Manuel Antonio National Park
April 21st, 2014
On Saturday Michael and I decided on a visit to Manuel Antonio, for some
hiking, birding and maybe swimming. I've already shared the star of that trip,
the Blue-Crowned Motmot that flew to within ten feet of us. Another happy
sighting was a glittering Red-Legged Honeycreeper. On the Esquipulas trip,
Mike and Johan had seen one of these while I was separated from them (at the
very time when I was getting my lifer Chestnut-Backed Antbird, in fact.) It
was gone by the time I got back. So it was nice to see one at last.
I actually mistook that for a wintering Indigo Bunting at first, despite,
y'know, the
blazing red legs and long curved bill and pretty much
everything other than the fact that it was blue. Not my proudest moment as a
birder!
A family group of raccoon-like animals caught our attention, as they travelled
along in a dried up stream bed below us. I initially thought they were coatis
due to their elongated snouts, but
some research
cleared things up. Turns out they're
Crab-Eating
Raccoons--aptly named close cousins of the raccoons we all know and love.
They were hard to photograph in the shadows and brush, but this one briefly
came out in the open.
The odd-looking guy below is a Common Basilisk, although the locals would call
him a Jesus Christ Lizard.
Here's why.
Our final sighting of the day came late and unexpectedly. Our taxi driver was
taking us back to the resort when he pulled over suddenly, exclaimed that
there was a toucan in a tree and let us out to see it. Thus did I get my lifer
Chestnut-Mandibled Toucan! (Handsome tip: earned.) It was distant and
half-obscured by foliage, but still pretty exciting considering. As Mike said
afterwards, "
everyone in Costa Rica is a tour guide!"
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Seedeater Birdscapes
April 20th, 2014
The
seedeaters, as a
group, stole my heart in Costa Rica. No, they're not colorful or beautiful
singers or anything like that, just very small and shy and cute. They seemed
to me as tiny as hummingbirds. The sapling palms near our resort were dripping
with them.
A close-up was out of the question. As soon as I approached within a certain
distance, every last one of them would melt into the scenery. I had to make do
with "birdscapes." I especially liked the view of these female Yellow-Bellied
Seedeaters with the mountains silhouetted in the distance.
Top to bottom: male Yellow-Bellied Seedeater, female White-Collared Seedeater,
juvenile male Yellow-Bellied Seedeater, male White-Collared Seedeater. (Yes,
there's a fourth one hiding down there.) Yellow-Bellied Seedeaters roam widely
in search of seeding grasses, and apparently that's the only reason I saw
them. They're not normally found in Quepos. Johan Chaves went searching for
them after I left, but the flock had already moved on.
Equally tiny Blue-Black Grassquits shared the same habitat. These guys were
quite pretty when the light caught them and revealed their cobalt-blue
iridescence. They were also more amenable to close-ups.
Many scientists believe that Blue-Black Grassquits were the original parent
species of
Darwin's
finches--the birds that helped Charles Darwin develop his theory of
evolution. When they first spread to Galapagos the islands were nearly
birdless. So they proceeded to rapidly diversify into about fifteen different
species, each one exploiting a previously empty niche.
A pair of Mangrove Black Hawks was nesting in a big dead tree near the
estuary. These hawks' favorite food is crabs, sometimes captured by racing
after them on foot through the mud! To everyone other than crabs, they seemed
to hold the status of "gentle giant"--the little seedeaters would perch in the
same tree as them without any sign of fear. The hawks also tolerated me close
to their nesting tree, although the first time I walked by on any given day,
one of them would usually do a quick fly-by to check me out (or maybe dissuade
me from trying any funny business?) This made for a good photo op if I had my
camera at the ready.
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Wherein Ursula Vernon makes me laugh hysterically
April 17th, 2014
Birder Directions: A Play In One Act
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El Rey wetlands with Johan Chaves
April 16th, 2014
In the dry season, El Rey was shallow marsh, productive of wading birds like
gallinules and herons, plus the occasional kingfisher. (In the wet season the
adjacent fields flood and breeding waterfowl move in.) One of the high points
for me was a tiny American Pygmy Kingfisher. This guy is less than half the
size of the kingfisher we're familiar with in North America (Belted), and eats
very small fish and aquatic insects.
Familiar Green Herons were everywhere in Costa Rica, anywhere they could find
the tiniest bit of water to fish in. This time of year the resident Green
Herons were joined by wintering birds from North America. Like so many of the
wintering birds, they seemed tamer than back home.
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The beautiful
adult Purple
Gallinules eluded my camera. I saw them only in brief glimpses. But this
juvenile was a lot more willing to come out in the open--perhaps because his
camouflage was better! Typical of his species, he stayed expertly out of the
water by scrambling over aquatic plants.
As did the jacanas. You can see below the ultra-long toes that allow jacanas
to even balance on floating lily pads.
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Naranjito and Esquipulas with Johan Chaves (part 2)
April 13th, 2014
A familiar face:
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This deep-golden beauty is a Prothonotary Warbler, a North American bird,
wintering in the tropics as most warblers do. Prothonotaries are abundant
breeders at Dutch Gap, one of my favorite birding spots when I visit my folks
in Virginia. They nest in tree holes (or manmade nest boxes) in wetland
habitat. I found this one to be especially tame. In fact I find a lot of Costa
Rican birds especially tame, as if they know they are in a peaceful country!
There are over two hundred types of tanagers in the Americas, nearly all of
whom are restricted to the tropics--probably something to do with their love
of fruit. Like our own Scarlet Tanagers (a species I'm still trying to get one
good photo of to this day), most of them seem to be deep woods birds who stay
well up in the trees and shun open spaces, which is unfortunate given their
often stunning beauty. Cherrie's Tanagers were a pleasant exception to the
rule. I saw them frequently both during our tours and around the resort.
