Birds!

February 19, 2013

A scarlet-rumped tanager showing off his butt

This trip has been my introduction to the world of birding. It is an amazing place to start. There are so many birds here (the total count for Refugio Bartola since 2001 is over 400 species) and a lot of the birds are colorful and charismatic and happen to sit in the brush and trees that are easily observed from a hammock or the breakfast table. What makes it even better is that my fellow TA, JP, is an avid and knowledgeable birder. Since I spend most days walking around the forest with him, it has been an excellent introduction to the neotropical avifauna. My bird list is a 97 right now. With one day in the forest a couple days of travel, I’m hoping to hit 100 (which is crazy to me!).

Red-legged honeycreeper- photo by Greg Grether

Some of the most wonderful birds I have discovered follow ant swarms. First of all, ant swarms. It’s an amazing sight, the leaf litter writhes with ant bodies.  Army ants literally swarm the forest floor, attacking and eating any insect that can’t get out of the way fast enough. Flying insects and vertebrates can usually avoid the ants, but hop/fly up into the air as the ants come pouring through. This is where the ant birds come in- they follow ant swarms, catching and eating the insects that hop into the air to avoid the ants. The birds don’t eat the ants themselves, but the insects they scare up.

Spotted antbird perched on a stick with a bi-colored antbird to the left

In addition to the unique behavior, many of the ant birds are absolutely striking with bright blue rings of skin around their eyes. Many of them are patterns of black and cinnamon color, and they make a soft chirring sound as they hop and flit through the understory following the swarms. One of these is a goofy looking bird that walks on the ground, looking a bit like a cross between a chicken and a short tailed peacock. This Rofous-vented Ground-cuckoo is apparently a must see for birders, and JP tells us there are neotropical birders where this is one of a few species they haven’t been able to find. I would have no idea of that here- I’ve been lucky enough to see two ground cuckoos in one location- one may have been a juvenile, it had a shorter tail and was less iridescent than the other- and I’ve had two separate sightings of these guys over a couple of days.

Rufous-vented ground-cuckoo!

Other birding highlights include watching a red-capped manakin lekking- tiny little birds with yellow legs and bright red caps, dancing like the moon walk on a thin branch (awesome youtube video of that here!). Also a rufous motmot, sitting on a low branch in the forest at dusk, a green ibis and a sunbittern near the river, and listening to a giant flock of mealy Amazon parrots coming in to roost in the evening, screeching and sounding like broken electronics up in the trees.

Some of my favorite creatures here in Nicaragua have been birds. I’m glad I finally gave them a chance!

Red-capped Manakin- photo by Greg Grether

Black throated trogon- photo by Greg Grether

Camera Traps!

February 11, 2013

Margay! Checking our camera out

Camera traps. Hands down the best thing that has happened on the FBQ so far. JP and I ran around with 9 of them a couple days ago, setting them up in spots in the forest that “we had good feelings about”. Camera traps are boxes that are meant to blend into the surroundings- they have infra red light and can capture images and videos of animals in the dark as well as the day light. They are motion censored, so you set them up, leave them alone for a few days, hopefully recording anything that walks by, and check them when you feel like it.

Margay(?) photo 2

Today we hiked out to where we set them- the furthest trail from camp that gets the least human traffic, and collected the photos onto a USB stick. As each was loading, we had some sense of how many photos and videos we collected. It was so exciting to speculate about what was on there- a jaguar! a tapir! It was a long hike back until we could get a computer and load all our images. By the time we got to camp it was almost lunch and a bunch of the students were around and picked up on our excitement and gathered around the computer with us. As we opened them, each find was better than the last. First an agouti, which looks kind of like a giant guinea pig (or a small capybara). Then a peccary, which is a wild pig. He (she) showed up twice, on two different cameras located in patches across the trail from each other. Then a brocket deer, a small deer with very pronounced facial structure and little pointy horns. They’ve never gotten a picture of one out here, though people from previous groups have glimpsed our heard them before. And finally, two photos of big cats. One, with its face pressed to the camera and is clearly investigating it, is a margay. It has a color pattern similar to a jaguar, though is much smaller. The second is a beautiful coated cat, though unfortunately you can’t see its face to identify it. We are guessing it is another margay, though the ocelot (also similarly patterned but larger) and the jaguar are not totally ruled out. As we were opening the photos, we were ridiculously excited and had everyone in the crowd yelling and cheering. Neither JP or I realized just how fun it would be to play with the camera traps. We moved a few to new locations, and “baited” a few with bananas (for the frugivores- apparently tapirs love bananas) and others with some canned tuna we bought on our excursion to the town of El Castillo yesterday. Hopefully we continue to get lots of exciting pictures- and try to learn a little more about the biodiversity of Refugio Bartola!

collared peccary

Red brocket deer

Fauna

February 11, 2013

We’ve made it through day 11 in the field- and are now past the halfway point. It has been amazing to be out in the jungle every day. The number of things I have seen is incredible. Today I was within a foot of a big male basilisk before I realized it was on the ground in front of me and I was barely able to stop before stepping on it. A basilisk looks kind of like an iguana with a headpiece and sails along the back. It’s also known as the Jesus Christ lizard, because they usually live along rivers and when they feel threatened can run away across the water! I also saw an agouti eating fruit on the trail. Even though it knew we were right there, it still just picked up an almendro fruit in its front paws and ate it like corn on the cob. I swear I’ve smelled big cat markings and wild pigs, and we have caught both on remote camera traps!

tamandua

Yesterday we saw a tamandua, which is related to a giant anteater but climbs trees. It is a beautiful and bizarre animal. All of my lists- mammals, birds, and reptiles- are growing longer, but more slowly now. While the rainforest is full of wildlife, it isn’t as easy to see as many animals as quickly as one might  imagine. At times it’s loud with monkey calls and bird song, but really much of the time it is quiet. You have to be fortunate to stumble upon an animal, be there in the right place at the right time when it is crossing the path in front of you or rustling the bushes within binocular sight. The fact that we have been able to see so much is incredible- and probably an indication of a healthy forest. But there are plenty of small, quiet amazing things. All the insect diversity- butterflies, damselflies, and dragonflies are charismatic, but there are thousands of other species out there that are fascinating. Leaf cutter ants?! Amazing! They harvest leaves not to eat directly, but to grow colonies of fungus which they do eat. These guys are farmers, and on a massive scale. There are tens of thousands of individuals in the colony, and each does his job cutting and transporting leaves back to their colossal ant cities on runways that they have cleared through the forest, simply by walking back and forth so many times. These are a fairly common sight in the forest, and after a couple of days you start to take them for granted. But it is a shame when people are disappointed when they don’t see much on a day hike. Even the humble ant, when taken in context, is fascinating and it is such a privilege to be out here and able to see and experience what so few people have the opportunity to do. 

Leaf cutter ant "city"