The last night…

Little guy was in my cabin. Pretty cool looking.

Orange-billed Sparrow.

Buff-rumped Warbler. I’ll miss the one that was living outside my cabin singing its little heart out.

Orange-billed Nightengale Thrush. I always really like these guys.

Friends.

5″ long grasshopper. Wow!

Plain Xenops. My last Costa Rica bird I banded!!

Hi everyone!

I’m currently sitting in my very gringo hotel in San Jose.  Tonight is my last night in Costa Rica.  I still can’t believe it.  And I’m full of emotions.  Mostly I’m excited to go home.  Partially I’m feeling guilty that I’m so excited.  And the rest of me is waiting to realize that I’m LEAVING Costa Rica.  My home for the last ten weeks.  Wow I’m going to miss this place so, so much.  I’m dreading the day when I realize that I’m not in Costa Rica anymore and I don’t know when I’ll get to return.

In the end I don’t have much to say.  This was an incredible experience and I’m going to need some time to reflect on it.  I know this has changed me and shown me many things about myself and a different way of life.  I know that I’m excited to be able to go into the bathroom without fearing for my life.  Ha.  (Spiders, cockroaches, etc…)  I’m also surprised at how quickly I became friends with people there and didn’t want to leave those friendships behind.  I’m going to miss touching birds and waking up at 4:30am to the Wood-Rails serenading each other outside my cabin.  I’m going to do my best to bring “Pura Vida” back with me and keep treating people the way I do here.  (The Stanford field crew guys, the bichos, were all SO sweet when I said goodbye to them.  It was wonderful and made me not want to leave.)  I’m really going to miss not having to cook, clean, or do my own laundry.  I’m going to miss the colors and the birds and all the songs.

I could go on and on but I’m going to stop.  I still have a lot to get through before I get to be home.  I can’t believe I’m so close to being back in Oregon.

What a crazy life…

Thanks for reading all this, everyone.  It’s been really great getting to share this experience with you all.

Goodnight!

Just checking in.

Hi all!  This post is just a check-in since I’ve once again been absent lately.  I hope everyone is well!

I’ve still been mostly doing the same thing- writing and researching information to back up my findings.  It has been going fairly well overall and today I really kicked butt on my paper.  Its now shaping up to be something that I think I’ll end up being proud of and worthy of the 6 “research” credits I’m going to get for being here.  I had put a deadline on the majority of the paper, which has helped.  I wanted to have the vast majority of the writing done by tonight/tomorrow morning so that tomorrow I can spend most of my time focusing on serious edits.  And I have always known myself to do best under pressure and today was another great example of that.  And I secretly kind of enjoy it, too.  Its fun to write about my own research!

Anyway, I’ve also had some little adventures lately, such as going into a new town yesterday.  The Stanford crew was going out to do some work in the afternoon and I absolutely HAD to go into town so I went with them and they dropped me and another girl off in this town that I hadn’t been to yet, Sabalito.  Its even smaller than San Vito but had a grocery store and of course a bread shop (panaderia) and a couple shoe stores (zapaterias).  Those are things you can almost always count on here, even in small towns: zapaterias and at least one panaderia.  Anyway, I just needed some basic things from the grocery store but we also had a mission to buy a special type of bread and find rubber boots, child sized, for the other girl I was with.  And the other girl (woman, I guess) is Israeli and speaks NO Spanish so I had to be the translator, which is always fun.  I’m learning to enjoy the challenge of trying to communicate better and work on my Spanish.  But its very frustrating to do so when someone is speaking English OVER my attempts at Spanish.  For some reason this girl thinks that repeating herself over and over and over in English will actually eventually work.  Very frustrating, but oh well.  I figured it out eventually and found her some damn boots.  Ha.

Also the rest of the Stanford crew is now here, which includes a couple of really well known scientists, so the station is kind of buzzing because of that.  Things have changed drastically in the last couple days and I dont get to eat meals with my Stanford friends anymore because they have a huge group now and all sit together.  I keep telling Leslie I miss her.  Ha.  We used to have quiet lunches and things and now its just always busy and everyone is a little extra stressed and I keep trying to find little times to sit and have a quick cup of coffee or just a quick conversation and such.  But with this drastic change in the way things are I’m even more ready to head home now.