Common Tody-Flycatcher
The striking pale eye on a dark face is distinctive, making this one of the
few easily identified flycatchers.
Green Honeycreeper
If you've been following along closely, the above bird might look familiar to
you.
I
photographed one in better detail at the Biodome a few years ago. Since
this was my first wild sighting, it was a lifer. There are three types of
honeycreepers in Costa Rica, all of whom specialize in drinking nectar.
Variegated Squirrel
These squirrels vary widely in color and pattern, thus the name. I found this
one particularly handsome.
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Naranjito and Esquipulas with Johan Chaves (part 1)
April 10th, 2014
Thursday was our first tour with Johan: a forested area called Esquipulas in
the morning, then El Rey wetlands in the afternoon. In early morning, we made
a stop in a suburban part of Naranjito that Johan knew to be good for birds.
There we soon hit paydirt with a gorgeous Fiery-Billed Aracari!
This is the smaller and more vividly colored of Pacific Costa Rica's two
species of toucans. It's also the only one that ever came close enough for
good pictures. Amusingly, according to him, the locals at Naranjito assume
that Johan is a real estate agent. They can't figure any other reason why he
would be taking people around their neighborhood and pointing at things.
"I remember my clients by what their favorite bird was," Johan said. "When I
think of you, I'll think of Masked Tityra." I liked the tityras mainly because
of the weird, buzzy sound they made. They're colloquially known as "pig birds"
because
it sounds like they're
going "oink oink."
A Chestnut-Backed Antbird: one of a large family of tropical birds who follow
army ant swarms. As thousands of ants rampage through the forest floor,
insects and other small critters leave cover to flee in a panic. Antbirds then
swoop down and pick off whatever the ants miss. Some antbirds make their
entire living this way; the Chestnut-Backed is more of a casual opportunist. I
was on my own when I first found and identified the species, as one crept
through the underbrush alongside an Orange-Billed Sparrow (also a lifer.)
Johan got this one to stop creeping and come out for a glamour shot by playing
back a recording of its call.
Violet-Headed Hummingbird. She was nesting just a few feet over a small
stream.
(Continued in next post)
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Close Enough To An Elephant
April 7th, 2014
You might be alarmed to see this little egret so close to a huge (and active)
tractor. But not only is he not in any danger, the tractor is the whole reason
he's there.
These are
Cattle
Egrets. They're found in North America too, though I've nowhere seen them
so abundant as in Costa Rica. If you've ever watched an African nature
documentary and seen a bunch of delicate-looking white birds picking around
amidst elephants or wildebeests, nimbly evading their crushing footsteps--
or even hitching a
ride on their backs--these are they. Cattle Egrets evolved to follow large
grazing mammals and scoop up the insects disturbed by their foraging.
Originating in the old world, they naturally colonized the Americas in the
20th century, learning to forage alongside domestic cattle.
In this case, the egrets decided that a tractor was close enough in effect to
"large grazing mammal"! Nearly every day I could find a flock of them
following behind it.
In addition to stirring up food, it also liberated some bits of nesting
material for them.
Perched in the resort's backyard. It wasn't unusual to find them there.
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High Alert
April 5th, 2014
An estuary ran alongside our resort. At low tide you could walk out on the mud
and explore. I saw various types of herons and shorebirds there, many of them
familiar to me from my vacations to the Outer Banks. But an exciting new bird
was Northern Jacana. This handsome, extraordinarily long-toed wader was very
common; I could always find at least one of them foraging by the dock at any
time of day. They were skittish though. I had to approach slowly and quietly
to win their trust (and failed to win it more often than not.)
One of my best photo ops occurred one day when a grackle across the estuary
made a piercing alarm call--the kind of alarm call that means "raptor!" The
nearby jacana immediately stood up as high as he could and looked in all
directions. The possible flying danger was a bigger concern than little ol'
me, so I was able to approach closely.
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Photo by Michael Britton
The estuary at low(-ish) tide. You can actually see a jacana in this picture
too if you look realllly carefully!
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Boating the Mangroves (part 2)
April 2nd, 2014
A few more pictures from the boat tour.
This Groove-Billed Ani, believe it or not, was photographed from a brief
glimpse in a moving boat. (He looks like he was posing just so, and how I
ended up with those background colors in an environment that was mainly mud
and mangroves, I have no idea!) Anis, beloved of crossword constructors
everywhere (they're usually clued as "black birds"), are a type of cuckoo.
They nest communally and are typically seen in groups. No one seems to know
why these primarily insectivorous birds have such large and unusual bills.
My first Green Kingfisher. A very common inhabitant of the mangrove swamps.
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Boating the Mangroves (part 1)
March 31st, 2014
On Monday we went for a boat tour in the mangroves. The star attraction, of
course, was the White-Faced Capuchin monkeys. This bold and intelligent
species is numerous in Costa Rica and, because of its fearless nature, easily
coaxed into close contact with people. A similar tour was the high point of my
honeymoon fifteen years ago. I loved watching the monkeys come right into the
boat, interact with us and mooch bananas. But I'm a different person now than
I was then. This time around, I found I was turned off by the circus-animal
approach to things. These creatures have a fascinating world of their own.
Their world matters, with or without humans in it.
So I preferred to photograph the monkeys who were at a distance from us,
engaging in more natural behaviors. Of course having a telephoto lens makes
that a lot easier!
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This guy was flycatching. I never knew monkeys did that.
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