Lazy birdwatching, Adirondack chair style

     In my last post, you read about my aspen grove and my Adirondack chairs. To remind you of the scene, hear is one of those photos reproduced.

   

      This year while working on my fairy garden, every now and then I decided I wanted a rest. I would be sitting in the Adirondack and I would hear a bird. As the spring progressed, I heard and saw more and more birds as the warblers came through. I learned that when I went out there to garden, I should take along my binoculars and my bird book. What a wonderful way to birdwatch. A very lazy way but a very comfortable way. If you know a little about birdwatching, you may know that warblers are colorful little birds that are in constant motion through the trees, catching insects. So if I see a fluttering of movement through the trees, especially before they have leafed out it is almost certainly a warbler. The only exception to that rule is so-called pseudowarblers. Those are the chickadees because they do a lot of quick fluttering from branch to branch as well. But they almost always sing, chickadee dee dee while they flutter. This year I identified the following warblers come through while just sitting with my head back in my Adirondack looking through my binoculars. Sometimes they came so close with my phishing, that I didn't even need my binoculars.

     Black and white warbler, black throated blue warbler, magnolia warbler, yellow rumped or "myrtle" warbler (very common), Canada warbler, chestnut sided warbler, pine warbler, yellow warbler, palm warbler, Tennessee warbler, Nashville warbler, common yellowthroat and the ovenbird. Other years when I have walked around my property birdwatching, not just sat in one place, I have also seen the blackburnian warbler, and the bay breasted warbler. And on local bird watching walks, I have seen a Wilson's warbler.

The following is a very long URLed blog which is however a wonderful site with many photos of some of the birds I have mentioned and will mention in this post. I am not the bird photographer. Most of the previous photographs that I have posted at various times were my husbands photographs. He has not photographed our local birds with the exception of the eagles and the turkeys. Check out this blog for many very nice images and for pages that can be used as a field guide for the warblers.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=1PugFogRtL1JQM&tbnid=fK7ZPx4WHRynmM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.katedolamore.com%2Fblog%2Ftag%2Fwarblers%2F&ei=46W1U8D0CoWpyASvk4DwCg&bvm=bv.70138588,d.aWw&psig=AFQjCNHDH0IUs8X9ZaCQeDNrbWOefadOpQ&ust=1404499757990229


     I also keep track of the birds that nest on my property or on properties immediately adjacent to us. Commonly we have cardinals, robins, wrens in many of my wren houses, catbirds, mourning doves, blue jays, crows, white breasted nuthatches, ruby throated hummingbirds, red winged blackbirds, chickadees, chipping sparrows and song sparrows. We have goldfinches regularly visit our feeders in small flocks, and we see cedar waxwing flocks, but I don't think they nest on our property or adjacently. We have cowbirds at our feeders and I know the female has probably parasitized some other bird's nest here. Usually in this location it is the chipping sparrow that is affected. Down on the Lake Michigan bluff and down on the beach, we have had cliff swallows, great blue herons, mallards, song  and chipping sparrows, as well as common coots nest. Of course, I always have at least one house with tree swallows. They only nest once a summer and they took the bluebird house in the back near the Lake. This year a pair of bluebirds chose a house that our neighbors recently put up. My concern was that it was just nailed to a tree trunk without any kind of predator guard. But I believe they were successful and fledged their young already. A pair has now been considering some of my bluebird houses in front of the house. I don't know if this is the same pair now attempting their second nesting or not. They built a beautiful deep nest in one of the bluebird houses and I was indeed sitting in my adirondack chair watching them. I love to listen to their soft bubbly song that somehow manages to carry long distances. But a wren stuck some sticks in that house on top of the grass bluebird nest and the pair disappeared. Now about 10 days later they are back again and are trying to nest in another nest box which I had cleaned out recently where a wren has already completed a nesting cycle. I hope the male wren now leaves that bluebird nest alone.

