Bound For Tranquilo

Seven years. It's been seven years since I have had my face melted off by Resplendent Quetzal, seven years since being crippled by an appropriately large and diverse rainbow of tanagers. Seven years since my bones have felt the BONK of a Three-wattled Bellbird. Seven years since I experienced pura vida.

Going so long without pura vida is excruciating. I have been withering, on the inside and out. Luckily, MAX REBO BIRDING TOURS has seen fit to send me back to Costa Rica in a few days, with a focus on Caribbean slope birds. The itinerary is mainly composed of sites we did not get to previously, though some sites are too good and too conveniently located to pass up again.

Target birds will be many and varied for our group. Speaking for myself, I have plucked most of the low-hanging fruit already, but the number of potential realistic lifers that await is well above 100. Bare-necked Umbrellabird and Yellow-eared Toucanet are certainly too rare to expect (but expected enough to look for), so other than those Sunbittern, Agami Heron, Snowy Cotinga and Ocellated Antbird definitely come to mind as top targets that could induce facemelt/cripple/seizures/spontaneous combustion/final birdgasm if seen. But who am I kidding, there is a good chance less-hyped species like Uniformed Crake, nunbird and Song Wren could leave me in a state of catatonic wonder.

And then there is the Collared Plover, my Neotropical nemesis. If you ask me, we have a better chance of finding 27 Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoos than a single Collared Plover, which are documented to be 50,000,000,000 times more common and easier to see for any other birder. It's embarrassing and shameful to admit, but at the same time the only birder without a nemesis is a dead one.

Sorry, I can't help but get a touch dark when Collared Plover comes up. A number of other living legends like This Machine, Coolidge (who is a person, not just a Descendents song), and BB&B's own Cassidy have recently just stumbled out of the steamy jungles of Costa Rica or are still there, sweating and lurching and having chunks of superheated face slough off their heads from constant exposure to great birds. It's the place to be this winter.

The owl highlight of the previous Costa Rica Trip was this Black-and-white Owl, which remains the only one I've ever seen. It was shown to us by Moncho, a security guard at Cerro Lodge. This time we have an owling trip lined up at Cano Negro with the near-mythical Chambita, so fingers are extra crossed for Striped Owl and other night lurkers.

Love geri birding? So does Max Rebo Birding Tours! I think on this trip I'm going to try to take photos of birds that are obviously on feeders instead of attempting shots of birds that don't have feeders or fruit in the frame. La Cinchona has excellent geri birding that features Emerald Toucanets, and we will be checking in on them soon.

Geri birding can often reward one with excellent looks at Green Honeycreepers, a bird that needs to be seen up close, and let me tell you I am ready to sit on my ass and watch a Green Honeycreeper eat a goddamned banana. This one was attending a geri station at Talari Mountain Lodge.

I actually don't expect to see Flame-colored Tanagers on this trip, but I do expect to see other fantastic birds doing unexpected stuff like hopping around in parking lot rubble with the wariness of a Safeway Brewer's Blackbird.

BB&B will be back in March. Until then, take care, and be wary of stringers.

BB&B Presents: Green Honeycreeper

Today's post is brought to you by one Cass Grattan, illustrious birder-writer, founder of the League of Intrepid Naturalists (LOINS), Munitions Specialist of the Nudibranch Appreciation and Pontifications Society (NAPS)...and regular contributor to BB&B. Enjoy. - Felonious Jive, The Great Ornithologist

We are awake in the dark.
Mango is there. She is a small, wheezing cantina whens she sleeps. The sound helps me sleep. When she wakes up, she sniffles a bit.
Sister Anna is a haloed gray silhouette against the jungle.
Sandman is a close talking mouth breather.
We say a little helpless prayer. Everyone’s breakfast, a finger dipped in honey.
Time to go.

The opening of the screen door is the sound of a screaming howler monkey.
Us bipeds are bolted to the earth, blood boiled. Then sheepish moans, giggles, stomach rumblings. Someone’s bowels have loosened but this has happened before, will again. It is dealt with quietly and efficiently.

The thunder in the treetops continues to roll. They are following us.

