Solimar Siesta: Birding Costa Rica

This is a picture of people having fun on the patio at Hacienda Solimar. I think we were waiting for lunch. A pleasant prospect, as all the food on the trip was delicious, fresh and abundant. We're relaxing. Not having to think about much of anything except moving from one awesome sight to the next. What a blast! That's the goal on these Costa Rica and South Africa trips I co-lead. Figure out a route, great places to go, great places to stay; (That's Main Guide Mario and Debbie from Holbrook Travel and our terrific driver Jimmy's genius); get people there and let Amazing Mother Nature do the rest. Dart around and direct attention, Vanna White style, to this and that and the other. (Zick's job). And oh, does Mother Nature come through for us.

Guanacaste is Costa Rica's cowboy country. It's comparatively dry, hot and scrubby, with low forest. That makes it easy to see birds and animals. This Harris' hawk looked at home against a brilliant blue sky. Mario took this shot for me out the bus window. 

Southern lapwings run around on stilty legs. What a beautiful bird! This one is checking for peregrines, I'm sure. 

A beautiful male green kingfisher was making a sound like two marbles clicking together for several minutes before any of us spotted him against the bank, just a pebble's throw away. 

A white-necked puffbird, a bulky giant-beaked Coraciiforme, sort of like a landbound kingfisher, subdues an enormous grasshopper. It masticated the insect for awhile, then gulped it down.

A pair of orange-fronted parakeets were sitting nervously beneath their nest, which was excavated in an enormous termite colony mound.  You can just see one of them directly beneath the black nest, framed in a rectangle of heavy limbs. The termite nest is made of frass, which the termites produce when they eat wood. When a parrot or trogon burrows into the nest, the termites simply wall off the birds' newly excavated nest chamber and go about their business. Nobody gets upset. It's pretty cool.

I witnessed an interesting phenomenon in this pair. Here they are, not displaying. Eyes dark, right? Maybe a dark-medium gray. 

Het up by our presence, they began displaying to each other. Look at their eyes now.  Probably best to click on the photo to see it well, and sharp. Suddenly their irides look white. Anyone who has lived with a parrot or macaw knows this look. It's when you're about to get bitten. When Charlie did it, I used to call it "pinning her eyes," or "pupils pinned." The pupil contracts down to a small dot, and the smaller that dot, the more likely I was to get bitten. It's a pretty dramatic difference in the appearance of the bird, isn't it?

It was hard to leave Solimar, so abundant and impressive was its avifauna. But we had to press on toward Villa Lapas, our lodge, one of my favorite places to stay. There, we are immersed in wildlife, can't get away from it. The landscaped grounds and nearby riverine forest are a strong attractant to all life forms. 

On the way, we saw a great gathering of birds at Caldera Bay. We pulled over and beheld more black terns than I've ever seen in my life, or ever expect to see going forward. And I've been on the North Dakota prairies, where they breed, for a week at a time for 12 Junes. But this was something else again. Black terns littered the beach, and floated like mosquitoes over the bay. It was stunning, astonishing. These are two halves of a panorama. I got tired of counting the preening flock when I got around 800. It hit me that there is so much yet to be learned about migration. Is this gathering of black terns in Caldera Bay in late February a known thing? How would one find out? And to think they're headed for prairie potholes in the Great Plains and Canada. It's humbling. Every darn one of them was preening, their heads and bills busy and moving. 

I can't convey the cloud of black terns the seethed over Caldera Bay with this photo, taken Feb. 24, 2016. Just trust me on this...there were thousands of black terns here. What a rush! 

You never know all that's going on with birds. Not even a particle of it. That's why traveling along the migratory route of "our" birds and seeing them on their wintering grounds is such a rush for me. It's as if I'm getting a privileged glimpse into their private lives.

More Birding Estero Llano

As luck would have it, the Saturday field trip I was helping to lead went to Estero Llano Grande again. That's fine with me. I'd go there every day and be perfectly happy.

Who wouldn't be, with Harris' hawks perched overhead and rasping? This is North America's only social hawk. They hunt cooperatively, winged wolves; one of them driving the prey out into the open and another one or two snatching the hapless thing. So when you see one Harris' hawk, you often see a couple more.

Dawn clouds scudded in an already quickening breeze.

We had a whole charter busload of birders and Estero Llano did not disappoint. I was honored to co-lead with Dave Irons, Shawneen Finnegan and George Armistead. I love these people who love birds. Here's handsome George, pointing stuff out. His ornithologist/librarian/bibliophile father Harry reviewed The Bluebird Effect for Library Journal. Was mostly kind. George, Bill, Jeff Gordon and I worked together on Identify Yourself, as well. What fun to be in the field! The Rio Grande Valley Festival was a homecoming.

Estero Llano is a good place for birds and birders. You may recognize this name (Benton Basham) as an influential early member of the American Birding Association and holder of a North American Big Year listing record of 710 species for quite some time. He's an anesthesiologist who also catalogues butterflies (the logical next step when you run out of birds). His US life list hovers around 868 species. You'd kind of have to have a good day job to do that.

Nearby, a curve-billed thrasher took the sun in a brushpile.

A Teleos longtail, one of the tropical longtail skippers Basham probably sees every day.

Feeders at Estero Llano attract many birds, like this great kiskadee, whose lusty EAT your BEANS call brightens the already sunny days.

Sigh. My best photo of a green jay. I'd forgotten how electric, how elusive they can be. Flashes of neon, raspy calls, then they move on. Makes me love my comparatively phlegmatic but no less flashy blue jays all the more.

Now this is another thing we don't have: green kingfishers. Ohh beautiful bird.

Caught a fish, she did (you can tell it's a girl by her rusty bra).

And swallered it down.

 There's one of those fabulous great kiskadees again. That's a flycatcher what am a flycatcher. Doubt he bothers with flies, probably more into the dragonfly/grasshopper/katydid thing with a bill like that.

Devilishly difficult to photograph a ladder-backed woodpecker, which is the ecological equivalent of the downy in South Texas. They're always on the other side of the limb, tapping away.

A lovely flight of long-billed curlews goes over, reminding me yet again that I'm not in Ohio.

and a mottled duck drops into the lagoon.

The unlikely star of the show was a northern beardless tyrannulet, a tropical flycatcher much sought after in South Texas. Dave Irons knew just where he'd be, trilling dryly. I remembered beardless tyrannulets from the Brasilian Amazon, remembered their call. Amazing, to have that memory sift up through my much-used gray matter.

Liam's paraque was in exactly the same spot she was two days ago, but this time she was looking at us with eyes in the back of her head. I've got those too. Ask Liam. (He really thought I did have them for the longest time; he used to sort through my hair to find them. How else could I know what he was doing behind my back?)

I love this shot! The bird is facing away. I'm still trying to figure out why the paraque would roost just inches off the trail and put up with being awakened dozens of times each day by gawking birders. What is it about that exact spot that makes it worthwhile for the bird to stay there? File under Things I'll Never Understand But am Thankful For.

I didn't expect to come away from a bird festival in Texas with a vision straight out of the wild blue sky of North Dakota. White pelicans wheel over Estero Llano, and I found myself wondering if I'd look up smiling next June during our Prairie Ramble and draw in my breath at the same bird circling near Chase Lake.

You never know who you'll run into at a birding festival.