     Early in the season, I found a dead chickadee in one of the bluebird boxes. Though a wren could have been the culprit, I blamed the house sparrows. I have accumulated quite a few of them. So early this spring as they were beginning their nests, I began a trapping chore. I managed to catch two males and destroy them. I still have one pair around and they were nesting in my purple martin house. In all the years that we have had that house up, I have not been able to attract purple martins, even with decoy bird figures, and playing their morning song daily. So I decided to let that pair work on their nest and even begin to raise their young. It would keep them busy and out of my other boxes. But then prior to when I thought the young might be ready to fledge, I lowered the purple martin houses and emptied all of them. I will not let house sparrows fledge on my property.

     Over the years we have had red headed woodpeckers nest near our property and the adults brought the young to our feeders. This year two red bellied woodpeckers have been regular visitors to our feeders and I believe they are nesting nearby. I occasionally hear them calling. We have some dead branches on a couple of our tall cottonwood trees and I think they might be up in a hole in one of those snags.

     House finches regularly nest in a light fixture on our back stoop. This year they started that nest very very early and had fledged their young by early May. I didn't have the heart to remove them. But now that they have fledged, I plan to nail that fixture cover back in place. It is kind of messy to have them over our heads as we leave the house through the back door.

     We regularly see Coopers hawks and I have heard commotions in the vicinity of a robins nest along our driveway. I don't think they are nesting on or adjacent to our property but certainly they are in the vicinity. Also we have a pair of red tailed hawks who on East wind days hang in the air over the bluff looking down while in one place in the wind, hunting for rodents on the bluff.  I always investigate when I hear the crows and even other birds making a fuss. Often it is a red tailed hawk perched in a tree. Some years ago such a commotion called my attention to a snowy owl perched on our neighbors patio. One day a couple of weeks ago their was such a hubbub
  of other birds going out back in a cottonwood tree near the corner of our house. I went out to search with my binoculars, and low and behold, there was a peregrine falcon sitting in the tree. Blackbirds and crows were giving it a hard time. I have never seen a peregrine in this area. It sat for some time in our tree just looking around. I went to the Internet and learned that there is a box nest site at UWM which is directly down the lake front from us, though it is about 7 miles away. I read that peregrines do range as far as 12 miles when they are feeding young. The peregrine pair at UWM is monitored and sometimes seen on camera. I would bet that the one in my cottonwood was the female from there, as it was quite a large bird. Female falcons are usually a third bigger than the males. Anyway, that was an exciting bird day at our home. 

       Of course, our bald eagles are still nesting (for the 5th or 6th year) about 7 lots south of us in what is now a Ozaukee-Washington County Conservancy. We see the parents periodically flying along the bluff. Over the years we have seen the young fledgelings taking one of their early flights. It is quite amusing. One year we saw a young one fly over the neighbor's back yard, put down his/her landing gear (legs) to try to land in one of our trees. But then it decided that it wasn't going to make that landing and it put its legs back up. After a couple circles it finally landed on our rail fence. I could envision this young birds thought processes as it lowered and raised its legs until finally it picked a spot it decided it could make. Apparently flight is not such a easy thing for a bird the size of a bald eagle.

     I just checked out the Decorah Eagles. This year's eaglets have fledged of course. They actually fledged already a couple weeks ago. They have had some difficulties this year. It is thought that the bad weather and the rains have been hard on the family. One eaglet was downed with a broken wing and apparently some sort of infection of its tail. Another was found down and captured and examined. It appeared too weak to fly but ate quail at a rehab site where it was taken and soon became strong enough to fly and was fitted with a radio band locator. The experts who monitor the Decorah nest think it has been difficult for Mom and Dad eagle to find food and to find the eaglets in order to feed them due to the weather and flooding. Also gnats were very bad in the area and some consider that perhaps this has led to slightly early fledging of weaker eaglets. Anyway it has been a tough year for us humans and also for the eagles.

Birds of Eastern Africa

     I love to watch birds, and Eastern Africa was a wonderful place to do just that. The birds are absolutely beautiful and they are everywhere. Over the years my birdwatching on all of our trips has turned my husband into an excellent bird photographer. I am thinking of sending some of these photos to birding magazines because I think some of the photos could earn a little money.  I have posted a few of my husband's photos here to just wet your appetite. Remember these photos are copyright protected. I have reduced their pixels for this purpose.  It will take more than one post to show all these nice photos. I am also in the process of counting the lifers that I added on this trip. I have to look through my journal from the trip, also identify all the photos my husband took of birds, and I also need to go through my bird book and remind myself if I forgot to note any bird that I did see down in my journal. My memory is pretty good for the birds I have seen, immediately the day of the sightings. But sometimes I need the bird book to jog my memory when some days have passed from the sighting.



