Getting My Doolittle On: La Ensenada, Costa Rica

 Amazingly, I'm blogging from Costa Rica. I know, never happens. But I was fresh out of one-eyed deer and I have fast Net at Villa Lapas and hey why not. It's what's in front of me, and it's awesome!
I have the loveliest group this year (well, they're all lovely). But ohh these folks, so wonderful to be in the woods together.

A saman tree. Also known as a Raintree, this enormous acacia-like tree (Albizia saman) spreads four times wider than it grows tall. It's native from Mexico to Brasil, but has been widely distributed around the world.  I looked at the ring of cabinas sheltering under its canopy (I was in #2, which must've been the Presidential Cabin because there were three beds!) and wondered who'd had the foresight to plant this thing in the middle of them, and how they knew the way it would define the entire space. And how long ago that might have been. One in Venezuela is a national treasure, and is thought to be more than 500 years old, having been described by Alexander von Humboldt around 1800--and it was old then!!

The view from beneath, out my cabin door. I had to set my phone to Panorama to capture it.

You could lead an entire trip to Costa Rica just focusing on its

amazing trees. Any one of the hundreds of trees we've seen here could be a tourist attraction in the US. Mario says it's called Raintree because cicadas live in it and piss down liquid. He says sometimes it's still green beneath a raintree when everything else has dried completely up. Good to know, about the cicada pee, I'd think. Or maybe not. Maybe better to think it makes its own weather, no?

So La Ensenada has an open-air dining room as do most eco-lodges we frequent, and there are white-throated magpie jays freely stealing stuff off plates and out of bread baskets. It's very amusing, at least to American tourists; less so to the staff I'm sure.  See jay, second plate from front.

Blue jays on steroids...crows in leisure suits. WTMJ's are pretty darned cool birds, smart and bold and opportunistic to a fault.  Big as a magpie and twice as purty. I believe this to be an immature.

It posed prettily for me when I imitated its scraping chuckles. Here, we're talking up a blue and white storm. Rawwk! Oop! dok dok dok! I'm getting my Doolittle on on this trip.

Ol Mr. Bluejay, in them baseball clothes of his

Struttin' 'round the premesis...

Gotta love the head doo-dads. What a bird!

Meanwhile, down by the pool, SIX black-headed trogons were feasting on figs.

Here, a female gags one down whole. She'll choke up the pit somewhere else, maybe plant another tree. 

I was just trying to get a photo of one black-headed trogon eating a fig when five more swooped in.

File under: Costa Rica problems. Durn trogons! Gotta swat 'em away!

And then there are the mantled howlers, waking me up at 3:28 AM. It's OK. I love the sound, like thunder in the treetops. 

I think this is an adult male. Just a hunch.  I made a video of one walking and howling at the same time. So amazing and so funny. I just love observing howlers. 

There are horses on this dude ranch. I made friends with a shy gelding at sunset, scratching his withers and jawbars and brisket. 

Lucy and Jenny M. took pictures of the whole thing. I took one back, of tiny Lucy and big horse.

But my favorite shot from La Ensenada was the theft of a whole slice of soft white farmer cheese by a young magpie jay and its parent. Well, the adult was loading up on scrams. That interface of wildlife and people... I find it irresistible. 

A-Birding from a Balcony

Like I told Bill of the Birds, who felt bad each time he had to leave me to take another birding trip, there are far worse places to be stranded alone than Hotel Via Maya. The balcony made all the difference. And then there was the location--on the edge of a large lagoon patrolled by herons, jacanas, bat falcons; even host to sungrebes, which some were lucky enough to see. For Lynne and Mary: A Guatemalan stinker, lookin' innocent.
Closer by, tropical house wrens burbled and chattered. Zick , following with the telephoto, trying to get a clear twig window through which to shoot. Gotcha! you little sneak.
A magnolia warbler, doubtless beginning to think about the black spruces of its Canadian forest home. Goin' home to see Sara and Kelly.

A black-and-white warbler peers into some rootlets, or perhaps they're hyphae. One never quite knows in the tropics. Maybe there's a spider there he can eat before it jumps out at April.
I'd like to think this American redstart is planning to bring coals to Indigo Hill.
Wood thrush, will you bring your flute to our forest?
Our neighbor cut down all the big trees where you usually nest, but you can come over on our land.
Pretty bug, you can stay right here in Guatemala.
In the afternoons, a soft, accelerating whoop, ending in a growl, would sound from the trees off my balcony. I'd struggle up out of bed, knowing that this is the call of the black-headed trogon. Oh, so worth getting out of bed to see, I finally got a passable picture of him. He's 11" long--quite a bird, with his ice-blue eye ring, his white-tipped tail, yellow belly and contemplative gaze. A fine thing to see from one's sickbed. Thank you, trogon. Persistant high chirps, sounding like a tiny bird scolding, resolved into the display song of a rufous-tailed hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl). Yes, hummingbirds often sing--our Anna's is a great singer! but not many of us stop to notice the song; it's like the voice of a Who.
His throat puffed, he gives it his all, which, if you're a female tzacatl, is just enough.