We present an update on the status and distribution of birds in Guatemala relative to a previous summary (Eisermann & Avendaño 2007) and based upon a review of new published and unpublished records. During the period 2006 to 2017, 50 species were first documented in Guatemala. Another 11 species were reported for the first time but without verifiable documentation. Breeding was newly confirmed for 58 species. Noteworthy observations, including range extensions, are summarised for 131 species. The Guatemalan avifauna now comprises 758 species of which 23 lack documentation. Of the 758 species, 509 breed in Guatemala, 240 are non-breeding visitors, transients or vagrants, and the status of nine is uncertain.

Avian inventories of the poorly known tropical dry forest in the Cúcuta Valley, north-east Colombia, yielded new distributional data for 15 bird species including several range extensions along the east slope of the East Andes, or filled distributional gaps between the Serranía de Perijá and Mérida Andes of Venezuela, and between the Maracaibo basin in Venezuela and eastern Llanos of Colombia. Some of the new records are of fairly common but easily overlooked species associated with dense habitats, whereas others concern open-country species whose spread has apparently been promoted by landscape transformation. Further work will probably yield additional new records in the region, especially in the transition from dry forest of the Cúcuta Valley to more humid habitats in the Catatumbo and adjacent Andes of Colombia and Venezuela.

We provide new information on the breeding and feeding behaviour of Squirrel Cuckoo Piaya cayana, describing 16 nests found in 1987–2017 at two Atlantic Forest localities, in Minas Gerais and Alagoas (Brazil). In these areas, the species was observed at edges of primary and secondary forests, and beside rivers and wetlands. Nests were placed in the forest understorey in bushes or trees, and were camouflaged by lianas or dry branches. Clutch size varied from one to three eggs. Chicks had white mouth markings, described herein for the first time, and fledged before being able to fly. The breeding season varied between localities. In Minas Gerais, Squirrel Cuckoo appears to breed during the rainy season, while in Alagoas it may nest year-round.

The avifauna on the north bank of the Putumayo River in Colombia is one of the most poorly known in western Amazonia. In February 2017 we spent nine days conducting ornithological field work in and around the community of El Encanto, dpto. Amazonas. We present novel distributional information for six species, the most significant of which concern range extensions for Whiteshouldered Antshrike Thamnophilus aethiops, Imeri Warbling Antbird Hypocnemis flavescens and Black-headed Antbird Percnostola rufifrons minor. We discuss these records in the context of recent ornithological work on the south bank of the Putumayo in Peru and address their biogeographical significance, especially with regards to the definition of areas of endemism in western Amazonia and the role of the Putumayo River as a distributional barrier. Our findings underscore the need for continued ornithological field work in the Putumayo–Caquetá interfluvium and indeed the Colombian Amazon as a whole.

Aside from mainly anecdotal sight reports, Shelley's Sparrow Passer shelleyi has been unrecorded in Kenya for 100 years since a specimen collected in 1917. Here we describe a newly discovered population south of the equator and report brief field observations of its occurrence alongside Kenya Rufous Sparrow Passer rufocinctus, with which it was formerly treated as conspecific. This is the first known location where the two species occur sympatrically, potentially enabling future behavioural and ecological studies between these closely related taxa.

Long-tailed Woodnymph Thalurania watertonii is known with certainty from Pernambuco, Alagoas and Sergipe, north-east Brazil, but the type specimen is still listed, albeit with reservations, as having been taken 3,000 km to the west in Guyana. The collector, Charles Waterton, gave the specimen to George Loddiges in 1844, claiming he took it 20 years earlier on the Mibiri Creek, south of what is now Georgetown. However Waterton, who had a particular interest in hummingbirds, also collected 58 birds in forest near Recife, Pernambuco, in 1816. Given these facts, the total absence of other records of the species from Guyana and its replacement there by Fork-tailed Woodnymph T. furcata, it seems far more likely that Waterton simply misremembered where he collected his specimen of T. watertonii and that the type locality is, as O. M. O. Pinto judged, Pernambuco (more specifically coastal Pernambuco).