African pied crow: A common bird especially in areas of human habitation, as you can tell from its perch.

 

     The above photo is just to wet your appetite for bird photos. Hit "Read More" and view many more.

More About the Hoopoe!

     I have written about the hoopoe, that is Upupa epops, a distinctive pinkish brown bird with a large crest on its head, a long decurved bill and wonderful checkerboard black and white wings. Please see my post of 1/17/2011. I wrote in some detail about the life of this attractive bird.
      Since I wrote that post in 2011, many YouTube videos of the hoopoe have appeared on the Internet. Here are several that are very interesting to watch. Following is an adult hoopoe catching a grub and eating it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm93aOddMQs

There are two quite long videos of a pair of nesting hoopoes in Israel. These videos are quite nice and show the birds growing even from day to day. Lively Israeli Hebrew songs accompany the videos.  I suggest watching at least some of each of these two videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GOHGRdJvjQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujYefw48owY

 

     Then there is a video of a hoopoe giving its call and you can see where its English name comes from.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOhuEQ4ZcUo

 



     I also promised you during my last post that I would show you some of the philatelic material that I picked up at Stampshow 2013 in Milwaukee. It turns out that in 2008, Israel conducted a vote in schools and in some other public places to determine the national bird. The hoopoe beat out the white spectacled bulbul. Therefore it is not surprising to see this philatelic item so effectively showing the hoopoe. It is a wonderful sheetlet of Israeli stamps, issued on 10/20/2009, one of the three types of stamps showing the hoopoe perched and the tag showing the hoopoe in flight.

 



 

          My other  hoopoe purchase was a First Day Cover with the four stamps from 1970 Helvetia or Switzerland issue showing 4 birds, one of them a hoopoe.

 

 

     There are many other stamps issued around the world, particularly in the Eastern Hemisphere by countries in the south of Europe and across Africa and Asia, where the hoopoe is present. Apparently ninety+ such stamps have been issued. We do not have a similar bird here in the Western Hemisphere. Perhaps that is why this bird seems so fascinating to me. There have been occasional visits to southern Alaska by this bird but otherwise it has never been a recorded vagrant to the continental US.

 

     Here is a partial checklist with photos of most of the stamps featuring the hoopoe.

 

     

Afghanistan 1985

 

 

 

 

Guinee



    

North Vietnam

 

East Germany

Romania Maximum card

West Germany, 1963

Poland, 1967

Macedonia

Algeria

 

Benin

Mongolia, 1967

Egypt



Romania, 1994

Macedonia

Cambodia, 1987

Cyprus,

 

 

Switzerland

Bechuanaland (now Botswana)
Scott # 169, with Queen Elizabeth
Issued in June, 2008

      Well, I was planning on making a checklist picturing the many stamps with hoopoe on them with labels showing their year of issue and country of Issue. I thought it might help some stamp collectors. I was even thinking of making such a topical collection myself. Then I found the following site, that I had not known about before. Now I see there is no need for me to do this and I am getting tired of doing it anyway. This site is amazing: you can enter any bird and all the known stamps with that bird on it are shown in nice little colored thumbnails. The bird can be magnified by clicking the little magnifier to the side of the stamp. If you click on one of the stamps, all the bird stamps of all species will be shown from that country. Wow, very nice website for collectors of birds on stamps.   

    

 http://www.bird-stamps.org/cspecies/9600100.htm

 

  

The Whip poor will and Tarrytown, NY.

The Whip Poor Will -- A Rare Bird!

