Tropical Birds – Bird Noetz

Jeepers! Honey Creepers

Leaving the present, and terrible, international situation for a bit. Thinking of more pleasant things….

For us, going to the tropics has been out of the question for the past two years-like a lot of people, I guess. Darn pandemic! We’ve certainly missed those evening breezes coming off the Caribbean, and the smells of Latin-American food being cooked down the beach somewhere. One night, in desperation, we even watched that Jeff Bridges movie from the 80’s, the one shot at Isla Mujeres and Tulum. We ordered in Mexican food, drank a few bottles of Sol, and had fun picking holes in the plot. Still, it’s not quite the same.

At least, I can rummage through my pictures of tropical birds. These are from Costa Rica, from the Cloud Forest at Monte Verde. The more observant reader might notice that not all images are of birds. Well, any port in a mountaintop storm.

On that trip, V and I spent a few nights at a lodge near the Cloud Forest Reserve. Our driver, on his first run ever, checked google maps, and picked what was likely the worst road in the region to get us there. When we arrived an hour or so after the regular van, we were as well-shaken as a protein drink. Later on, we took a (guided) jungle walk at night, which came complete with tarantulas, little rivers of Leaf-cutter Ants, a ghostly Olingo high in the trees, and sleeping Trogons.

The next night was so windy that we thought the roof of our bungalow was going to blow off. At dinnertime, we huddled in our puffer jackets eating pasta and drinking Red Tapir Ale, thinking fondly of the beach we’d left behind at Playa Hermosa. Our birding tour of the Cloud Forest almost didn’t happen-the guide being afraid that jungle trees might fall on us. In spite of rain and wind, however,we ventured out and ‘got’ our ‘target birds – the Resplendent Quetzal and one of the loudest birds in the world, the Three-Wattled Bellbird (hard to see, but easy to hear).

Cloud Forest Night

Memories of Oaxaca

The Dancing Men

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They have faded into the valleys,

Those Kings who sipped

the thin mountain air

like gods.

Only we, the

Dancing Men remain in the high city,

waiting, waiting

for our own Gods to release us.

Prisoners still, we linger

on these misty pathways above the clouds.

MC 2001/2022

*The Dancing Men are 300 or so stone carvings of captives at the ancient Zapotec city of Monte Alban. Most look contorted, as if tortured and mutilated, and are thought to represent captives, most likely of high rank. Unfortunately, I can’t find the pictures I took of them.

Avenida Quinta

The window sashes, once eggshell white,

have faded to cracked and curdled cream.

Memories of Moorish Spain

sleep in the peaks and arches of these windows,

now softened by time and the Caribbean salt air.

Likewise, the stuccoed walls,

tagged with graffiti,

assaulted by lianas and ficus,

have crumbled in places.

The gate of sapote wood gleams darkly solid

In the bright Mexican morning,

while an aggressive sun bleaches the lesser wood to spectral gray.

Not long for this world, this old queen of the avenue

Succubi of broken masonry and twisted rebar surround her,

ravenous building lots, chewing up the old ways

and disgorging money.

She waits her turn, a still substantial ghost,

one of the walking dead, so to speak,

half-hidden by those walls

with their cascades of bougainvillea—

scarlet, foam-white, shocking pink.

The polished gate still protects one sanctuary,

a vain hope,

like the studded door to an tenth-century English abbey

surrounded by Vikings.

Then, from within, an antique lock clashes,

the massive gate trembles and opens.

Two Maya women in embroidered huipils exit and open their parasols

The elder, her hair wound in a tight bun,

wears a heavy gold necklace and pendant earrings.

A shawl of watered olive silk loops under her right arm

and across her left shoulder.

A heavy jade bracelet flashes green on the arm of her daughter-companion,

Reminders of an earlier time,

these two,

Like nobility, taking in the morning air, on their way

to church, perhaps,

towards the clanging bell.

While,

elsewhere along the avenue,

bars and cafes rattle open,

and construction workers

buy their breakfast from bicycle carts.

MC, 2001

Estero San Jose (Los Cabos, Mexico)

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San Jose River Estuary

I took a long hiatus and finally published the third book in my Archie Stevens Mystery series. This one is called Raven Creek. Now, I’m back with nature, mixing birding with a family vacation in San Jose de Los Cabos. I head for the San Jose River estuary every morning just after sunrise. It’s a quiet time, the temperature is perfect, and the birds are active.

