Category Archives: Costa Rica

Graceful

March 8, 2017Bird Behavior, Birds of Prey, Costa Rica, Nesting & Courtship, TravelKate St. John

Swallow-tailed kite in flight (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

We use words like powerful, strong or fierce to describe raptors but this one is different. The swallow-tailed kite (Elanoides forficatus) is truly graceful.

Named for their beautiful black tails, their flight is so buoyant that they barely flap as they swoop and turn to grab food from the air or the treetops. They seem to be moving in slow motion and it’s true. They can fly slowly because their wings and tails are so long.

Swallow-tailed kites live year round in South America but only visit the southern U.S. and Central America to breed. They eat mostly insects which they capture with their feet but supplement their diet with frogs, lizards and nestling birds during the nesting season.

I’ve seen solo kites returning to Florida in late February but my best experience was last month on the Road Scholar birding trip to Costa Rica. We saw flocks of swallow-tailed kites and they were spectacular!

At a pond near the road to Agua Buena, three kites skimmed the water, drinking and bathing, as graceful as swallows. They flew so low that we could see the bluish sheen on their backs. Jon Goodwill photographed them in the flight.

Swallow-tailed kite, bathing (photo by Jon Goodwill) — Swallow-tailed kite, bathing or drinking in flight (photo by Jon Goodwill)

Swallow-tailed kite lifting off from its bath (photo by Jon Goodwill)

Later we took a detour … and we were lucky. Our guide Roger Melendez saw a pair of kites building a nest. Bert Dudley zoomed his camera for this video of the female arranging the sticks. (You can hear us talking in the background.)

I would love to show you the beautiful flight of these graceful birds. This video of three man-made kites flown by Ray Bethell is the closest approximation.

Swallow-tailed kites are so graceful.

(top photo from Wikimedia Commons, bathing and drinking photos by Jon Goodwill, video by Bert Dudley. Click on the images to see the originals)

Tanagers True And False

February 28, 2017Costa Rica, Songbirds, TravelKate St. John

Silver-throated tanager, Cherrie's tanager, yellow-crowned euphonia, Feb 2017 at Las Cruces (photo by Jon Goodwill) — Silver-throated tanager, Cherrie’s tanager, yellow-crowned euphonia, Las Cruces, Feb 2017 (photo by Jon Goodwill)

When I visited Costa Rica this month I saw more tanagers than I’d ever seen before … but some of them weren’t really tanagers.

Tanagers (Thraupidae) are the second largest family of birds on earth but their membership is constantly in flux as DNA tests move birds in and out of the family every year. In the photo above, all three birds used to be Thraupidae but one of them moved out in 2012.

Thanks to photos from fellow travelers Bert Dudley and Jon Goodwill, and from our guide Roger Melendez, here are tanagers we saw in Costa Rica, both true and false.

True Tanagers whose names include the word tanager:

Blue gray tanager (Thraupis episcopus), seen everywhere on our Costa Rican trip.

Blue gray tanager (photo by Jon Goodwill)

Cherrie’s tanagers (Ramphocelus costaricensis) were plentiful at Las Cruces Biological Station. Here’s a male, in velvet black and orange with a blue-gray beak, perching next to a female.

Cherrie's tanager, male and female (photo by Jon Goodwill) — Cherrie’s tanager, male and female (photo by Jon Goodwill)

The two palm tanagers (Thraupis palmarum) in front are photobombed by a red-legged honeycreeper (Cyanerpes cyaneus). The honeycreeper happens to be a tanager, too.

Palm tanagers with red-legged honeycreeper in the background (photo by Roger Melendez)

Speckled tanagers (Tangara guttata) are subtly gorgeous birds. These were at Las Cruces.

Speckled tanagers (photo by Bert Dudley)

Silver-throated tanagers (Tangara icterocephala) are very common.

Silver-throated tanager (photo by Bert Dudley)

True Tanagers whose names don’t say “tanager”. These species are in the Tanager family but you’d never know it by their names.

The red-legged honeycreeper (Cyanerpes cyaneus), posing above with the palm tanagers, is in the Tanager family.
The green honeycreeper (Chlorophanes spiza), below, is too.

Green honeycreeper (photo by Jon Goodwill)

The scarlet-thighed dacnis (Dacnis venusta) has beautiful scarlet thighs. Too bad the leaves are hiding them.

Scarlet-thighed dacnis (photo by Bert Dudley)

The streaked saltator (Saltator striatipectus), with a beak like a grosbeak, is a tanager.

Streaked saltator (photo by Roger Melendez)

The slaty flowerpiercer (Diglossa plumbea) is a recent move (or about to move) into the Tanager family. Some websites still list him as a Sparrow/Bunting (Emberizidae). Notice his hooked beak for piercing flowers.