     A couple weeks ago I was out in my Wild Area (my husband calls it my jungle) where I have a lot of prairie plantings, and I heard the call of a Whip Poor Will. I have only heard this bird call twice before. The first time was during an at dusk neighborhood walk in our old Applewood neighborhood. The second time was shortly after we moved to our new neighborhood in Mequon. I was again taking a walk and heard this bird call. This third time the call was coming from about 3 lots north of us, perhaps even from Virmond Park. All three times have been during migration. Click on the link below to hear the Whip poor will's call.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTATW8H8zpQ

     The Whip-poor-will is a member of our North American nightjar family (named after the nightjarring call after dark) as is the common night hawk, the paurauque of southern Texas,  the Chuck-will's-widow of Southeastern US, and the poorwill of Western canyons. These birds are all members of a genus of birds known as the Goatsuckers. They get this name because it was thought they would suck the milk of a female goat at night to nourish themselves. They were certainly seen around herds of goats and other animals at dusk, but only because they were chasing the insects around these animals.

      The night hawk is much more commonly seen as it flies in the sky in the late day and during dusk and gives its peent call. I recall studying for finals at my desk at the window in the northeastern corner of Currier Residence Hall at the University of Iowa in June and hearing that peent as the nighthawks take off in their nightly search for insects just as the street lights come on. They basically just fly with wide open mouths and scoop up the bugs in their swarms.  White wing bars which run across the wing identify the night hawk easily in its flight and also during its brief migration in late summer.  The migration of nighthawks can be an impressive event if you know when and where to look. These birds migrate in late summer, usually between August 10 and September 15th. But the majority will fly around August 26th or within 2 days either side of this date. A few may fly south during the day, but the vast majority do so within 2 hours of the sunset. Find an open field or open space, even such as Millennium Park in Chicago and scan the sky on those few nights. You might be lucky to witness the silent show that is going on overhead above tree level. These flights will detour and flutter around to catch insects in the swarms that they run into on this migration. This stuttered and fluttering flight led people to think these birds were bats, hence another common name, the bull bats.

    The whip-poor-will is much harder to see. It also is a nocturnal bird, but mostly flies from a perch only at dusk and at pre-dawn to catch insects with its wide jawed cavernous mouth. During the day and some of the night it simply perches on a branch or on the ground where its colorings make it next to invisible. When breeding it makes a nest among the leaves of the forest and will sit still on the nest, invisible, almost until stepped upon. But in contrast, its call is very noticeable and carries for long distances. It may repeat the call in rapid succession for an hour or more at dusk and at dawn.

     The Whip-poor-will nests on the ground, usually lays 2 eggs only and both parents help to raise the hatch lings. Because the bird is so hard to see and watch, not as much is known about its behavior as other more visible birds.

     This Whip-poor-will species has recently been divided into two separate species. The one I heard is now called the Eastern Whip-poor-will. The range for this bird is throughout southern and eastern Canada and much of the eastern United States. It winters in southern Florida and across the US Gulf Coast. It is rare locally throughout its range, but is not really threatened because of its vast range. I think the birds that I have heard on all three occasions were probably in migration only. I do not think they nest around southeastern Wisconsin or even northern Illinois. The second species' range is in southern California and northwestern Mexico. It has been separated from the Eastern species for so long that it has developed different markings and its call is a little different. These are the reasons that it was decided to name them a separate species. Even their DNA varies a little. That bird is called the Mexican Whip-poor-will.

     Here is a photo of the bird. I did not take this photo and I have never seen the bird myself, only hearing it on those three occasions.

                                                           The Eastern Whip-poor-will

     Early American Indian legends have often associated the haunting repetitive call with death. One New England folk legend says that the whip-poor-will can sense a soul departing and can also capture it as it flies. It is quite interesting that I heard this bird calling the night before I went to attend a funeral for the first member of our high school class to die in maturity. Of course, this is just a coincidence but it would be quite easy to attach a significance to this event as our ancestors often did.

