: Cuckoos

Species identified by Ferdy Christant