Back at it.

I left Panama in mid April this year returning to Connecticut, for a fruitful season of naturalist work in New England. I’m back on the Nicoya peninsula of Costa Rica, and I can tell you for certain as always many interesting stories will unfold over the ensuing weeks. Will be working again on a number of research projects, mostly involving birds, but the naturalist inside me will keep diligently curious about many taxa across the spectrum. There will be plenty of bats, snakes, reptiles, insects, spiders, a few amphibians  (due to the habitat), and many more things to talk about.  I’m going to try to give a valiant effort in updating this much more frequently over this season.  

The Sunset over the dry forest habitat of Nicoya

I thought I would talk a little about the first couple of days; it’s surprising that even though this is the fifth year of traveling here and doing research, I haven’t often documented or talked about it. 

The port at Puntarenas

We took the five hour flight from Newark to San Jose, than the next part always goes much the same every year. You feel like you’re shot out of a canon, we have to make decisions quickly about what time it is and when we’d like to make the ferry. To get over to the Nicoya Peninsula you have to take a ferry from the port at Puntarenas to Nicoya. It’s a mad dash though to get to the few times the ferry departs from the port.  We didn’t make the 2:00 ferry to the port we wanted to get to, but instead had to take the 2:30 ferry to a port further away from the Finca. 

Crossing over the Gulf of Nicoya

We managed to arrive at the Finca at around 6:00 which is better than our average return time, so we managed to make pretty good time this year.The first night was a little on the anti-climatic side usually were chomping at the bit to get out and do some exploring, but this year we both decided we’d wait till the following morning.  It had been a long day and I quickly slipped away to my sleep. The one things you can guarantee there is always some form of natural alarm that will wake you up early in the tropics, over the years it’s been the White-faced Capuchin troop running on the metal roof making as much noise as possible, a dueling troops of Howler Monkeys letting of boisterous alarm calls, or this year the sounds of over a hundred hummingbirds darting in and out of the 15 feeders we have set up in the gazebo. If you never heard what quite literally a riot of food frenzy of Hummingbirds sounds like, I can tell you for sure it’s surprisingly quite loud.  But there is nothing one can enjoy more about being in the tropics than watching over nine species have aerial battles, that rival famous fighter pilot stand offs.

A new member to the Fincas Mantled Howler Monkey troop.

After enjoying a cup of coffee we took to the trails to make some net lanes and start setting up some nets that we will eventually train the new cast on interns on. 

It was a slow morning with only two species captures, were currently in a heat wave that seems to be affecting the amount of movement species are exerting currently. 

The two species caught though are somewhat telling of the avifauna of Nicoya though.  First were a beautiful Blue-crowned Motmot (Momotus momota) and the other the very common Long-tailed Manakin (Chiroxiphia linearis), if there was a bird species that symbolizes the avifauna of Nicoya it would be this species for me. It’s been over the years are most commonly caught species, and it’s song bouncing around in the forests all over the peninsula, are always a wonderful reminder of where I am.  

Blue-crowned Motmot (Momotus momota)

Long-tailed Manakin (Chiroxiphia linearis) 

I’m going to stop here and talk more tomorrow about our day in the mangroves and what that work this year is going to look like. It’s muddy, at times tedious, but there is a particular sense of excitement, when you’re working while listening to the chatter of a critically endangered hummingbird.