Slaty flowerpiercer (photo by Jon Goodwill)

False Tanagers that are still called “tanagers.” These birds in the Piranga genus were moved to the Cardinal family (Cardinalidae).

Flame-colored tanager (Piranga bidentata), plentiful at Savegre.

Flame-colored tanager (photo by Bert Dudley)

Summer tanager (Piranga rubra). Another cardinal relative.

“False” Tanagers that used to be in the Tanager family, though “tanager” is not in their name.

The yellow-crowned euphonia (Euphonia luteicapilla), pictured at the top with two true tanagers, was in the Tanager family (Thraupidae) until 2012 when he became a Finch (Fringillidae). This didn’t affect the euphonia’s life but it scrambled our field guides.

Yellow-crowned euphonia (photo by Roger Melendez)

As you can see, the Tanager family can change in a flash!

(photos by Bert Dudley, Jon Goodwill and Roger Melendez)

The Falcon’s Laugh

February 27, 2017Birds of Prey, Costa Rica, Travel, VocalizationsKate St. John

Laughing Falcon, Costa Rica (photo by Bert Dudley)

27 February 2017

On my trip to Costa Rica I wanted to see a laughing falcon. And then I wanted to hear it.

Laughing falcons (Herpetotheres cachinnans) are very vocal birds that live in Central and South America from Mexico to northern Argentina. They specialize in eating snakes — even poisonous ones — which they kill by biting off the heads. Ch’ol Maya legend says the birds can cure themselves of snake bites. And yet, the birds sound spooky.

At dusk laughing falcons raise their voices in advertisement calls or duets. They start with a gwa call, getting louder and louder, that usually morphs into two syllables: gwa co.

One evening before dinner at Las Cruces Biological Station, Bert Dudley filmed this laughing falcon warming up at dusk.

The two-syllable call gave the bird its common name, halcón guaco, but those calls don’t sound like laughing.

Here is his laugh:

“Laughing Falcon (Herpetotheres cachinnans)” from xeno-canto by Mario Trejo. XC771495

The falcon only laughs when he’s worried or upset.

(photo and video by Bert Dudley)

The Walking Palm

February 19, 2017Costa Rica, Travel, TreesKate St. John

Here’s a tree whose roots are taller than a man and are said to “walk” 20 meters a year(*). Really?

The walking palm (Socratea exorrhiza) is native to Central and South America where its narrow trunk grows 50-80 feet tall with stilt roots up to eight feet high. The walking palms at Wilson Botanical Gardens, Costa Rica were so tall that I couldn’t get their tops in the viewfinder.

Walking palm trees, Wilson Botanical Garden, Costa Rica, 2 Feb 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)

The tree’s claim to fame, repeated by local guides and the BBC, is that it can “walk” more than 65 feet a year by throwing out new roots to one side, leaning toward the new roots and abandoning those on the trailing edge.

But this is not true.

Reality Check: 20 meters per year is 65.6 feet, the height of 6 story building. At 5.5 feet per month it’s a distance that’s easy to see and hard to ignore. You would notice that the plant is not where you left it!

Scientists have measured over and over and the walking palm never walks. But they are puzzled why it has enormous stilt roots. It occurred to me that an old theory about the roots may have spawned the walking legend.

In 1980, John Bodley and Foley C. Benson proposed that the tree has stilts so it can recover when downed by another tree, as shown in the diagram below.

How the stilt roots of Socratea exhorriza allow it to right itself (Bodley, John; Foley C. Benson (March 1980) via Wikimedia Commons) — 1980: How the stilt roots of Socratea exhorriza allow it to right itself (from a paper by John Bodley & Foley C. Benson, March 1980, via Wikimedia Commons)

Tree #4 took root from the crown that hit the ground. Its distance from the old root system is the height of the old tree. The trees average 65 feet tall. Hmmmm!

Other fallen trees can sprout roots, too, and later studies disputed Bodley & Benson’s theory, yet none have solved the underlying mystery. Why does Socratea exorrhiza have such long stilts? No one knows for sure.

Meanwhile, at Wilson Botanical Gardens the walking palms stay rooted where the Wilsons planted them. Otherwise they’d be half a mile away by now.

(*) Meters or centimeters? See the comments here!

(photos by Kate St. John. Diagram from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original)

Ornate From Head To Toe

February 14, 2017Birds of Prey, Costa Rica, The Collection at CMNH, TravelKate St. John

Ornate hawk-eagle legs, Bird Hall, Carnegie Museum (photo by Kate St. John) — Legs of the ornate hawk-eagle, Bird Hall at Carnegie Museum (photo by Kate St. John)

14 February 2017

Museums inspire me.

