A Gift for Don Alvaro

When we arrived, Don Alvaro had just hosted a school group that morning. The macaws were already full of peanuts! He hosts as many as four groups per week now. He said there had been a sudden jump in requests for visits, and he's not sure why. (Could it be the magic that pervades his farm?)

I became worried that my blogposts might have been part of the reason for the uptick in attention. I'm not sure it is, but this is exposure of a kind he hasn't had before. I asked him if it was becoming too much for him. He said it wasn't a problem (yet).  But his first thought is what is best for the macaws. The modest fees he takes for hosting school and other groups go to making nest boxes, and a bigger jaguar enclosure, coming soon. He's making a road now, and a pond in a low pasture for wild birds. Beyond that flows the river where the sunbittern sings. All this, and a sunbittern hopping from rock to rock just below the finca...the magic never stops.

So thanks to your generous response to my appeal, we had a very nice gift ($1,000) for Don Alvaro, and I'd written him a letter, which Mario read and translated as he went. We all gathered in the yard while the macaws dangled and played and the great curassow hen chased Jimmy our bus driver all over the place behind us while the "ceremony" was going on. I couldn't see that happening, but my group was all stifling laughter even as they tried to be respectful and solemn. The joy kept bursting out.

 These photos by Bonnie Bowen

 Jimmy wasn't wild about having a turkey-sized bird pecking at his calves. Who would be?

 Go chase somebody else, you durn bird!

But it's YOU I want. I like your shoes.

Mario translates my letter to Don Alvaro. Goofy scarlet macaw twirls and shows off.

Dear Don Alvaro:

  It is a great pleasure to see you again this year. Our group’s visit to your  beautiful sanctuary was the highlight of my trip last year. When I got home, I posted photos and a story on my blog about your work with macaws. It captured the imagination of my readers, and several of them asked if they might make a gift to you, so that you may continue to rescue macaws and return them to the sky. 

  So in January I posted some more photos of you with your macaws. And I offered to bring you a gift when I returned in February 2015. I was overwhelmed by the response from readers. You have touched their hearts.

  For 23 years, I had a macaw, named Charlie. She was a chestnut-fronted macaw, Ara severa. Although she was captive-bred and we loved each other, she was always wild at heart. I spent as much time with her as I could, but it wasn’t enough. She plucked her feathers, more every year. As the years went by I realized how wrong it is to cage a macaw. We built a special glass room for her, so she wouldn’t have to live in a cage. But that wasn’t enough, either. In my travels, whenever I would see wild parrots and macaws, it made me cry to see how happy they were in a flock, flying free. When Charlie died in 2010, I knew I would never again be able to own a parrot.

This is the only way to keep macaws: free. To take them from solitary confinement and return them to the society of other macaws, to set them free, is to give a gift to them and to the world. It is a lot of work to keep one macaw happy. I can’t imagine having 19 (and now 30!) to satisfy. Thank you for all you do to help these birds. Please accept this gift as a token of our respect and gratitude.

And the letter is signed with the names of everyone who so generously donated to Don Alvaro, that he may continue to show people how these magnificent birds were meant to live: free, in pairs and flocks, tussling and fighting and laughing and mating and --most of all-- flying.

On the evening after these photos were taken, Don Alvaro came to Selva Verde, where we were staying, to thank me personally for your gift. Because he is a self-effacing and humble man, he did not look in the envelope I handed him. When he finally did, he got in his truck and drove over. He said nobody had ever done anything like that for him. He was very grateful. He talked for a long time, in incredibly rapid-fire Spanish, and Mario interpreted for me. I scribbled down what he was saying as fast as I could, but I know I missed a lot.

Back to our visit that day...Don Alvaro had  a surprise for me, too. When we pulled up, the water buffalo I'd admired so last year was tied up to a tree, wearing a saddle. 

I became a little suspicious...

Here, he said. You ride him!

Aaaack! OK! Here we go! I'll do anything once.

 My soas muscles will never be the same.

As you could see in the video above, Don Alvaro has more than a little showman in him. When he vaulted up behind me I about died  and fell off the buffalo from laughing. I still hoot every time I see these photos. Oh Lord. I can't unsee that.

But this...this I want to see in my mind's eye forever.

A special thank you to reader and great soul Jeff Ferguson, who planted the idea for this litte fundraiser in my head after my Don Alvaro posts in 2014. With a book deadline that started in April and stretched through mid-July, it's taken me far too long to catch up and gather all the photos and information I needed to write these posts, and I thank you all for your patience and your generosity. 

Don Alvaro was truly moved, and so were we all. And yes, he smiled!

Macaw Rescue: Don Alvaro's Story

 We were here on a mission of sorts. Before I left for Costa Rica in the third week of February, 2015, I put out an appeal to you, my dear and faithful readers, for donations to help Don Alvaro and his work with macaws (and people). Having kept just one small macaw for 23 years, in the manner to which she'd become accustomed, I know how expensive it is.

