1st week of banding completed

This week we finished our first full week of banding here in Tortuguero. We have 5 banding sites, including our home site at Caribbean Conservation Cooperation (CCC) which we band every other day. CCC has 20 nets which we aim to open at 5:40, before the sun rises just as the first rays of light are penetrating the rainforest. The timing can be tricky, as we learned this week when we found ourselves extracting bats not birds from a net opened too early. Our home site consists of 5 nets arranged in the coastal scrub habitat, and 15 nets in the adjacent highly disturbed secondary forest. So far our most captured birds at CCC seem to be residents such as White Collared Manakin (my first bird banded in Costa Rica), Variable Seedeaters, and 3 common hummingbirds - Long-tailed Hermit, Bronzy Hermit and Rufous-tailed hummingbird. There are also some migrants hanging around, Prothonotary Warbler being the most common capture, but we also have duplicate catches of Chestnut-sided Warbler, House Wren, and Yellow-throated Vireo. Baltimore Orioles and Yellow Warblers also seem to be abundant, but we have yet to catch one.





A migrant female Prothonotary Warbler (above). The sex of these birds can be reliably determined based on the amount of white on the tail feathers (below). The males will have white in all tail feathers whereas in the females it will be lacking or barely visible in the inner tail feathers.




A Chestnut-sided Warbler, common throughout Costa Rica during the winter months. This, the first CSWA we caught, was already banded indicating that it had successfully migrated to North American last spring and returned to winter again in Tortuguero selecting the same exact area to winter as last year!!



White-collared Manakin (female above, male below). The males preform complex dances in leks in hopes up attracting a mate in which they produce a loud snapping sound with their wings. The snapping sound is a constant early morning occurrence however I have yet to find a dancing bird. Video of manakin dance




We also have a banding site located in the Parque National de Tortuguero. This expansive park was founded in 1975 to protect the important nesting grounds on the beaches for sea turtles as well as the surrounding rainforest. Banding here involves an early morning hike of about 25 minutes to the park where we set up our nets. Consisting of mostly primary rainforest we see (and hear) a totally different array of birds than at CCC. This place is a paradise for birders and the mornings are filled with bird songs such as the beautiful Song Wren (3rd link) Song Wren Song We spotted a White-Crowned Pigeon in the coastal scrub and unknown to me, this is an extremely rare sighting for Costa Rica. Upon entering it in ebird I received a confirmation email asking for more clarification. Luckily I snapped a terrible, documentation quality photo which I submitted and word got around in the birding community initiating a steady flow of birders in the country into the park to search for it. My first Costa Rican rare bird!


Documentation photo of a White-Crowned Pigeon in Tortuguero National Park.


Tortuguero National Park is home to a spectacular amount of biodiversity including 375 species of birds, 400 species of tree and over 2000 species of plants. It is also known for its abundance of the dangerous eyelash viper (Bothriechis schlegelii). This beautiful but highly venomous snake is present in many color morphs. It certainly keeps me on my toes and adds a whole new element to banding birds. I make it a rule to not step or touch anything without looking carefully. We took great care when we set up the site to make our net lanes wide to provide ample space to walk by the nets without touching vegetation. I have so far seen 2 (both of the yellow phase) in just 3 trips to the park.



An Eyelash Viper (below possibly a juvenile based on its much smaller size)



Next week we will band 3 times at CCC as well as travelling to 3 sites (the Airport, Cano Palma - a Canadian run tropical research station in old growth primary rainforest, and Tortuga Lodge - a tourist lodge located within primary rainforest where pale-billed woodpeckers, a relative of the ivory-billed woodpecker, are sometimes caught. With any luck I will get to band one myself).