The first time I saw the ornate hawk-eagle specimen at Carnegie Museum I didn’t even know the bird existed. Its beauty impressed me (ornate legs shown above) and that was before I learned what he can do with his head feathers! (photo below from Wikimedia Commons)

I hoped to see this bird in the wild some day, but I never expected it would happen.

Ornate hawk-eagle (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Ornate hawk-eagles (Spizaetus ornatus) live in the rainforest from southeastern Mexico to Colombia but are rarely seen. Their numbers are declining because of deforestation, so it was quite a thrill when our Road Scholar birding group saw one at San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica on 4 February 2017. We learned afterward that none had been seen in the area since a flyover two years before and prior to that 10 years. We were very lucky.

This video from the Organization for Tropical Studies shows how beautiful they are.

video embedded from Organization for Tropical Studies on YouTube

Ornate hawk-eagle voices are high pitched, similar to those of bald eagles and ospreys. The bird we saw made no sound.

video embedded from American Bird Conservancy on YouTube

(credits are in the captions)

In The Subduction Zone

February 11, 2017Costa Rica, TravelKate St. John

Subduction landscape along the Costanera Sur, vicinity of Quepos (photo by Kate St. John)

Reflections on a trip to Costa Rica, Jan 27-Feb 6, 2017:

One of the unusual features of Costa Rica’s landscape is the bumpy-looking surface in the subduction zone. Pennsylvania has nothing like it.

Near Costa Rica’s Pacific shore the Cocos tectonic plate dives under the Carribean plate. This slow but relentless movement causes ripples in the landscape with small stand-alone hills and pockets where the surface was dragged under. (Here’s a diagram of tectonic subduction.)

The photo above was taken in the subduction area on Route 34 near Quepos. Below, I’ve marked light pink circles for each small hill and dark pink for the visible subsidence pockets among the grass.

Hilltops (light pink) and pockets (dark pink) in the subduciton zone near Quepos, Costa Rica (retouched photo by Kate St. John) — Hilltops (light pink) and pockets (dark pink) in the subduction zone near Quepos, Costa Rica (retouched photo by Kate St. John)

This isn’t a stable place to build anything. Even the road has dips and ripples.

We don’t have a subduction zone in southwestern Pennsylvania but we know something about subsidence. In Washington and Greene Counties, longwall mining machines remove the coal seam and then back out of the mine causing the roof and surface to collapse. You can see its effect in the roller coaster appearance of Interstate 79 in Washington County. Click here for DEP photos of longwall subsidence problems on Interstate 70 and here for a PDF with maps describing longwall mining plans under both I-70 and I-79 in 2004.

Pennsylvania’s man-made subsidence has a cost.

(photos by Kate St. John)

Magnificent Butterflies

February 6, 2017Costa Rica, Insects, TravelKate St. John

Mariposa morpho, Costa Rica (photo from Wikimedia Commons) — Blue morpho butterfly, Costa Rica (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

On a birding trip to Costa Rica:

While looking for birds in Costa Rica it’s impossible to ignore the magnificent butterflies. Though February is a slow time for them there are many wonders to see. Here are just three of Costa Rica’s 1,500 species.

The common blue morpho (Morpho peleides), pictured above, is one of 29 species in the Morpho genus. Huge and beautiful with a wingspan of 5 to 8 inches, its color comes not from pigment but from the blue light reflected by its dorsal scales. It hides from predators by closing its wings to show off its spotted brown ventral side (click here to see). In the rainforest it flashes blue — on and off — as it flaps its wings.

The glasswinged butterfly (Greta oto) has no problem hiding since most of its 2.2 – 2.4 inch wingspan is transparent. But does it need to hide? Perhaps not. Its caterpillar host plant is Cestrum, a member of the toxic nightshade family that probably makes these butterflies poisonous.

Glasswinged butterfly, Costa Rica (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

With an 8 inch wingspan the owl butterfly (Caligo memnon) is the largest in Costa Rica. It earned its name from the large ventral spot that looks like an owl’s eye, perhaps reinforced by its crepuscular habits. Its caterpillars feed on Heliconia and bananas, so this butterfly is sometimes considered an agricultural pest. Alas!

Owl butterfly (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Butterflies are most plentiful in Costa Rica during the rainy season, June to November, so I’ll have to come back later if I want to see more.