    Because that call for which the bird is named is so notable, the bird's name or its call has appeared in many literary works and in many songs over the centuries. H.P. Lovecraft used the soul capturing idea as a plot device in his story,  The Dunwich Horror. Howard Phillips Lovecraft lived between 1890 and 1937 and wrote initially poetry, and later horror, fantasy and science fiction. He is especially known for a subgenre of writing called weird fiction. He said he was guided by a philosophical principle that he termed "cosmicism" or "cosmic horror" which he said is the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and indeed that the universe is basically an enemy to the interests of humanity. He conceived of a story cycle called the Cthulhu Mythos and invented a fictional magical textbook of rites and forbidden lore, called the Necrononmicon, which appears in the story The Dunwich Horror along with many whip poor wills.  Many of his stories were in the vein of Edgar Allan Poe, but perhaps even more horrific, if The Dunwich Horror is any indication. Stephen King was a great fan of Lovecraft and no doubt Lovecraft had a great influence on this well known and prolific writer. Mr. King called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale"  In King's autobiographical book "Danse Macabre" he credited Lovecraft with his own fascination with the macabre . Lovecraft's stories have been made into plays, films and games. The Dunwich Horror was made into a B-movie in 1970. The story was altered significantly but it is based on a similar idea. It was actor Ed Begley's last role where he played Professor Henry Armitage, of the fictional Arkham, MA Miskatonic University. These places enter into several of Lovecraft's writing. The leading role of Wilbur Whateley was offered to Peter Fonda who turned it down. Dean Stockwell finally played the role of Wilbur Whateley. The film was shot in Mendocino, California.

     Below is an online copy of this short story written in 1928 .  Note that several recurring themes of Lovecraft's appear in this story. He frequently used the fictional town of Arkham, Massacusetts and this town's fictional Miskatonic Universtiy. Also Lovecraft's fictional magical text, the Necronomicon appears and plays a large role in the story. One of his invented deities, Cthulhu is sited. You might be interested in reading this story.

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dh.aspx

    Perhaps the most famous reference to the  whip poor will is in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. In Irving's description of the local school teacher, Ichabod Crane, and the general haunting nature of the locale, which led to that horrible legend of the Hessian headless horseman of all of our memories, the whip poor will is mentioned along with other strange night sounds and visions.
     "He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvelous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spell-bound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather's direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination, -- the moan of the whip poor will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing his nasal melody, 'in linked sweetness long drawn out,' floating from the distant hill, or along the dusky road."

     If this brief paragraph strikes your memories from the distant past, since I am sure this story was required reading for many of you way back in high school, or perhaps even grade school -- then here is a link to the entire story.

http://www.bartleby.com/310/2/2.html

  Or if you would rather arouse another memory from your childhood, here is the link to the Disney short cartoon feature of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Much of the story here is read by Bing Crosby, and their are songs as well, along with the animated views. It's really cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxX66vLSZoQ

Tarrytown in 1928, looking south toward Manhattan.

     As depicted in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the area of Tarrytown, NY and the small village which the modern city engulfed, Sleepy Hollow, are very historic and scenic places. We had the pleasant occasion just in May this year to attend my niece's wedding held at Tappan Hill Mansion in Tarrytown, NY. If you read the first paragraph of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, you heard this area referenced. The Dutch people who settled this area grew wheat. Tarrytown was their market town and was called Terve Town (Terve, meaning wheat in Dutch). Apparently the name was corrupted to Tarrytown. However, Washington Irving has a different explanation of the city name. It was thought that Tarrytown received its name because the husbands of the local Dutch folk, often tarried too long at the local tavern. And nearby is the small village still known as Sleepy Hollow. It is a very nice area to visit, but you do have to plan ahead. At the turn of the century and into the early 1900s, Tarrytown became known as "The Millionaire's Colony." At that time, there were 65 huge and opulent mansions in this area, many of them overlooking the Hudson River. There are visits that can be made to several of these local mansions along the Hudson River, that once belonged to the local blue bloods. And since many of these mansions have become financially and otherwise burdensome for the descendant owners of these properties, several have become resorts, hotels and wedding venues. Such is Tappan Hill Mansion where the wedding was held. It once belonged to Mark Twain who lived here from 1900 to 1902.

The Hudson River from Tappan Hill Mansion.



 

View directly from the Wedding Room.

Since there are no rooms at Tappan Hill, we stayed at Tarrytown Estate Hotel,
originally another of these opulent mansions in the area.

Where the wedding would take place(it was raining.)

 

The wedded couple leaves the reception at Tappan Hill Mansion.

