Hummingbird Babies

A female Rufous-tailed Hummingbird sits motionless on her eggs only inches above people passing underneath her.

The ecotourists on their way to dinner at La Salva Lodge, Costa Rica, don't notice her just off the canopied trail in the rain.

Broad leaves conceal and protect her as she patiently incubates her eggs. Keeping her eggs warm and dry during the frequent rains will require 15-17 days of attention.

To go unnoticed for that long she needs to be discretely feathered. Her rufous tail is her only showy feature. Yet still, most of her tail is hidden.  

A few miles away at the La Selve Biological Station, a Band-tailed Barbthroat Hummingbird rests on her nest. She too, wove it herself.

Shaped from twigs and other plant matter, woven with spider's silk, she hangs suspended over a pond. The leaf provides her with protection from the rain.

She looks wary, but if she felt threatened by our passing she would have flown off. She didn't.

It is safe to assume she is incubating eggs, too.

A new generation of Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds has hatched at Savegre Lodge in the Talamanca Cordillera mountains of Costa Rica.

Having hatched from an egg smaller than a green pea and now still only the size of a peanut shell, the pair rests defenselessly.

Remaining motionless, eyes closed, they wait for their mother's return.

Mother rufous-tailed drops to the edge of the nest and immediately freezes to avoid attracting attention.

But, the hungry babies can't wait and give away their location...three feet high in a four foot bush.

Consisting of mashed-up midges and gnats combined with nectar, these feedings will continue for weeks at the nest, still longer after they fledge.

The feedings take place deep down the throat.      

It seems unfair that the male hummingbirds get all the attention, while the female does most of the work of raising the next generation, but it works out that way. By necessity female birds are less colorful. How and why it evolved this way I can't explain, other than to say female birds choose the most colorful males more often. Color may be an indicator of health and strength in the female's mind.

A male Magnificent Hummingbird rests on an equally beautifully adorned branch. Always wary, but faster than his enemies, he glows in the late morning sun. Common to the mountainous reaches of Costa Rica, although reaching into Southeastern Arizona, too, the Magnificent Hummingbird is a rare find in the USA.

Allan

Credit: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds
Credit: The Sibley Guide to Birds
Credit: The Birds of Costa Rica, Richard Garrigues & Robert Dean

Resplendent Quetzal

The people of Central America can be rightly proud of their Resplendent Quetzal.

When shortened to just quetzal (pronounced: KETS' al), he still has the ability to impress.

Together the male and female Resplendent Quetzals are elegantly feathered in shades of blues, green, red, yellow and white.

The male sports a long tail-like feather, which isn't an actual tail feather, rather just a look-alike one. His tail is white on the underside and is largely hidden.

The female is similar in shape and size, but lacks the helmet-like head feathers and the red breast of the male.

This pair was building a home in what may have been a woodpecker hole in the past, but it wasn't quite roomy enough for them, so they were remodeling.

Diving head first into the hole, with only his long tail dangling outside, the male excavates wood chips mouthful by mouthful.

The female was just watching for now, but she too took a turn at enlarging the hole.

You could call the mountain highlands where the Resplendent Quetzals lives remote, but it is easily accessible by car or truck.

Tourists make the trip often and there are businesses and shops throughout the small Talamanca Mountain village of San Gerardo de Dota.

A specie's chances of survival is mainly dependent on the survival of its habitat. To that extent, Costa Rica has a good record of maintaining its bird populations by maintaining the habitats of lush rainforests, deserts, sandy beaches and cloud forests.

The small West Virginia-sized country of Costa Rica has more bird species than all of North America...more than 830 species.  

It was confusing to me why the female quetzal suddenly started to make a hole on the opposite side of their nest tree.

Could this be a backdoor?

The male quetzal watched in amazement as she hammered her stout bill into the old dead tree. For all her work she was making little progress while exerting much effort.

