Sunbittern Soliloquy

Don Alvaro has macaws living at liberty on and around his farm, and they are the heart and soul of the place. I'll get to them soon. But there is so much more living there!

He walked down to show us where to look for the sunbittern.

On the way, a common tody-flycatcher with its outsized bill and staring yellow eye!

This bird is tiny, smaller than a kinglet. 

A squirrel cuckoo sat in plain sight. I began to wonder if the animals and birds here were all enchanted.

 The sunbittern is kind of a Grail of Costa Rican birds. Not a rail, not a crane, not a duck and not a  bittern, it's a grail.  :) It makes its living along fast-flowing rivers, hopping from boulder to boulder, catching small fish and searching for aquatic insects and crustaceans in little pools.

The sunbittern is about the size of a green heron, but it's not a heron--it's in its own family, the Eurypygidae. It's the only member of the genus Eurypyga. Monotypic genus in a one-species family: rara avis. I was astounded to learn it shows genetic and morphological similarities to the famous kagu of New Caledonia! They are each other's closest living relatives...a long, long way apart. This indicates a "gondwanic origin," according to Wikipedia, which I'm thinking refers to an ancient shared lineage dating back to Gondwanaland, that big ol' blob of continents that later split apart. Holy cow. 

But the sunbittern has a secret. 

One that it keeps hidden until it flies, preens or stretches...

Its wings look like those of a giant butterfly! Patterned with two enormous eyespots that, when presented frontally as the bird bows, ought to bedazzle either prospective mate or predator alike.

We huddled down on the riverbank, cameras, scopes and binoculars at the ready, and saw this beautiful bird through four different leisurely bouts of preening and stretching, just aching to catch a glimpse or get a photo of those incredible wings.

The bird was like a fan dancer. It was as if it knew it was tantalizing us, and enjoying it. Perhaps it could hear our gasps over the roar of the river, each time it half-opened a wing. For there is nothing, nothing like the colors on a sunbittern's wing.

We attracted the attention of a couple of adorable boys

who joined us and looked in our scope to see this miraculous bird.

Stretch, and stretch again...

show us your best, here on this tumbling river

in this place where animals have nothing to fear.

Sunbittern Morning

That first morning at Selva Verde, Mario took us out to look for the sunbittern. It was not a long walk--you could hear it singing from the dining room at beautiful Selva Verde in the Caribbean lowlands. This is Mario Cordoba, bird guide extraordinaire, hunting for the sunbittern. I figured you'd need a visual by now.

 Now, who ever gets to see a sunbittern? But Fate smiled on us and soon enough Mario heard its haunting whistle from the river bank. It's a high, slurred, loud whistle, nothing like you'd expect from this grebey, herony looking character. We're used to croaks and grunts from grebes and herons, but this bird is clearly neither. And its song is a magic clarion call in the morning mist. 

Mario gathered us up and we crept quietly toward the sound. Here was this gorgeous little thing, neither bittern nor grebe, heron nor rail, but a sunbittern, in its own family no less, calling away. We peeked through the greenery and there he was, the sun coming through his bill. Singing. Ohhh. I'd never seen a bird anything like this. I'd always wanted to see a sunbittern.

I hunkered down and kept my telephoto lens on the bird. I wanted so badly to get a shot of it in flight, because this bird has unforgettable wings. When it finally took off, I was blocked by vegetation. But I saw a flash of orange, gray, black. Ohh I hated to miss that shot.

The sunbittern poked around in the shallows amidst the river rocks for the better part of two hours, catching little fish and invertebrates and gulping them down.

The snowy spangles on its wings gave just a hint of what splendor lay in their folded length. But we would never see it.

By chance, when I returned from Costa Rica, my Facebook friend Peter Jones had just returned from there, too. And he posted a photo he'd managed to get, of a sunbathing sunbittern. Which he has given me permission to share with you. Make sure you're sitting down...

photo by Peter Jones

It's got the wings of a painted lady. It's an avian butterfly. The sunbittern uses these amazing wings in mating displays and threat displays. The spots on the inner primaries might even represent eyes in a great colorful face when the bird tips forward and presents its wings frontally.  And looking at this incredible shot, I resolved to return, and follow the sunbittern until I saw this. And maybe even got a shot of it. I can dream, right?

Finally it was time for breakfast and we made our way back to the restaurant, an elevated, sort of open-air affair where you can sit on a balcony and watch birds and howler monkeys. 

I was listening for the insect-like, persistent chirping call of the blue jeans frog (another poison dart frog) and managed to zero in on this little fella under a leaf. Oh Oh Oh Oh. So tiny, so precious, so well attired. With his throat puffed in song. That's two beautiful creatures I've seen in song before breakfast. It was going to be a wonderful day. 

While dining, I felt around for my iPhone and realized I had dropped it. No mystery where it might be...I had contorted myself into a million shapes shooting the sunbittern from a high spot on the rocky river bank. I ran full-tilt back to find it, tripping on a conveniently placed root in the trail and flumping smack down on my right side. I twisted in space to land on that side, and let my body take the impact for my camera. 

Which flew up and hit me hard near my left knee, leaving a spectacular purple bruise that remains to this day. But the camera was OK. And so was I. I'm so glad I can still fall that hard and come up fine. I realize it will not always be thus. Must remember to slow down. My mom never got the hang of slowing down. Expect I won't either.

I got up, continued on to where I'd dropped my iPhone, and after a brief search found it nestled down amongst the rocks about eight feet below where I'd been perched. Woo. That's a bad fall onto boulders. Wonder if it still works? 

Ivan, (pronounced EE-vohn) who works at the lodge, saw me starting to scramble down the rolly tumbly rock bank and offered to go down there for me. The first boulder he stepped on got loose and bounced twice, right next to my phone. Um, let's not do that again. So he angled off to the side, scrambled down and picked up the (unharmed) phone. Whew! I was so happy.

I completely get why Costa Rica and its warm and lovely people lure so many Americans down to make it their forever home. It's all there, in Ivan's smile, in the morning song of the sunbittern.