Date: 5/21/25 6:25 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 05 May 2025: Corcovado National Park (20 feet), Osa Peninsula, extreme southwest Costa Rica
3:47 a.m. (one hour thirty-one minutes before sunrise). Seventy-nine
degrees, muggy and saturated. La Sirena Ranger Station is a dormitory
without walls. Bunk beds and mosquito netting. All-night rain, torrential
at times, rolling thunder, and bursts of lightning. Woken by monkey alarm,
primeval and unfailing. Troops of howlers, a lifeline of prehensile tails
securely wrapped around branches, dim light notwithstanding, usher out the
night ... and me out of bed. In preparation, I slept before 7:30 p.m.,
darkness having already descended. The monkey troops had issues, quarreling
among themselves all night; one troop was here, and one was there, on
either side of the ranger station, reporting positions and intentions:
stereophonic howls, grunts, screams, roars, caterwauls, dyspeptic barks.
The voice of a howler monkey carries three miles, and when they
preambulate in the treetops next door, you greet the day ... you have *no *
choice*.* Only a blue whale is louder. The howler's hyoid, the bone in the
neck that anchors the tongue, is thick and creates a resonance chamber. At
one hundred forty decibels, a howler is twice as loud as most screaming
humans. Even the roar of an African lion pales by comparison. The Pacific,
less than half a mile away, is eclipsed by conversing howlers.
Living things have meaning in terms of what they do.
Everything's dripping, including the air and voices in the tree. Like crows
and jays back home, howler monkeys set off an alarm when a predator moves
through the jungle. They don't discriminate. Jaguars, pumas, ocelots,
crested and harpy eagles, and boa constrictors all get similar treatment.
When monkeys agitate, you stop, hold your breath, look, and hope to glimpse
an apex predator. Shortly before sunrise, I found fresh puma tracks. It's
tough to be stealthy when a troop of monkeys, each with a voice that
carries like Aretha Franklin, broadcasts your position, punctuating the
airwaves in deep basses and otherworldly cries.
Cicadas join the monkey chorus. Howlers eat leaves, move slowly, and sleep
a lot. Spider monkeys, the Flying Wallendas of New World primates, have
long limbs and long tails, are on the quiet side, and eat fruit. When
spider monkeys move through the canopy, you cannot help but watch. A troop
of spider monkeys swinging through the jungle displaces insects and
lizards, and attracts attendant birds like double-toothed kites, the way
foraging of army ants attracts antbirds. Spider monkeys knosh legumes,
dribbling bits of green.
More than fifty species of birds (they're everywhere, noisy, and difficult
to count). First two: common pauraque and chick, eyes glowing in the beam
of a flashlight, oversized nightjars on the ground on the hem of the
jungle; bare-throated tiger heron stalking spawning tree frogs, in a rain
puddle. Third: male red-capped manakin, a small, compact Neotropical fruit
eater, red-headed, yellow-eyed, black bodied, and yellow-thighed
(nicker-like), dancing on a branch in the dim light ... a performer par
excellence—bouncing, pivoting, sliding. Someone must be watching beside us,
but I see no sign of his betrothed. Fourth: ale-billed woodpecker, red
crest and white bill gleaming in mist-diffused sunlight. Then, a pair of
yellow-throated toucans slides into the wet greenery. Pick fruit with
cartoon bills. Lean back and swallow. Overhead: pairs of scarlet macaws,
breathtaking and noisy, call attention to themselves, sunrise on their
feathers, long tail plumes stirring heavy air; two by two, mate for life;
by comparison, several pairs of mealy Amazons, equally faithful, rapid,
stuttering wing beats, fly as though overcome with mechanical problems,
graze the canopy.
Mournful, quavering notes of the great tinamou counterpoint to the howlers.
Emblematic of a rainforest. Like a loon in the Northwoods.
Standing in the shade, luxuriating in the cool breath of the Pacific,
shoulder to shoulder in the company of friends, new and old, the way I'd
want everyone I know to stand, mouths open, fingers clutching binos, not
knowing what to look at first.