If her mate could look confused, he looked confused to me. Starting this new hole when there was a perfectly good hole on the other side of the tree seemed odd.

He didn't help her.  He just watched.

It didn't take long before she abandoned that project and the work continued on the first hole. Whatever the outcome of the nest building project, the Resplendent Quetzals will be raising their family living in a beautiful place...on a mountain side...in a forest...in Costa Rica.

Allan

Credit: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds
Credit: The Birds of Costa Rica, Richard Garrigues and Robert Dean
Credit: Wikipedia  

Green Honeycreeper, Costa Rica

A Green Honeycreeper watches anxiously.  Having scored a prize bunch of bananas hanging at a local restaurant only to lose it to a larger Clay-colored Thrush, the Green Honeycreeper can only watch and wait.

A Clay Colored Thrush, the ubiquitous national bird of Costa Rica, laid claimed the bananas and felt no need to share.

The bananas hang in an opening where a window would be, if the Neotropical Costa Rican restaurant needed a window.

An abundance of birds populate the trees surrounding the restaurant, but only the bravest birds will fly inside.

A badly bruised banana reveals the fruit's soft insides. Today, the Clay-colored Thrush is being served first at the Rancho Magallanes Restaurant, Chilamate, Costa Rica. The reward went to the strongest.

While waiting to be served, the Green Honeycreeper grabs a little protein to go with the carbohydrates of the banana. A bee will do nicely. Seed and nectar eating birds commonly catch insects to supply protein for themselves and their nestlings.

Eventually the Green Honeycreeper gets a turn at the banana, too.

For a country smaller than West Virginia, Costa Rica is rich in bird life. With 850-900 bird species depending on whose data you choose, even the brilliant Green Honeycreeper barely stands out in a country with so many beautiful birds.

In Costa Rica even if you don't actually go looking for birds...they're all around you.

While enjoying a soup 'n sandwich at a roadside open-air restaurant the birds entertained us for nearly an hour.

Allan

Credit: The Birds of Costa Rica, Richard Garrigues and Robert Dean

Costa Rica, Day One

This series is about my second trip to Costa Rica. My first trip was back in 1990, during my working life as a television photojournalist. At that time I was working on a story for WITI-TV6 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with meteorologist Vince Condella. Then the story was on the newly evolving ecotourism trend. Today, on this trip, my goal was to find and photograph beautiful birds. I believe I accomplished some of that. 

My wife, Linda, joined me along with our good friends, Mark Laux and Wendy Jabas, for a ten day trip divided into three parts...a Caribbean tropical rainforest, an interior mountain highland and a dry season Pacific Coast national forest.  

This blog is not a travelogue, but I feel I need to explain a brief shift in format. I will include other animals in the next several posts, simply because I found them new and interesting.  I hope you find this focus shift interesting also.

As the departing sun darkened the sky above me, a toucan landed in a rainforest tree. The Chestnut Mandibled Toucan immediately began claiming his rights to this tree and seemingly every other tree in sight. He was being quite vocal and quite insistent. His calls carried far beyond the Selva Verde Lodge and Rainforest Reserve where we were staying.

The Chestnut Mandibled Toucan is the largest toucan in Costa Rica and one of forty-two species of Latin American toucans.

Male and female Chestnut Mandibled Toucans look alike with the male being only slightly larger at 22 inches (56 cm). They live in a colorful bird family, too, all with outsized bills.

The impressive bill may look intimidating to enemies, but it is not a defensive tool. Instead it is made of a spongy material called keratin...extremely lightweight, largely hollow (think: fingernails).

Additionally, the bill serves another propose. It's a cooling system to regulate body temperature. Arteries in the bill expand when it's hot to expel excess heat into the steamy rainforest.

He didn't seem to mind as I lit up his eyes with bright flashes. Instead he turned to give me another pose of his finely feathered body. Blue legs and red under tail coverts brighten this beautiful bird's color palette even more.