   
      The rehearsal dinner was held in downtown Yonkers, at X2O Xaviars on the Hudaon, down the Hudson River about 12 miles from Tarrytown. From this venue, you can see the Tappan Zee Bridge to the north and the George Washington Bridge to the south, along with the skyscrapers of Manhattan.

George Washington Bridge and Manhattan to the left, Fort Lee, NJ to the right.

Just to the left of bridge tower, note Freedom Tower in lower Manhattan.

Tappan Zee Bridge, Tarrytown, NY

 In Tarrytown, if you intend to visit some of these historic mansions, you will need to buy a single ticket sold at several places in the city. Often these need to be purchased or reserved in advance. The timing of the visits to the different sites require this. Therefore, you can not just show up and expect to get tickets to all the places you want to see. The various sites include Kykuit, Rockefeller's mansion in Tarrytown, built in 1902; Lyndhurst Mansion which belonged to Jay Gould the railroad magnate; Sunnyside which was a home and property created and owned by Washingtion Irving himself; and the Sleepy Hollow area which has a restored mill and river walk, a museum demonstrating the history of the area, and finally the Cemetery of Sleepy Hollow. Otherwise places that are described in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow do not exist. Still you can certainly get the flavor of this story by visiting the area and seeing some of these sites.

Sunnyside, Washington Irving's estate in Tarrytown, NY.

Kykuit, the Rockefeller mansion built in 1902.

Lyndhurst Mansion, site of a neat Halloween lighted tour



     .

     May I make one more related suggestion, should you decide to travel to this historic area. Go at Halloween time. In early and mid October, the leaves will be at peak along the Hudson. And the area of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow hold all sorts of wonderful haunted tours and light shows. There is a lantern light tour of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Many of these special tours start well before Halloween. We were there in May but were I ever to go back, I would go at Halloween time -- Yes, I would!  Woooo! 

Birds of Central America

     On our trip to Central America, we did the most birdwatching that I have ever done on a trip. And my husband who is not really a birder, also enjoyed some of our hikes. He was able to do a lot of bird photography so I have much material for this blog.
     Let's start with Guatemala. We were so lucky that our guide in Tikal is a birder of some renown. So he showed me a lot of birds that I am sure I would have missed if I was doing the watching on my own.

The beautiful large scarlet macaw

red lored parrot

lineated woodpecker

oscellated turkey

Montezuma oropendola

The Montezuma oropendolas' nests

   Let's move on to Costa Rica. As I said on a previous post, Costa Rica is all about nature. We saw lotts of birds, many of them quite unusual. The first group was sighted at Tortuguero National Park on the Caribbean. We went there to see the sea turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs, but we were a little early. None were arriving. But it didn't matter. We saw many birds and other interesting insects and animals.

These are bats hanging on a tree trunk. You can see their faces tilted toward us.
They have white spots on their backs but they are called long nosed bats.

A lovely large praying mantis

The anhinga drying its wings. Interestingly it does not have the oily feathers that
other diving birds have, so it must dry out its feathers after a dive for fish.

I think this is one of the loveliest birds -- the little blue heron

Just an artistic view.

T

The Northern jacana which walks and nests on top of these rafts of water hyacinth.

   Next we are going to Monte Verde, a birding destination for many people in the highlands of Costa Rica.  Here we met Carlos outside Stella's Bakery in St. Elena, neighboring Monteverde Park. Apparently this is a common place for birdwatchers to meet. Several different guides showed up with their tourist charges. There is good birding right their in the middle of the rustic little town. There is a large fig tree which was bearing fruit so the birds of all kinds are coming and going. After a while birding, Stella had opened up and we all took a coffee break with some bakery of course. Then it was time to ascend to the intermediate zone just below the cloud forest. There we would see a different habitat with different birds. But Carlos was on a motorbike. So he called a taxi and we were escorted to the foot of a trail for more birdwatching. It looked like this was going to be a long and productive morning.

This bird looks like a bump on the tree branch. It just sits here
during the day as it is nocturnal -- the great potoo. We were
lucky to get this photo.

A common bird, but I couldn't skip this lovely photo. The great egret.

We see these birds out in California commonly. They are black necked stilts.

The green basilisk lizard of Costa Rica. I know this post is billed as birds
but I couldn't resist this photo. 