The day is climbing into our eyes, a tremendous decanting of light. All the plants are reaching towards it, this flooding. Patient birds, waiting for the day to grow the fruit, to warm the boneless bodies, float the bugs up to them. Owls turn into wood. A potoo hardens into an oblong mineral block.

Improbable bill of the toucan; it won’t fit into the binoculars, no matter how far we distance ourselves from it. Its plumage, that thing on its face, its all too much to consider right now. We must keep lurking and leave the pondering of this glutton for leaner times.

A trogon, violaceous, is perched above us on a telephone wire. Voices without bodies humming through its feet.  Bottomless eyes, its head turning like some haunted toy from Giuseppe’s workshop. Wordlessly, it sings, You have been Judged.

The ants surround us.

Somehow, we make it to the marketplace, the entrance to the ruins.
The girls have to take a pee.
The men, broken boys, are charged with ticket buying.

The fever has begun to boil and if only we could be away from these people, all these beasts, safe in the shadows of the temple, against the cold stones of this ruin, tracing fingers against the carvings, taking countless mediocre photographs.

The man who I bought the tickets from; I couldn’t see his face very well. The window between us was cloudy and cracked. I gave him the money in the little bowl beneath the glass and he reached for it and revealed a bright pink nail on his left hand, pinky finger. This nail slackened my hold on things and I stood shocked and helpless; suddenly I could hear the howler monkeys laughing again. They had followed us. They had followed us.

Skyguy found me staring at the tickets being offered by the man with the pinky.      
Its only paper, man. Take it. He took it and led me away.
He had one pink fingernail, I said to no one. To everyone.

There are the girls. Mango has peed a little on her shoe and is grinning big.

Staggering towards the gate, almost there. Men with machine guns, smiling and not smiling. Iguanas in the trees, thinking about ants.

There is a violent commotion in the brush nearby.
A bit of emerald daylight jerking about in the understory.
I go towards it, groaning, mouth agape. Skyguy grabs me, shakes hard, Pull it together gawdamit! He follows my eyes, brimming with horror and joy, smiling and not smiling.

Together, we watch the green honeycreepers, paired, desperately copulating, lost in their savage beauty. Clutching each other, on the edge of the jungle.



Cass has written many good things for us over the years, including this recent piece right here. Photos in today's post are provided by one Seagull Steve.

Sarapiqui Eco-Observatory Part I

There is something indescribable about the color of a male Green Honeycreeper...and no, calling it "green" doesn't do it justice.

Following advice from Pat O'Donnell's blog, we decided to check out Sarapiqui Eco-Observatory, which isn't mentioned in Lawson's birding guide. The observatory is not far from Puerto Viejo, and is just down the road from the Tirimbina Preserve, a hot spot that we did not get the chance to bird. Despite the incessant rain, checking out the observatory turned out to be a great idea, even if we ran out of time to check out the nice patch of mature forest that runs between the feeders and Rio Sarapiqui. The birding was quality and the photo ops were even better.

Facemelting. What else is there to say???

Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds aren't scared of anything, not even a tropical torrential downpour.

Raindrops must seem quite large to something the size of a hummingbird.

Blue-gray Tanager is one of the commonest birds in Costa Rica (and probably most places in Central America). I wouldn't be surprised if they show up in Texas one day. Birders should have no problem identifying one when it shows up...and if they do, there will be hell to pay.

Banana destruction.

Great Antshrike was the best bird we got at the site; it was the only one of the trip. I know these photos aren't on par with the other stuff on here but GODDAMN what a good bird!

Look at the size of that bill! There is no doubt in my mind that this bird could skin a (live) human being within a matter of minutes.

Collared Aracari. When these birds first appeared (right in front of us), we knew things would never be the same again.

Is this aracari eating papaya, or in the process of projectile-vomiting it? You decide.

Buff-throated Saltator is a common bird in Costa Rica, having membership in many a mixed flock. This bird is at the perfect angle to hide it's namesake field mark perfectly.

Black-cowled Oriole, a well-dressed bird. Both sexes look alike, so not an easy bird to misidentify.

We only got to see these in the Sarapiqui lowlands, but they were not hard to come by. More from the observatory coming soon...