Date: 5/15/25 7:22 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] April 28 - May 13 2025
*COSTA RICA: A synopsis of the highlights:*
I left Vermont to daffodils and maple keys, pine warblers and
white-throated sparrows, and returned to tulips and lilacs, indigo buntings
and scarlet tanagers. In between the daffodils and tulips, I saw this:
Of the more than *320 species of birds* recorded on our 16-day trip into
the mountain wilds on both slopes of the continental divide, the
rainforests, cloud forests, and both coasts of Costa Rica, we were
entertained by *several lingering Neotropical migrants*: a flock of
Wilson's warblers picking through the stunted trees on a 12,000-foot
dormant volcano,; a Swainson's thrush; an eastern wood pewee and a
yellow-bellied flycatcher in the same salt-stunted wild almond, four paces
from the Caribbean; semi-palmated plovers; spotted sandpipers;
black-bellied plovers; ruddy turnstones; a whimbrel, and a least sandpiper,
foraging near a sleeping crocodile; an upland sandpiper on the margin of a
jungle river; an eastern kingbird; an olive-sided flycatcher; a
chestnut-sided warbler; a Blackburnian warbler. As well as resident
American dippers and black phoebes along rugged mountain streams, and acorn
woodpeckers near resplendent quetzals.
*Most unexpected sighting: *Four brown noddies, exhausted, along the
Caribbean shore in Tortuguero (Pacific terns blown off course). One stood
on a driftwood log pushed around by the crashing surf.
*Among the busy birds*: at sunrise (but shaded and softened by rising
mist), a pair of resplendent quetzals feeding a chick in nest cavity, (more
or less) unobstructed; *four* species of motmots; *four* species of
toucans; a roadside hawk perched above a road and a humorless laughing
falcon standing on a muddy bank; a sungrebe; *ten *species of woodpeckers;
(among them, the pale-billed, a member of the genus *Campephilus* that
includes our extinct ivory-billed) *six* species of woodcreepers;
*thirty-three* species of flycatchers: *eleven *species of parrots,
including gorgeous and noisy pairs of both scarlet and great green macaws;
*three* species of manakins; and *twenty-three *species of tanagers.
*Best sighting in a torrential downpour: *black and yellow silky
flycatcher, water dripping down long tail feathers.
*A most exciting bird*: a sunbittern and feeding her chick on the hem of a
stream. Through the trees, beyond the stream? A boys' soccer game.
*Hummingbird total*: *33* species (out of 54 known species). One morning,
in the cloud forest, a hummingbird jamboree: snowcaps, green thorntails,
green-breasted mangos, white-naped Jacobins, striped hermits, and
scintillant hummingbirds.
*The most interesting thing I learned:* After a slaty flower-piercer
punctures the base of a tubular flower and sips nectar, hummingbirds,
mostly gray-tailed mountain gems, go directly to the hole for nectar rather
than the more conventional approach at the head of the flower.
*The second most interesting thing I learned: *there's no zoning in a
Montezuma oropendola colony. Nests three to six feet long, dangle from
limbs like dull, disorganized Christmas stockings. Mom builds. Dad
inspects, bouncing and stretching the tightly woven fibers and vines. Nests
are in constant motion, rocking to the wind, the rain, and the commotion
next door.
*The last bird ticked*: Russet-nape wren on a fence post.
*The cutest mammal*: infant coatimundis on a morning stroll, tails up, long
noses down, shepherded by their mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and other
female relatives. A maleless troop of more than forty.
*The most entertaining primate*: spider monkeys swinging through the
canopy, long tails gripping branches like a fifth limb, and then eating
legumes, bits of green seedpods dribbling from their mouths.
*The biggest surprise*: a tamandua, a mid-sized arboreal anteater, lounging
head down in a sea grape by the Pacific. The pink pads of its feet appeared
pillow-soft; its claws talon-sharp.
*The second biggest surprise:* the sun-bleached bones of a sea turtle
(green or loggerhead), likely predated while nesting by a jaguar.
*The largest reptile*: American crocodile. Many log-like crocs (fifteen to
eighteen feet long) idled on the surface of the Tarcoles River. Another in
Corcovado, slept on the far mudbank across a small, shallow tidal river,
mouth wide open. Cooling off in front of a small parade of shorebirds and
wading birds. Lulled by the Pacific crashing.
*Four species of snakes*, including an almost invisibly camouflaged
fer-de-lance and an arboreal eyelash palm pitviper (*bright *yellow morph),
coiled in a vine, a sit-and-wait predator of nectaring hummingbirds.
*The biggest lizard*: green iguana.
*Cutest lizard: *common house gecko
*The most entertaining lizard: *the basilisk (the Jesus Christ lizard), ran
across the water's surface. (I searched vainly for the *mythical* Mose
lizard, hoping to see it part the waters and stroll across the Sierpe
River.)
*Most charismatic frog*: Red-eyed treefrog. Two mated above a forest pool.
*Close second*: strawberry dart frog.
*Most enormous toad*: Marine toad, big as a shoe … large enough to trip
over.
*The most extraordinary insect*: blue morpho butterflies (*Morpho menelaus*),
each the size of an open hand, flitting through the jungle. The upper
surface of their wings is iridescent blue. Undersurface, mottled brown.
Like a Penn and Teller trick, when a morpho flies, it stands out. When
perched, it vanishes.
*The second most extraordinary insect: *the duckling swallowtail moth (*Urania
fulgens* (a.k.a. pato de cola), a mid-sized, iridescent green and black
moth migrating toward Panama. Duckling swallowtails are half the size of
our black swallowtail butterflies. They moved because their caterpillars
had denuded a food source, and the new growth would be toxic for at least
two years.
*Sex on a branch: *yellow-throated toucans. More vertical than horizontal,
the male had to carefully position his head and oversized bill to maintain
balance on the female's back.
*Sex in a puddle:* dozens of marine toads, a hyperactive colony just off
the sidewalk in Tortuguero. An orgy in the pouring rain. Males calling,
splashing, jostling, pushing, dunking … choreography by World Wide
Wrestling Association
