Costa Rican Wildlife – Part 3
This post will focus on some of the beautiful birds I photographed in the Costa Rican highland cloud forest.
I encourage you to click on the images and graphics in this post to enlarge them for a better, more detailed viewing experience.
After four days on the tropical Osa Peninsula, we drove four hours to San Gerardo de Dota in the highlands where we would spend two days searching for exotic birds. San Gerardo de Dota is a small town nestled in the Savegre River Valley of the rugged Talamanca Mountain Range.
The average elevation in this area is 7,785 feet but chasing birds up and down the mountainous terrain can take you up to over 9,400 feet. Our base of operations was the Savegre Hotel Natural Reserve. The hotel is located on a 500-acre private reserve with beautiful gardens and both forest and river trails for guests to explore.
This family-owned property was one of the first eco lodges in the area and has been operating for 50 years. The lodge sits at 7,200 feet and is just outside the Los Quetzales National Park. While it was hot and humid on the Osa Peninsula (no jackets needed), it was cool (jackets a good thing) with intermittent misty rain in the cloud forest. Compared to popular cloud forest destinations such as Monteverde, this area is relatively unknown without the large tourist crowds.
What is a cloud forest?
A cloud, or montane, rainforest is typically found along the sides of some mountains in tropical regions at altitudes between 3,000- and 10,000-feet that have a layer of clouds at the canopy level most of the time, year round.
Cloud forest ecosystems are not very common globally because they require special conditions of climate, elevation and distance from an ocean body. As trade winds from the northeast that have collected warm, moist air from the Caribbean Sea encounter the steep slopes of the Costa Rican mountains, the air is forced upwards where it expands and cools.
Since this cooler air cannot hold as much moisture as warm air, water vapor begins to condense, forming very tiny water droplets that appear as clouds. The water droplets in these clouds are often deposited on vegetative surfaces before they can coagulate into the larger drops of rain. This form of water deposition is called horizontal precipitation. A characteristic of cloud forests is the presence of a very high population of epiphytes such as mosses and bromeliads (the orchid is the most famous of the epiphytes). These epiphytes provide a large amount of surface area for capturing horizontal precipitation. Cloud forests maintain a humidity of nearly 100% throughout the year.
What is the difference between a rainforest and a cloud forest?
Rainforest refers to a tropical forest with trees that form a dense canopy having an annual rainfall of 100+ inches while a cloud forest, technically a type of rain forest, can only exist at altitudes above 3,000 feet having a massive population of epiphytes. The distinguishing characteristics between the two is the elevation at which they can exist along with the cloud cover found in a cloud forest. Both types of forests have great biodiversity. While rainforests may have broader biodiversity, cloud forests have more uniqueness with a greater concentration of endemic species (species found in only one locality). The only places that have greater concentrations of endemic species than the cloud forest are ocean-isolated island ecosystems such as the Galapagos.
We divided our time in the San Gerardo de Dota area between hiking through the cloud forest hunting a variety of avian species such as the quetzal and visiting a number of gardens frequented by hummingbirds.
We saw a number of different varieties of tanagers in the cloud forest.
The Flame-colored Tanager (formally known as the stripe-backed tanager) is a member of the same family as the cardinal. It is a 7.5-inch bird found from Mexico through Central America. They eat arthropods, insects and berries.
The Silver-throated Tanager is a 5-inch bird named for the color of its throat. They are found on wet mountain slopes at middle elevations (2,000-5,900 feet) ranging from Costa Rica southward to northern Peru. Males and females look similar except that females are a bit duller in color. They eat mainly fruit (as seen in the mouth of this bird) but will supplement their diet with arthropods.
The Blue-Gray Tanager is a fairly common 6-inch bird found in much of Costa Rica. Both sexes have identical color patterns. They prefer to eat fruit but will also eat insects. They are commonly called viuda (widow) after the blue-gray shawls that are traditionally worn by Costa Rican widows.
The Acorn Woodpecker is a medium-sized woodpecker (about 8-inches long) that ranges from Oregon southward through Central America to Columbia. It is rarely found below 3,300-feet in Costa Rica.
As the name implies, acorns are an important food. These birds store acorns in “granaries” which consist of many storage holes in trees, utility poles and wooden buildings. These granaries are used year after year, and each of the many holes will be filled with an acorn by autumn.
The Emerald Toucanet is a small toucan (15″) with a bill that is relatively short for a toucan. It hops through the foliage to forage. Fruit is preferred, but it will eat small animals, bird eggs and nestlings. They nest in tree cavities that have been carved by some other species.
