Date: 5/15/25 4:32 pm From: Rita Pitkin <ritapitkin15...> Subject: Re: [VTBIRD] April 28 - May 13 2025
Sounds…um…fantastic!
On Thu, May 15, 2025 at 10:22 AM Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> wrote:
> *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
>