   I must write a little bit about this lizard. In Costa Rica, there are three species of this lizard, of the type called basilisks. This one is the largest (can reach 32 inches long) and the prettiest. The other two species are more olive or brownish. Another name for all three species of this lizard is "the Jesus Christ lizard." The reason it is called this is because it can actually walk on water. Its toes have webs which increase the surface area and due to the fast pumping of its legs (at 5 mph) it can actually stay on the surface of the water for short distances. When first seen, it usually freezes as this one has done, but if further threatened it will escape  into the forest, under leaves or across water surfaces to disappear quickly. It also is an excellent swimmer so sometimes it just swims away. They can often be found along water courses and are omnivorous eating insects, small invertebrates, and small mammals and birds as well as vegetation and fruits.  With its sail like decorations on its head, back and tail it certainly is an attractive fellow.

Another birding group preparing to start the trail at
one of the Monteverde sanctuaries. Notice the size of
the tree. 

 

The local version of the jay. A pretty gregarious bird.

The resplendent Quetzal. A hard to find bird in Central America, but Carlos
knew where to look. 

   This magnificent bird deserves a little elaboration to match its beautiful dress. It is found from Mexico to Panama, but is often a little reclusive in the deep and thick forests. It likes the heavy rain forest and therefore even if present is often hard to see. This is the male with its iridescent green back, wings and head, a crimson lower breast and belly, black outer tail feathers, white tail covers underneath, and two long iridescent green central tail feathers that can't be seen here but extend out beyond the bird when it flies at least twice its body length. The female is a drab brown color. It became known among the indigenous peoples here as a flying snake. It is very important in both the Aztec and Mayan culture and is the source of the name for the primary god of the Mayan people, Quetzalcoatl. Because it does not survive in captivity it has become a symbol of liberty throughout the region. Here is a website in case you are interested in this birds natural life history and cultural history.  http://www1.american.edu/ted/quetzal.htm     Click on this address and I think you will be offered an option to go to the site.

   The Respendent Quetzal is the national bird of Guatemal, perhaps because it is so prominent in their historical culture. Of course, we saw it in Costa Rica. Interestingly, the national bird for Costa Rica with all of this country's dramatically colored bird life, is the clay-colored thrush. Here is a photo of this bird.

The clay colored thrush looks almost identical to our robin both in appearance
and behavior, just minus the red breast. 

The crested guan. Not such a good picture but
a pair were in the treetops near the quetzal. Just
goes to show the density of wonderful birds
in this rain forest.

The three wattled bellbird, actively calling.

   This was the last bird we saw on the Monteverde bird walk. We heard it constantly during the walk, and I asked Carlos about it. He just kept saying, "We'll get there in good time." Then as I knew we were nearing the end of the walk,  I began to worry, because we kept walking along the path and seemed to be passing the bird by. Finally near a large dead snag along the trail, Carlos said, "OK, Amos you can put your folding chair right here facing that snag. Ann, you can wait here or come back along the trail with me, either one, but you will do fine just to wait here." I was tired so I waited. But Carlos was gone for quite a while. I did walk backwards along the trail just to see what was happening. I saw Carlos off trail traipsing through the undergrowth a little bit. After maybe 10 minutes or so, guess who showed up near that snag. Yes, indeed, it was Mr. Bellbird as pictured above. And as you can see he is calling with a wide open mouth. Apparently the bellbirds use about 3 different perches. If they are threatened on one perch, they will move to the second one. And if threatened there they will move to the third which happened at this time to be the one along the trail near the snag. So Carlos just went back and spooked him out of the other two perches in succession and predictably he showed up right in camera range where we were waiting. What a nice climax to this productive rain forest walk. Just to show  what this bellbird sounds like here is a YouTube video showing him calling and you can hear the reason for his name.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnu8QbpImWw

   Now, as you may know from my previous posts,  our trip to Central America also included Panama where our guide for the whole 6 days, Archibald V. Kirchman is an avid birder as well. So we saw some excellent birds in Panama as well, but I will post those at a later time in another post. This one is getting unwieldy. But don't forget, look for the second post on Central American birds soon.