We saw a lot of hummingbirds. They are difficult to identify especially since they can look very different under different lighting conditions. A lot of the fun here was to observe the behavior of these little birds and to try to stop their action with a camera. I found the Merlin Bird ID app from The Cornell Lab to be very useful in trying to identify the hummers and other birds (I use it on my iPhone). You can download a database for Costa Rica, and the app and databases are free. The way I use the app is to take a picture with my phone of the photo I have taken with my camera and let the app analyze it. I love this app and use it all the time in the U.S.
The Fiery-throated Hummingbird is the only hummingbird that combines all the colors of the rainbow on its throat and breast. You need to see the throat in good light or this species looks like other types of hummers.
This is truly the most beautiful of hummingbirds. Both sexes have the same coloration.
The Talamanca Hummingbird is a fairly large hummingbird with a long black beak and a white spot behind the eye. This one is preening.
The White-throated Mountain-gem is a medium-sized hummingbird. The male is mostly green with bold white throat and white line behind eye. The female has a green back and rufous-colored throat and breast.
Hummingbirds are anything but sweet little birds. They are territorial and often aggressive to other hummingbirds. I enjoyed watching them spar. Sometimes one bird would claim an area of flowers and proceed chase other hummers away from its “property”. They are actually pretty evil little birds!
Here are a few other shots, best viewed by clicking on them, that I caught of hummingbirds in the cloud forest:
Although we wanted to photograph a variety of birds in the cloud forest, the elusive Resplendent Quetzal was our holy grail. It is the largest and most spectacular member of the trogon family.
The male Resplendent Quetzal has a 14- to 16-inch long body that is bright green with a red lower breast and belly. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to capture the front of this bird in any of my photos. The male has an orange beak and a notable helmet-like head crest. His iridescent green feathers, makes him look like shiny wet canopy leaves. This appears to be a camouflage adaptation allowing the quetzal to hide in the forest canopy. During the spring breeding season, the male quetzal will grow a spectacular tail plume that can be a foot or more long. Unfortunately, this quetzal was photographed in September and does not have that plume.
Female resplendent quetzals are not as colorful as their male counterparts. The females are less vibrant in color and have a shorter tail. They have gray lower breasts, bellies, bills, and no head crest. These birds build their nests in holes in trees. After the eggs are laid, both parents take turns incubating them, the males during the day and females at night.
Resplendent quetzals are specialized fruit-eaters who particularly like the ping-pong ball-sized fruit of the wild avocado which is swallowed whole. They regurgitate the pits, a process that helps to spread these trees. They will eat fruits of some other trees along with insects, frogs, lizards and snails only when avocados are not available.
These birds are generally very shy and quiet in an attempt to avoid attracting their predators although they can be vocal during the breeding season when trying to attract a mate. The main predators of adult quetzals are eagles, hawks, and owls while emerald toucanets, jays, weasels and squirrels prey on their eggs and nestlings. The quetzal’s shy demeanor can make photographing them a challenge as they like to hide in dense, dark foliage and are very skittish. We ended up literally running up and down steep mountain trails trying to bag a photo of one. Our spotters would find a subject up the slope, but, by the time we got there, it would have left. A spotter would then find one down at the level of the river so down we hustled. Of course, when we got there, it would be gone and up we would need to go. We spent several hours running up and down. In one area, we tried doing a stakeout of some wild avocado trees hoping to observe feeding. The quetzal we saw landed but stayed high in a tall, photographically-impenetrable, dense tree for the very long time that we waited. Eventually, in another area of wild avocados, we located two quetzals that were relatively cooperative. These are the ones shown in the photos above (and at the top of this post). Our quest was fulfilled!
This is final installment from my trip to Costa Rica. If you have an interest in photographing wildlife, I recommend you check out Juan Pons’ Photo Workshops. I have yet to be disappointed in any wildlife-seeking adventure I have taken with him. Costa Rica was a great place to see some interesting, and even unique, wildlife. My first post, Costa Rican Wildlife – Part 1. Land of Sloths and Monkeys, covers the mammals I photographed on my trip, and my second, Costa Rican Wildlife – Part 2. Of Lizards, Frogs and Birds covers some of the reptiles, amphibians and birds I photographed on the Osa Peninsula. This was a wonderful trip, and I hope that you have enjoyed coming along through my photos. The process of writing this series of blog posts brought back great memories from my Costa Rican visit.
Resources:
- Reid, Leenders, Zook & Dean, The Wildlife of Costa Rica, A Field Guide
- Garrigues & Dean, The Birds of Costa Rica, A Field Guide