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!!

Big Day: Sights Along the Way

Liam carries Harry Potter along, just in case it gets dull while we're birding.

We aren't just looking for birds when we go on a Big Day. We look at everything. These handsome horses looked back.


Behind them stood the cutest donkey, whom we didn't even notice until I was done taking horse photos.

About time you took my picture. Notice my eyelashes, and fetching withers markings.

I thought she looked like she needed to pull up her stockings. You know, the kind with the rolled top that only come up to your knees, like my grandma used to wear.

We had a lucky encounter with some shorebirds that, until I got the photo on my screen, I thought were lesser and greater yellowlegs. Only problem: the smaller bird has greenish-gray legs and a prominent eyering, which points to solitary sandpiper. Both lesser yellowlegs and solitary sandpipers were feeding with the greaters that day. I really wanted the two yellowlegs to line up side by side and thought I had the shot, but it's a cool picture, anyway.


In Newport, we stopped to get ice cream at the Jug, home of Jugfest, whatever that is. Happy Mother's Day! Show us your jugs!


Back to the woods--the phoebe nest on a cliff, right across from the Church in the Wildwood.


A closer look showed that it was about to explode, so we backed off. You don't want to get too close to a phoebe nest where you can see faces. They're spooky little things when they get near fledging age, and might fledge prematurely.


My father, now gone since 1994, used to sing "The Little Brown Church in the Vale" when we'd go on car rides. He could sing, but he had no rhythm, and you never knew how many times he was going to sing the word "come" when he sang "Oh, come, come, come, come, come to the church in the wildwood, oh, come to the church in the vale." We'd get so tickled trying to sing along with him, especially my mom, who is a good singer and does have rhythm.




Down along County Road 12 not far from our home, we found The Church in the Wildwood. It has been cleaned up over the past year, and it was nice to see it looking cared for. We like to stop there because there are always yellow warblers and phoebes on the stream bend in front of it.

Dad would have been 97 on June 18. I was the last of five children, and the nurse thought Dad was my grandfather when she came out into the waiting room to tell him I'd been born. He was only 46, but that was considered pretty old at the time to be hanging out in a delivery room waiting area for your child to be born. He'd been out pheasant hunting and was still in his boots and mackinaw. We lived in South Dakota.

I like to stop there because when I look at the church, I can still hear my father singing. Happy birthday, DOD. Wish you could talk to these kids.