A couple of months back I posted about Bananaquits on Abaco – specifically, at the Delphi Club. I featured images of a recently fledged bird, still with its ‘too big for my face’ orange-based beak. You’ll find other bananaquit information there, including audio of their call. I won’t repeat it all here – to see that post CLICK BANANAQUIT 

The small bird below looks like a slightly older juvenile – an early teen, let’s say, before the troublesome stage. There’s something very sweet about its feathers. It’s still more like fluff. This one is growing into its beak, which has also lost the very bright orange at the base.

This handsome adult was a regular at one of the feeders at Delphi. The base of its beak is red as opposed to orange (I don’t know the technical term  for this bird part. Is ‘mouth’ too simple? Someone tell me, by all means, via the comment  box). Bananaquits enjoy the hummingbird feeders, which their narrow curved beaks seem to manage. There, they are not pestered by the (very greedy) black-faced grassquits and the larger Greater Antillean Bullfinches who enjoy the other types of feeder available and take priority in the pecking order.

Finally, this bird was a distance shot. At the time, it looked  larger than a bananaquit – more Loggerhead Kingbird-sized. Before I had downloaded the image and could see it clearly, I’d wondered about a mangrove cuckoo. Then I saw at once that it didn’t tick the right boxes. So I decided it must just be a huge bananaquit with an orange rather than yellow front. If it’s anything else (a rare hybrid spindalisquit?), please say so!