Along a River Green

For St. Patrick's day, I'm going to take you down a lovely green Costa Rican river. One of the most relaxing and fun things we did was our afternoon cruise on the Rio Sarapiqui. Just sit back and look for birds. We could do that! 

On the way we saw banana plantation workers lined up at the bank to get their money. Mario said they are waiting to cash their checks. They want to see the money, he said. 

Perhaps to spend some at 

El Palacio.

To buy some breadfruit--something I'd love to try someday.

Breadfruit trees are amazing, with huge lobed leaves and a rounded form. I understand it's edible at all stages, but fairly soft when ripe. It's roasted, boiled, or fried, and used in place of potatoes, so it's starchy. Not sweet.

I would like to taste it someday.

Soon we made it to the boat, and our cruise started. There was a foot belonging to someone napping at the dock. Seemed like the thing to do to document that.

 Our pilot was Esteban.

I'd seen so many anhingas in Florida in January I felt I was seeing an old friend.

Another familiar outline--this a Neotropic cormorant, a more gracile relative of the double-crested we know so well. 

But this young bare-throated tiger heron was a nice surprise. So well hidden and fierce! Tiger herons get their name from the striking barred plumage of the immatures. They generally don quieter pinstripes for adulthood.

A bay wren popped out for a glimmering second. What a beautiful color. So many tropical passerines are that rich, rusty red brown, but the bay wren is the prettiest brown of all.

More studies in brown and green...a pair of broad-billed motmots were hanging out near a bank where they may have been excavating a nest. They dig enormous holes with bills and their tiny feet, kicking the dirt out, kingfisher-style.

Glorious birds, with surprising turquoise on their throats. 

They looked like they had little bow ties on. Motmots are Coraciiformes, related to kingfishers.

 The little racquet-tips on their tails are fetching. The barbules around the tail tips are weak and the motmots preen them away to reveal the racquets. It's not given to us to know their function. Maybe chust for nice.

Speaking of nice: Long-nosed bats on a riverside tree. Love them! And these were the only species of bat we were lucky enough to see this year.

They utterly vanish if you don't know to look for them on their exposed daytime roosts. There are at least seven in the lower photo.

Massive root systems, clinging to an undercut bank.

A lone spectacled caiman. I remembered when I was a kid and some of my friends had tiny stunted baby caimans in tanks. We all thought they only got about a foot long. We were actually bonsai training them with poor nutrition and husbandry. I saw an 11-foot black caiman in Guyana. 

Some guys, fishing. I love shooting wildlife on the river. 

 An Amazon kingfisher was fishing, too

 alongside his smaller, rounder cousin, a green kingfisher. I love the oily viridian of their backs.

Another boat much like ours passed

and I wondered if they'd been lucky enough to spot a female slaty-tailed trogon, my favorite plumage of my favorite trogon.

I don't know who dipped a charcoal-gray bird in red paint, but I'm glad they did. Trogons are probably the most fun bird to draw from life because they sit so patiently, slowly turning their heads, looking at everything as if they're seeing it for the first time. They seem a bit dopey, but they're actually foraging, examining the leaves around them with keen eyes. When they sally out in a flurry of red, yellow, orange, blue, or green, snatch a huge katydid and return to the perch to bash it into pulp, you know they aren't just daydreaming up their on their branches. It's never good to assume anything about birds until you get to know them.

Sarapiqui River Morning

A morning trip on the Rio Sarapiqui into La Selva Biological Reserve was just the tonic we needed.

And it was off to a good start, with a colony of long-nosed bats clinging to the underside of the dock!

Right off the bat, I'm happy. These little characters roost in fairly conspicuous places, often in charming vee patterns. I've seen them in Guyana, clinging in staggered lines to vertical palm trunks near the water. Right out in the open, but looking like marks on the bark. The outflung wings are characteristic--quite a different roosting position than most bats. I marvel that they can cling perfectly upside down on concrete. It makes me wonder if there is some suction capability in their feet, in addition to sharp claws. Everything about bats amazes me.

A closer look reveals mouselike faces and a fabulous fiddle-shaped pattern on their backs.

I don't know why some bats are so ornate, but I'm thankful for it. Sorry for the lousy photo--it was the best I could do in the dark and distance.

Sunlight flooded the river, and there was an endless parade of life forms to admire. 

Drinking from Mom, while she's drinking. This reminded me of the days nursing my kids when I'd fill up a quart jug of water and have it drunk down by the time they were done. I felt like some kind of vending machine, turning all that water and food into milk. That's a pretty incredible thing to ask one's body to do, and it fascinated me, getting in touch with my mammalian heritage.

Green iguanas perched high in the trees, always a jolt of surprise to see a lizard in a tree...

or scurrying along the bank. This is a lovely youngun'. They get a bit less gaily marked as they age.

A noble-looking black river turtle watched us slide by.

This female anhinga turned jerkily as we passed, giving us every possible angle for our cameras and making us all giggle.

Here. How about this side? Like this angle?

A green heron stalked the shallows. Whether I see it in a West Virginia backwater or a Costa Rican river, it always delights me with its subtle combination of rust, maroon and oiled verdigris.

The same goes for the wintering spotted sandpipers, constant companions on the Muskingum and the Sarapiqui alike. Who knows. This bird may come back to nest in Ohio.

But this one won't--a long-tailed tyrant! Now those, we don't have. That's a mighty fancy flycatcher, perching out in the open on a river snag, waiting for a hapless insect to fly by.

And here's the bird that caused such a stir at last November's Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival--the Amazon kingfisher. My friend Jeff Bouton, a rep for Leica, found it, and all hell broke loose in the birding community. This one seems unaware that, if it only flew a couple thousand miles north, it could be a star. Egad, what a face. Give it some skin-stretched wings, and you've got a bitchin' pterodactyl.