Estero Lllano Grande: A Feast for the Eyes

 Blue-winged teal, drake in flight. Ahhhhh. That's such a singular blue on those lesser wing coverts. And I always forget that they have a brilliant green speculum, so taken with their shoulders am I. Frozen in flight by my Canon 7D, with its 70-300 IS L series lens. The rig of my dreams.

I was already getting tired of winter. Ohio has turned almost gray, with heavy rains and winds ripping the leaves off the trees. So it was a delight to come down to south Texas for the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival, to bake our blanched bodies in warm sun, to feel the tropical breeze, which rapidly became a warm tropical gale.

Our first stop was Estero Llano Grande. It was Liam's birthday, and we wanted to spend the whole day together doing something we like to do. Birding. Butterflying. Paraqueing.

A Teleus longtail on Eupatorium (closely related to my lovely mistflower).

A clouded skipper. I think. Texas butterflies are a tad tricky for me. Mexican stuff, tropical stuff, stuff I never see. Makes it even more fun.

Bougainvillea. I miss my bougainvilleas. Had them in the greenhouse for years. They finally got too ungainly and sparse. Maybe this year. If we ever get the greenhouse done...we're looking at Saturday for our next series of roadblocks and heartbreaks. Or maybe even completion. This project has made a hardened pessimist of me.

White peacocks were everywhere.

Nothing subtle about this one--the  guava skipper, an uncommon to rare (even in So. TX) tropical species that's dependent on plantings of guava for egglaying and caterpillar rearing. Wow. Look at that helmet.

The orange headlights are a nice touch, as are the blue striations on thorax and inner forewing.

It was a difficult bug to photograph, because it liked to hang upside down. I like this one. It looks like a guy in a butterfly suit.

We smiled at the clambering antics of plain chachalacas, the U.S.'s only member of the cracid family. It's a guan. I still can't believe we have a native guan. How cool.

Though they bear a superficial resemblance to grouse, turkeys and chickens, they aren't galliformes. They're something much more primitive, stranger. Perhaps a very early (as in Cretaceous) proto-galliform.

When I saw a horned guan atop Volcan Atitlan, I knew I had seen something primitive, something elemental, something irreplaceable.
Noisy as they are, chachas are beloved by Texans.

Om nom on the orange.

A Cooper's hawk wished for an unwary chachalaca, green jay or dove.

One of my very favorite photos of the trip: a mottled duck in flight. Egad, look at that speculum. Note that it lacks the conspicuous white trailing edge to the speculum that mallards show. Though it superficially resembles a black duck or female mallard, the mottled duck is a separate species, Anas fulvigula, distinguished by a highly contrasting pale head and neck. Sexes are alike. This bird doesn't migrate; it's a subtropical resident in Florida and Texas. And boy, is it beautiful in flight.

I guess the highlight of the day, and the trip, was the moment that Bill jokingly offered the kids $50 to spot a paraque (easier said than done). This tropical nightjar is extremely well-camouflaged on the forest floor, where it rests all day after a night of moth catching. Within seconds, Liam pointed at his feet. "There's one." And within five minutes, Phoebe had one located in the woods. Holy cow. Harnessing the power of kid eyes. We were very, very proud of our youngun's. No biggie, right Liam?

Phoebe has been genuinely bitten by the birding mosquito, and if his dedication to cross-country (another of Phoebe's passions) is any indication, Liam will likely follow suit. She's all ate up about birding. Shh. Don't tell her how thrilled we are.

Liam clocks out now and then. Every brand-new 13 year old gets to clock out when he needs to. Especially on his birfday.

Phoebe's paraque.

And Liam's. We'd never have seen them but for the kids.

All hail Estero Llano Grande. What a place, what a beautiful place it is. It was so wonderful to be together as a family on this special day. Wearing shorts and feeling the warm wind lift the hairs on our arms. Mmm.

The Figs of Tikal

Me and my baby atop a temple in the Grand Plaza of Tikal, Guatemala. Photo by Jeff "El Jefe" Gordon. It's sweaty up there. Soundtrack: screeching red-lored Amazon parrots and burbling Montezuma oropendolas. Blurp-blurp-blooooeeeeepppkkksksksk!

In the tropics, one fruiting tree can make all the difference in your birdwatching experience. A lovely fig tree in the Grand Plaza is dripping with fruit, and hordes of birds are taking advantage. Tikal is one of the few places on earth where you can watch big, tasty birds like crested guans, curassows, and ocellated turkeys. They aren’t molested, and more importantly, they aren’t extirpated in parks like Tikal and Chan Chich in Belize. I spent six solid months in Amazonian Brasil, and never saw a wild cracid (the family name for the chachalacas, guans and curassows). Here, they’re present, and they are unafraid, a very unusual thing to be when you live in Latin America and are big enough to be edible. Oh, what a delight. I looove these birds, love to draw them as they clamber around in the fig tree, plucking fruit. They have a polished greenish patina on their feathers that reminds me of bronze. Not to mention their slate-blue facial skin and screaming red wattles. Here's a crested guan in flight, temple ruin behind. Yeah. Guan in flight. Happens every day in Ohio.Bill, Jeff and I set up on the flank of a temple at eye-level with the fruiting fig. It's not often you're at eye-level with a crested guan...
or a Montezuma oropendola. These amazing members of the oriole and blackbird family build enormous hanging nests, five to eight feet long. They're almost ridiculously loud, bold, and bizarre. Highly recommended.
Surreal, this, posting from Coban, Guatemala, telling you about the wonderful birds in this gorgeous little country even as I'm experiencing them. The Internet continues to delight and amaze me. Too soon, we'll be heading home. Bill and I are slated to play music on Friday night, February 23, for the opening reception of the Ohio Ornithological Symposium to be held at Hueston Woods near Oxford, Ohio. It's the OOS Owl Symposium. I'll be speaking on Saturday, Feburary 24, along with the incomparable Denver Holt of the Owl Institute. Bill and I will help lead field trips on Sunday. Yeah, we'll be fried crispy--racing home Thursday morning, driving across the state with kids and Chet on Friday. Yes, Puppy Supreme will be making an informal appearance at the Owl Symposium. Check it out! Hasta luego!