More at eye level is a Summer Tanager. Hidden by darkness, but not really hiding, the Summer Tanager perches as proudly as rainforest conditions permit, reflecting nicely when sufficient light is applied.

The Summer Tanager rarely makes it to Wisconsin, although a similar red bird, the Scarlet Tanager comes to Wisconsin in the warm weather months.

The strawberry colored Summer Tanager is the only completely red bird in North America. Living on a diet of bees and wasps, the Summer Tanager is a challenging bird to find and photograph.

Usually preferring the upper story of tall trees to wait for prey, this one was driven down into the dark understory by the rain.

Also sheltering from today's steady rain is the Olive-backed Euphonia, a small songbird in the finch family. This female Olive-backed Euphonia is accustomed to rain.  The rainforest is her year-round home.

Preferring the Caribbean side of Central America, the Olive-backed Euphonia lives mostly on fruit and so must maintain a home range that provides for a fruit diet.

The male Olive-backed Euphonia is similar in appearance with only his yellow forehead identifying him.


(Click any picture to enlarge)

In the low-light reaches of the rainforest you may also find bats sheltering from the storm. My guide, Ivan Castillo, found this group of four clinging to the side of a tree waiting for even more darkness to descend.

Bats are just as important to an ecosystem as birds in pollinating, dispersing seeds and balancing a healthy rainforest. As evening progressed bats swirled and swooped around gathering flying insects nearly invisible to us.

The tale of bats getting caught in your hair is folklore, legend and outrightly false. Night hunting bats have adequate nighttime vision, can echo-locate flying insects in the dark and have no interest in interplay with humans. Bats seldom hunt in the rain though. Rain interferes with their echolocation.

We quickly left this small group, not out of fear, but rather concern my flash would disturb their daytime sleeping rhythm.

Rain in a rainforest is to be expected. As challenging as it is to photograph birds in the rain, I feel grateful to have seen the number of species I encountered on this first day in Costa Rica.

Allan

Credit: The Birds of Costa Rica,
Richard Garrigues and Robert Dean
Credit: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds
Credit: Wikipedia

Desert Birds in the Snow

                          Although snow in rare in the desert, new moisture is always welcome.
These two Curved-billed Thrashers seem puzzled, as snow covers their cactus. Possibly never having experienced snow before, they appear confused...What's this all about?

Although the desert is typically hot and dry, desert snows will develop when atmospheric conditions are right.

As welcome as snow is for some, snow makes finding food harder, especially for the ground dwelling birds like the Mourning Doves.

A young Cooper's Hawk may consider snow an advantage. Cooper's Hawks hunt other birds and may benefit from a white blanket of snow highlighting their prey.  S/he soars quietly with minimal effort looking for a meal.

Snow doesn't last long in the desert and a bird's search for food resumes quickly.

A common sight in the dry southwestern desert is the Ladder-backed Woodpecker.

This Ladder-backed circles sideways in search of insects. Insects hide in cracks and crevices.

His stiff tail supports him upright.

Insects can hide in inaccessible places, too, so finding them takes a bit of dexterity and daring for this Orange-crowned Warbler.

(Click any picture to enlarge)


The Cactus Wren is a year-round desert resident...winter cold to summer heat.

As the wren family's largest member, the Cactus Wren is well adapted to find enough moisture in food to survive in arid lands.

Snow melts beneath the Anna's Hummingbird as he awakes from torpor. Torpor is a state of lethargy where the bird's internal temperature drops and breathing and heart rate slows.

This conserves the tiny energy stores the Anna's Hummingbird possesses. Approximately the size of a ping-pong ball and the weight of a nickel...depletion of energy reserves could be fatal during a cold night.

The warmth he needs to rise each morning is provided by the sun. Arizona's dry air and intense sunshine brings him back to life to reflect the sunrise.