A lucky pair: yellow-naped and red-lored Amazons enjoying a peanut snack.

A pair of scarlet macaws fooling around. WRRRAAAAWWWK!! AAAWWWK!!

 I have been intensely curious about how Don Alvaro came to have all these macaws, and I finally had a chance to speak with him at length, with Mario as interpreter. What I'm about to tell you is from that conversation.

It all started 25 years ago with four macaws his father had owned, and four more given to him from confiscations by the Ministry of Environment.

Lucky macaws, to land here, where they would be allowed to fly free through appropriate habitat and even breed! Forty macaws have fledged from his nest boxes in that period, of which 30 now fly free around his farm. He has eight nest boxes, barrels that he mounts high in the trees and fills with balsa wood for them to "excavate." Macaws like to nest high in mountain almond trees with broken branch stubs that make enormous cavities. Those huge trees stand alone, like sentinels, and there are not nearly enough of them to serve as nest trees now.

Don Alvaro "keeps" two species at his finca, the scarlet and the great green macaw.

Both are native to Costa Rica, but severely endangered by loss of habitat. Most of his birds are paired with species-appropriate mates, and they're duly producing purebred offspring.

He has one pair consisting of a scarlet male and great green female. And there's a story in that. The scarlet was mated for years to a very fertile scarlet hen, who produced a number of broods, but sadly, she died when she hit a powerline. Her widowed mate now sneaks matings with a fertile female great green, who has been paired for years with an infertile male great green. This hen laid infertile eggs for years until she started consorting in secret with the widowed male scarlet. (She still goes everywhere with her infertile great green mate, but come nesting time she kicks him out, mates with the scarlet widower, and finally gets to raise babies.) This great green hen now produces hybrid young, and there's not much Don Alvaro can do about it, because love amongst free-flying macaws is a complicated thing.

Three hybrid babies with their great green mama (second from right) and their scarlet daddy (far right). They're so pretty, but we hope and trust they're sterile!

A hybrid scarlet x great green macaw in flight:

Don Alvaro is pretty sure the hybrids are sterile, and won't compromise the gene pool of the purebred birds.

A great green macaw, with scarlets behind.

When people come to see the macaws, he calls them in with peanuts. Lapa lapa lapa lapa lapa! he calls.

He knows how to set up a photo op, watching the light and telling us where to stand for the best angle. In this video, you can get a feel for the energy and presence of this remarkable man. He is so utterly in tune with animals and birds, and the evidence of that harmony is all around.

Next, we present the gift.

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.

Animal Brigadoon

It's a magical place, Costa Rica, so colorful and lush, popping with life and flowers, birds and insects. It brings the winter-dulled senses back to life. Going there in dreary February is like drinking an elixir that wakes you and makes you feel that everything is possible again.

We were headed back to Don Alvaro's finca in February 2015 to show it to some lucky travelers, and to bring him a gift. Your gift. 

The groovy anis waved hello, looking fine by some roadside cannas.

We took a narrow, muddy back road cut-through and almost knocked a white hawk off its eye-level perch. That bird hadn't gotten the memo that white hawks are always a dot in a scope in a distant tree, many hundreds of yards from eager birders. It was completely happy to let us ogle it, get out of the bus, and commit it to our many respective digital recording devices. It had lizards on its mind.

Our guide Mario Cordoba had first brought me (and some of the present crew, repeat offenders on my second trip to Costa Rica) to Don Alvaro's place in 2013, and what I saw and felt there left a deep impression on my psyche.

It was an animal Brigadoon, where there was nothing to fear and everything to trust.

Where a fierce-seeming water buffalo is gentle as a lamb. Yes, he has a ring in his nose, but he's a doll.

Where a donkey named Conejo begs for pineapple, and gets it. I've never met a full-sized donkey you could throw your arms around and smooch on the nose, but Conejo is a great big lovebunny. 

From this most unusual open-air kitchen, attended by creatures great and small, we enjoyed the most delicious meal of our trip, and that's saying a lot.

Fresh pineapple juice? Comida typical, perfectly prepared and seasoned? Yes, please, more more more. We were in Food Animal Heaven.

Of course, I had to share. 

Don Alvaro's is the kind of farm where a great curassow just walks up to you and gently pecks your hand, giving a little moaning call as you tickle its curly crest. 

I like it there, and I'm not alone. 

We were here to take it all in, and to give something back, too. 

And it wasn't going to be peanuts.

I am indebted to my friends Jenny Bowman, Bonnie Bowen, Jenny Minton and Karen Johnson-Nieuwendijk for many of these photos. If I'm in 'em, I didn't take 'em. The mists of time have pulled a cover of forgetfulness over me and I was lax in recording whose photo was whose. They flooded in right after the trip and I was, uh, not paying attention. Please jump in and tell me!!