Tortuguero

A lot has happened since my last post. Spent a couple days in San Jose getting to know the common bird species. I was lucky enough to be able to visit INBIO, the Costa Rican equivalent of the Smithsonian. I got a private tour of the insect taxonomy lab and was blown away by what I saw. Picture a building the size of a high school gym, filled with specimens. One entire wing, bigger than my house, was dedicated solely for beetles and butterflies which are pinned in trays stacked 35 high 15 long and hundreds of rows. You do the math, millions is what you will find. Each tray has 10-100 insects depending on size, rhinocerous beetles, weevils, fireflies, click beetles, silver and gold beetles, blue, yellow, red, striped, poca dotted, zig zags, you name it. No pattern made by man has not already been displayed on a tropical beetle. This place turns out new species weekly, in fact it has been calculated that in their first 20 years (celebrated this year) they have described a new species every 3.5 days!!! There is also a little park on the grounds that has a impressive array of birds to be found. I saw some beautiful life birds such as RUFOUS CAPPED WARBLER, and NORTHERN JACANA as well as some familiar migrant birds such as YELLOW WARBLER and BALTIMORE ORIOLE.

On Monday, we left for Tortuguero, this involves a 2.5 hour bus ride to Cariari through the perfectly preserved primary rainforest of Braulio Carrillo National Park. The bus rides up over the mountains offering breathtaking vistas of steep precipices blanked in rainforest without a human blemish as far as one can observe. From Cariari we took the bus 1 hour to Las Pavonas and transfered to a boat which took us to Tortuguero an hour further. Tortuguero is one of the wettest rainforests in the world with nearly 6000mm of rainfall each year. There are no roads and the only means of transport is boat which winds through the maze of canals that penetrate in every which direction. The town itself is situated on a narrow sliver of land between the caribbean and Tortuguero lagoon and at the opening of the massive Tortuguero National Park and this is where I am staying at a turtle investigation center.

This past week has consisted of the grueling job of opening the trails and banding net lanes reclaimed by the jungle from when banding last occured this time last year. The machete is the best tool assuming you don't slice though an eyelash pit viper of which I was very careful not to do. We were able to clear one site a day. I have found only one snake so far, a non venomous tree snake. I have seen lots of new birds including 3 species of trogon and 2 manakins as well as the absolutely stunning golden hooded tanager (you must google this bird).

Tomorrow we open the nets for the first time here at CCC. I wonder what the first bird will be.

A Whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus)feeding on Tortuguero Beach

Black-bellied Plover (Pluvialis squatarola)

Cane Toad (Bufo Marinus)

Bare-throated Tiger Heron (Tigrisoma mexicanum)

A very cool insect

Bienvenidos al San Jose

Tropical Kingbirds are common in Downtown San Jose. Public Domain Photo by Unknown Author

San Jose is the gateway to the rest of Costa Rica. Inevitably anyone who wants to witness the treasures of the country must past through this bustling city whose beehive marketplaces can both dazzle and frighten the traveler. I am staying at a popular hostel in the financial district of town. I am already familiar with the country's two most popular beers Imperial, and Pilsen, which are made by the same company and actually taste the same. Surely they just slap another label on the bottle and call it something different. Last night I got a chance to see the University, and the busy district adjacent not to unlike an American college town. Chespi who will be overseeing our work in Tortuguero, took us out so that we could go over some of what we will need to know, however the noise from the bar made communication difficult. Hopefully I will have another opportunity to listen to what he said.

For me, the one thing that always assures me that I am traveling and no longer at home, is hearing the the different pigeon songs of the morning. I think this was even true before I was a birder. The one here seems to be White-winged Dove, whereas this summer I was awakened by Eurasian Collared Dove. Both songs are very different than the locally abundant early morning singer the Mourning Dove. So far I have been able to track down: Rufous-collared sparrows, Tropical Kingbirds, Great-tailed grackels, Rufous-tailed hummingbird, Rock dove, and some unknown parrots. It promises to be a good trip filled with new birds. Today I will visit the metropolitan park of the city, and will have special permission to bird the research section thanks again to Chespi.

Tomorrow I will be heading to Tortuguero for a few days of machete work to reclaim the net lanes from a season of jungle growth and hope to be banding birds by Monday.

The widespread Rufous Collared Sparrow. Public Domain Photo by: Dario Sanches