Puerto Rico Y2K16: Bosque Susua, Punta Higuero (Rincon), Rio Abajo

Suddenly, time was running out for the group from MAX REBO BIRDING TOURS...we only had a couple days left in Puerto Rico, and the time had come to leave the southwest corner of the island, where many of the island's hotspots are located. Today we would bird a couple less popular spots, starting with Bosque Susua. Why? Geotrygon. I had never seen any kind of Geotrygon, and Bosque Susua is known as one of the best places in Puerto Rico to find both Key West and Ruddy Quail-Doves. To my astonishment, I got great looks at a cooperative Key West Quail-Dove on an overgrown trail northeast of the picnic area.

Now this was a seriously juicy lifer. The photos do not do the bird justice at all...the blue cap struck me like a punch in the throat. I'm still surprised I didn't start coughing up blood while looking at this bird. Though obviously not an endemic, this was one of the species I wanted to see the most, and considering how fucking skulky they are I couldn't have been happier with the looks at this confiding crippler of the shadows.

Afterwards I wandered south past the picnic area back on to the access road, and saw a wide road/trail with a gate across it going southeast. This turned out to be a pretty appealing birding trail that paralleled a river (heck of scenic), and seems like just as good a place as any to bird here. About ~250 feet past the gate I had another look at a Key West Quail-Dove, but that would be the last Geotrygon for the day.

Friendly Puerto Rican Todies provided me company.

I am still having difficulty grasping these bizarre and indisputably fantastic birds. Does anyone know what their closest relatives are? From my understanding, that situation is fairly muddled.

A number of Red-legged Thrushes were along the trail as well. We ended up with a pretty solid checklist for the site that morning, with other highlights being Puerto Rican Lizard-Cuckoos, Lesser Antillean Pewee (only found at one other site on the trip), Antillean Euphonia (only found at one other site on the trip) and Puerto Rican Oriole (found nowhere else on the west side of the island on the trip).

Dipper Dan did some Oscar Mike ebirding while we worked our way up the west coast, and directed us to the Puerto Higuero lighthouse in Rincon. At first it seemed bleak and windy, but eventually we started finding some new birds.

A flock of disgusting Pin-tailed Whydahs fed on the lawn, but the more interesting exotic species was a pair of slightly less disgusting Saffron Finches, which was yet another reluctant lifer for me.

Not disgusting at all was this Zenaida Dove trotting around proudly.

A flock of Cave Swallows foraging next to the lighthouse contained a single Northern Rough-winged Swallow, new for the trip. The Cave Swallows were much more interesting though. Other birds of note here were a few flyby Brown Boobies and a pair of American Oystercatchers on the rocks below.

The best birding here was in the forest across the street from the lighthouse - look for the trail that starts on the edge of the cleared area. This was only one of two spots we birded on the trip that had a lot of North American migrants.

A Puerto Rican Woodpecker threw some cripple our way at the beginning of the trail.

The woods quickly began coughing up birds. Hooded Warbler, Magnolia Warbler, Ovenbird and White-eyed Vireos were all new for the trip! I fucking love trip birds and eastern neotrops, in case you have not figured this out by now. We also had redstarts, parula (above) and Prairie Warblers. Not a bad little patch. Of course if you are from the eastern U.S. you will not find this patch very tempting, but we were relieved to sate our fierce warbler hunger.

Believe it or fucking not, I was into herps before I was a bird addict. I still don't know shit about herps, but I am an admitted herp sympathizer (as opposed to a herp synthesizer). This is the one and only herp from the trip (other than green iguanas, which are jaguar-sized and therefore not herps) that I have bothered to identify.

Look at the size of that fucking dewlap, wow! This is a barred anole (Ctenonotus stratulus).

After our modest victories at El Faro, we barged northeast to be at Rio Abajo for sunset. Of course, this was to get Puerto Rican Parrot. To make a short story extra short, the forest here was mature and really nice to walk through, but the only one of us who really saw the parrot was Officer Searcy, and his looks were poor poor poor poor poor poor poor. There are hardly any canopy openings...I'm surprised folks actually see them so regularly. I heard them well (free-flying birds, not the enclosed birds at the end of the road), but that is nothing to write home about. Considering that all the wild birds here were released here recently, I wasn't too bummed to not get looks, but I wasn't reveling in this defeat either. Good news for the parrot and for birders - a third flock will soon be holding it down in the Maricao forest. 

Cave Swallow

We are asked to pull to the side of the road at a checkpoint outside of El Paso. Deep nowhere in the high desert of West Texas. Big sky country with a carpet of archetypal Chihuahuan desert shimming to the horizon and back. Our rig loaded with stringed instruments, boxes of books, binoculars, various technologies for coffee making. The bone and feather talismans on our dashboard make us suspect the moment we pull up to the roadblock. At the side of the road a man with a gun instructs us to exit our cars slowly, with our hands clearly visible at all times. We do, eyes compulsively scanning sky and scrub. This is new country for us and we are hungry to meet its animals.

After 5 hours behind the wheel, I extract myself awkwardly from the car then double back into it, reaching for my binoculars behind the drivers seat. The officer nearest me swings his shouldered gun around and tightens his grip on it. Keep my hands where I can see them. But we are birders, we explain, benign naturalists who have long since traded in the fiery roach of youth and revolt for the hand lens of tranquility and natural philosophy. Blank stares and they tear our car apart. Hounds sniff the trunk and floor boards. Sage bundles and pressed desert marigolds are the closest they will find to the illegal botany they are so sure we harbor.

The officer guarding us plays good cop. ‘So, you do a little weed once in awhile? A lot of people do, its no biggie.’ I don’t really hear him. I am distracted by the halo of birds he is wearing. A great ringing has filled the structure and the sound is spilling out into the desert beyond. We are being swarmed by cave swallows.

They are nesting here, in this house of fear and suspicion, up in the corners of the open structure. Their thriving village a counterweight to the paranoia we have built here.  Birds falling in and out of their basket homes, earth worked masterpieces of clay, water and spittle, the same ingredients used to make the first woman and man. Peering over the lip of these exquisite potteries, their foreheads aflame with some ancient knowledge. Flying in the face of those who see and exploit borders and shitting upon this blasphemous house.

My co-pilot asks the men with guns to look up at these birds. See, they are nesting here. They help raise each others young. The men are hesitant. They are used to telling people what to do, to forcing confessions, to bullying without resistance. But this woman is contagious in her conviction. They steal glances up to the corners of the building. They want to believe her. In the edges of their eyes, I can see that they want to come with us. To trade in their rifles for spotting scopes. To press flowers, their nostrils caked with pollen as they set the plants between the pages of their field guides. To stalk birds in the gathering light of the early hours, watching birdsong leave birdthroat as a vapor, as a supplication, to the backlit dawn.



This guest post was crafted by Cassidy Grattan, a birder and storyteller equal parts gifted and cursed. The Cave Swallow image was provided courtesy of Nate at This Machine Watches Birds.