Poised for Flight: 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.