Return of Bird of the Week: White-whiskered Puffbird

Another of the puffbird species that WC has been able to photograph, this one in 2010. Panama is more or less in the middle of this species’ range, which extends from Mexico to Ecuador, generally in humid evergreen forests and shady forest edges, usually pretty low in the understory. This is an ambush predator. It perches motionless on branches, where it can be remarkably hard to see, and then sallies out to capture insects, spiders, frogs or lizards, then returning to its perch to beat the prey to death on the branch before eating it. Unusually among puffbirds, it is…