It’s my second visit to this estuary, this haven for dowitchers, egrets, herons, ibis, ducks, and other bird species. A Zone-tailed Hawk appears. A nice surprise. These guys usually pretend to be Turkey Vultures, and drop down on their prey who don’t expect trouble from the relatively harmless Vultures. My old pal, the Reddish Egret, is here, jumping around like a bird possessed. They hunt like this and it must work. I shouldn’t find it comical, I suppose, but I do.

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Reddish Egret

A pair of Hooded Orioles flash past and dive into a Palo Verde, him a bright orange and black, her a soft moss green. They startle a Cactus Wren who lets loose with its rattling call. And Gila Woodpeckers seem to be everywhere, sounding very much like the squeaky toys babies, and dogs, seem to like.

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Hooded Oriole

White-faced Ibis work the shallows, probing with their long, curved bills, dressed as always as if they’ve just come from a funeral, stalking, with excessive gravitas, through groups of very busy dowitchers, plovers, sandpipers, and bright Cinnamon Teal. Lots of activity today and everyday, at least in winter; birds come and go up and down the river, moving from sandbar to sandbar, in constant motion.

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White-faced Ibis – Morning Spruce-up

Several locals told me that a hotel chain is trying to get rid of the bird sanctuary here to clear the way for yet another hotel! It’s hard to imagine such foolishness, but we see a great deal of nonsense in the world these days. The birds, of course, are unaware of this. They are used to visitors and tend to ignore them. You don’t see that everywhere. This is a magical place and I hope it will remain so forever.

A side note: in 1588, two English galleons took on water from this river before they attacked and captured a Spanish treasure ship near the ‘Arches” at San Lucas. One of the ships ‘Desire’ then completed the third circumnavigation of the globe. The other ship, called ‘Content’, didn’t follow Desire and disappeared — loaded to the gunwales with treasure. With a little imagination, you can almost see two galleons standing off beyond the surf, and watch their longboats breaching the breakers so the barefoot crew can fill casks and barrels in the river.

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Zone-tailed Hawk

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Northern Mockingbird and Chum

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Osprey Breakfast

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Gilded Flicker

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Wood Stork – rare bird here

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Long-billed Dowitchers

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The River

Costa Rica Birds and Beasts Continued

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Black Vultures – Okay, we’re not pretty…useful, not pretty.

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White-throated Magpie Jay

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American Crocodiles – Tempisque River

Orange-fronted Parakeet

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Howler

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Bananaquit

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Rufous-naped Wrens

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Yellow-crowned Night Heron

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Oropendola Colony

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Orchid

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Clay-colored Thrush

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Stick Insect

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Variegated Squirrel

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I’m Done…

Costa Rica Wildlife

Decades ago, some friends and I planned to drive the Pan-American Highway from Vancouver BC to Tierra Del Fuego. It never happened. The 1956 VW van I’d rebuilt and camperized never made it to Costa Rica — the government of that country took the time to us well. I finally got to the, for me, fabled highway. Not as glamorous as I thought, incidentally. More important, I got to experience Costa Rica’s wonderful wildlife.

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Howler Monkey

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Ferruginous Pygmy Owl

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Red-legged Honeycreeper

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Crested Currasow

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Streak-backed Oriole

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Black-cowled Oriole

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Jabiru

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Black-headed Trogon

Turquoise-browed Motmot

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Yellowish Flycatcher

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White-fronted Amazon

Monteverde

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Monteverde Waterfall

We needed our down jackets up here. After a few nights of winds strong enough to move furniture, plus intermittent rain, we finally entered Monteverde’s Cloud Forest. Noisier than we expected. Three-wattled Bellbirds are the main culprits. Although they make, we think, some of the loudest bird calls anywhere, they are devilishly difficult to track down — even when they open their big mouths and bellow. But Bellbirds aren’t the only prizes. The Resplendent Quetzal tops the list of Cloud Forest must-sees. We get lucky. Gorgeous. So many more birds in this delightful country. I recorded over eighty lifers in Costa Rica and missed a few hundred more.