The Pyrrhuloxia is a tough-old-bird. He gets most, if not all, the moisture he needs from the food he eats...rarely drinking. As a seed-eating, ground-dwelling bird, capable of surviving in temperatures well over one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit he is well suited for the arid southwest.

Snow doesn't bother him and he seldom ventures out of the desert. Related to the more common red Northern Cardinal of the eastern two-thirds of the United States, and similar in appearance, the Desert Cardinal is quite comfortable when the cacti are covered in snow.

Allan

Credit: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds
Credit: The Sibley Guide to Birds

Harris's Hawk

(Note: I apologize for the awful mix of font stiles and spacing you MAY experience while viewing some of my posts. I believe this is a compatibility problem with Blogger, Apple's OS X Yosemite and Word that I'm unable to correct. If anyone has the solution or suggestion for this problem, please advise.)

Watchful waiting pays off for the Harris's Hawk.

As a hawk of the arid southwest, the Harris's Hawk is the picture of patience.

Upright and formal in appearance, an adult Harris's Hawk looks regal while surveying the house dotted desert below. 

Little escapes a hawk's notice from this vantage point. With a 42" wingspan and sharp talons for hunting jackrabbits and packrats, the Harris's Hawk in at home in the desert.

Long-legged and elegantly feathered in charcoal grays and rufous reds, males and females look alike. 

Harris's Hawks are cooperative hunters. Teaming up with a mate, a lead hawk will flush a jackrabbit while the others chase it down. Teams of five hawks have proven to work best at this hunting technique.

This juvenile can only wait and watch. Too young to join the adults, he passes time over a Tucson, Arizona horse corral.

                                   Another juvenile sibling a few trees away also waits for the adults to return.

One adult Harris's Hawk has captured a medium-sized bird, is enjoying it and is not about to share it. 

Other than nesting time, few adult birds share their food resources with a mate. Quarreling and/or outright thievery is far more common in ownership disputes. 

From hummingbirds to eagles...sharing in not in a bird's nature.

Dining on a bird may be a treat for this Harris's Hawk...it's something special...savory...not the usual 
rats'n rabbits diet. 

Curiously though, the option of eating the bird in front of your mate may be satisfying for one, but, I'm assuming here, disturbing to the other. 

The hapless Harris's Hawk has little choice but to look away in disappointment, as the meal is plucked and plundered atop a pole overlooking a horse corral in Tucson.

Allan

Credit: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds

Credit: The Sibley's Guide to Birds, Second Edition

Mexican Jay

You'll know they've arrived before you see them.

The highly social Mexican Jay is a noisy bird. Traveling in small family groups, they command your attention by their numbers and clamorous calls.

This band of about a dozen Mexican Jays arrived at the Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon, Arizona on a routine stop to partake in the feast set out for birds.

The seed, suet and sugar-water buffet behind the Santa Rita Gift Shop attracts birds to this mountainside lodge in uncounted numbers.

The birders who line up to watch the birds could be counted, but no one has.

Mexican Jays are in the same family as Blue Jays found in Wisconsin all year long. Crows, Ravens and Magpies are close relatives.

In shades of blue and gray the Mexican Jay is slightly less colorful then the Blue Jay, yet still impressive in size and shape.

Gregarious by nature, they attract attention with their energetic darting, dashing and bouncing.

The family groups stay together for years. Males and females look alike with only the juveniles giving away their age.  The telltale white on the bill indicates an age of less than two years old. With time the bill will turn completely black.

Handouts from people are not their only resource. Living in pine/oak forests at higher elevations, they thrive on acorns and pine nuts stored for the winter. Along with insects and invertebrates they manage quite well without the people food.

Mexican Jays are resourceful and manage quite well. They can't be blamed for taking the low hanging fruit provided by humans. They are of Least Concern as to their survival in the foreseeable future.

That is not the case for far too many birds.

Allan

Credit: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds
Credit: The Sibley's Guide to Birds
Credit: Wikipedia