Goodbye, butterflies. I’m flying home today.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons)

Day 10: Fly home

It Started With Volcanoes

February 5, 2017Costa Rica, TravelKate St. John

Turrialba Volcano erupting, 2014 (photo from Wikimedia Commons) — Turrialba Volcano, erupting in 2014 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

On a birding trip to Costa Rica:

100 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs, North and South America were far apart and Costa Rica didn’t exist. Instead the oceans were connected by the Central American Seaway that flowed from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

North and South America approach each other. Water flows from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Central American Seaway (image linked from Woods Hole Oceanus Magazine, April 2004)

The earth’s crust kept moving, as it still does today. The North American Plate drifted close to South America and two smaller tectonic plates smashed into each other at the site of Costa Rica (center of the diagram below). The Caribbean Plate still remains on top and the Cocos Plate continues to dive into the subduction zone.

Plate tectonics near Costa Rica (image from Wikimedia Commons)

Subduction zones are geologically active places with earthquakes and volcanoes. They often create archipelagos like Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Costa Rica began as a group of volcanic islands but the plates kept approaching and accrued land around them. Eventually a bridge formed at Panama 3 to 15 million years ago (the timing is disputed).

And then, three million years ago, mammals of all kinds began walking across the bridge from one continent to the other. Llamas walked out of North America into South America where they live today. Porcupines and armadillos walked north. The armadillos are still walking.

Today Costa Rica and Panama are narrow mountainous countries with enormous biodiversity for their size, not just because they’re in the tropics (where biodiversity is naturally high) but because they are the bridge, the mixing zone, where north meets south and both cross over.

Panama’s volcanoes are dormant but not so in Costa Rica. Recent ash eruptions from Turrialba Volcano, pictured above, closed San José’s airport in January.

Costa Rica started with volcanoes.

(image credits: Turrialba volcano and Central American plate tectonics from Wikimedia Commons; click on the images to see the originals. Map of North and South America approaching each other is linked from Woods Hole Oceanus Magazine, April 2004)

Day 9: Forest trails at Cerro de la Muerte, return to San José

Silky Bird

February 4, 2017Costa Rica, Songbirds, TravelKate St. John

Long-tailed silky flycatcher, at Cerro de la Muerte, Costa Rica (photo from Wikimedia Commons) — Long-tailed silky-flycatcher at Cerro de la Muerte, Costa Rica (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

On a birding trip to Costa Rica:

This bird with unusually silky feathers is only found in the mountains of Costa Rica and western Panama.

The long-tailed silky-flycatcher (Ptiliogonys caudatus) is one of four birds that used to be in the Waxwings’ family. Like their former relatives, long-tailed silky-flycatchers eat fruit, flycatch for insects, and flock together in the non-breeding season. They also have a fondness for mistletoe berries just like North America’s only Silky-flycatcher, the phainopepla.

This blurry photo from Wikimedia Commons gives you an idea of how easy it is to find a long-tailed silky-flycatcher if you’re in the right habitat.

Long-tailed silky-flycatcher (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

I think I’ll see one today. We’re birding at Cerro de la Muerte where these photos were taken.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals.)

Day 9: Forest trails at Cerro de la Muerte

Tomorrow Should Be Resplendent

February 3, 2017Costa Rica, Songbirds, TravelKate St. John

Resplendent quetzal leaving nest hole (photo by Joseph C Boone via Wikimedia Commons)

On a birding trip in Costa Rica:

Today we’re traveling up-mountain to 7,000 feet above sea level to San Gerardo de Dota, the cloud forest home of the resplendent quetzal. This legendary trogon is the national bird of Guatemala and a must-see species for birders visiting Costa Rica.

Resplendent quetzals (Pharomachrus mocinno) live in moist, cool, mountain rainforests from southern Mexico to Panama where they eat fruits in the avocado family. Both sexes have iridescent green bodies but the male has a deep red breast, a helmet-like green crest, and a magnificent long green tail.

Their genus name, Pharomachrus, means long cloak and refers to the male’s “tail” which is actually four long upper tail covert feathers. At 30+ inches, they can be three times the length of the male’s body — so long that when he enters the nest hole his tail remains outside. In the photo above, a male is leaving the nest while his tail is still going in!

Legends of the resplendent quetzal date back to Mayan and Aztec cultures where he was considered the “god of the air” and a symbol of goodness and light. In Guatemalan legend the quetzal guided Tecún Umán in his fight against the Spanish conquistadors. When Tecún Umán died, the quetzal’s breast became red from his blood. The quetzal is also a symbol of freedom because he could not be kept in captivity, dying so quickly in a cage.

And so tomorrow I will have my fingers crossed, hoping to see this resplendent bird.

Resplendent Quetzal, Costa Rica (photo by Francesco Veronesi via Wikimedia Commons)

(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals)

Day 8: Traveling to San Gerardo de Dota

Outside My Window

A Blog of Birds & Nature with Kate St. John