Oh, and I came VERY close to having to share my cabin for the rest of the time that I’ll be here.  Yesterday I got a call saying that another girl was coming and would be joining me for the rest of my time here.  After thinking about this I called the receptionist back and told him I really, REALLY didn’t want that (it’s my last week here, after all, and I don’t know this girl at all) and that I would even give up my cabin if that’s what it took to get a room to myself.  After some thought he realized that if I would just share my cabin for one night then I could move in the morning after another guest left.  I thought this was just fine.  So the girl got in last night after I was already asleep and it was super awkward and everything.  Then this morning I told her that I would be moving and she realized that it would make MUCH more sense for her to move to the other cabin rather than me since this is basically my home here.  So after breakfast she moved on over.  I’m really happy about this.  Not only do I not have to share my cabin or move to a different cabin, but I also don’t have to move into a cabin that I know has two large spiders living in the  bedroom.  Ha.  The guy who was in there liked the spiders because they ate the other bugs, I guess.  He said that one of them was the size of an orange!  Ahh!

I’ve seen some really great flowers and things recently around the Garden that I keep meaning to photograph but I haven’t found the right time and, in some cases, the right lighting.  Plus I’ve been working so hard on my paper, especially today, and I don’t want to stop in the middle of a good writing session to go take photos.  But there are some I definitely need to take before I leave.

So that’s pretty much everything that is new with me.  Oh, I also got a lifer the other day.  I had photographed it and looked at it many times before someone finally helped me ID it.  It was a White-necked Jacobin (hummingbird) and is actually the second photo in my previous entry that I mislabeled as a Charming.  And the one that I said I didn’t know what it was is actually a Charming.  Oops…  And that puts me at 159 species!

And in 3 days I’ll board a bus for San Jose…  Wow.

Looking forward to seeing everyone!  Ciao!

 

Just a few photos.

I’m not entirely certain who this is to be honest.

Charming Hummingbird I think.

This is a flower. I like the circular-ness of it.

This tree is covered in little scenes like this around 4pm every day. They’re all coming in to roost at that time. Crimson-fronted Parakeets.

Preening.

We might not have bullet ants but this guy is pretty vicious looking still.

Hi everyone!  I hope you’re all well.

Once again I don’t have a whole lot to talk about because I’ve been busy writing and goofing off lately.  Just the usual stuff, jogging and writing and some miniature photography walks have been taking up my days.  I’ve lost a little steam on the photography front though, hence the few photos.

This morning I went out with the OSU crew and observed hummingbirds as well as learned how to pollinate flowers.  So that was kind of fun, but was only a very small part of my day.

One of the best things lately is how incredibly active the hummingbirds have been.  I can easily see seven different species of hummers without leaving the dining room/deck.  And they’re always fighting with each other and chasing each other and so ingrained in their activities that they’ll come really close to me.  It’s fun.

The closer I get to leaving here the more nervous I’m getting about traveling back through San Jose and going through the whole airport deal and everything.  I wish I could skip that part and just magically be home when it was time to be!  Ah well, part of the experience I suppose.

Anywho, like I said I really don’t have a whole lot to talk about!  So that’s about it.  I’m looking forward to seeing everyone!

Ciao!

Hawks in a kettle? No, a kettle of hawks!

Orchids in the light.

I had moisture inside my camera, so the shot is off. But this is a Broad-winged Hawk right outside my cabin.

Happy, sunny bird.

Vegetation.

The body on this nasty, noisy cicada was as big as my thumb.

Juvie Crested Caracara. Easily the goofiest bird I’ve ever seen.

Again. Such a doofus!

Kettle of mostly Swainson’s Hawks. There are about 100 in this photo and this was only part of the group!!

Ahhh, orchid. :)

Hi everyone!  I hope you’re all well!

Once again I apologize for the break in blogging, but yesterday consisted of the same thing as the few days before that, and today was pretty similar as well.  But some fun things did happen that I’d like to share!

Of course I spent the first half of the day following all the news on the earthquake and the tsunamis.  Some pretty serious, crazy stuff is happening all over the place.  But I’m sure you all already know about it.  And of course I had to reassure my Mom that I’m alive and well and didn’t need to use the ‘evacuation route’ signs that were put up recently.

At breakfast this morning I finally got one of the birds on my wish list for here!  A Scarlet-thighed Dacnis.  The bird was far off and I only had my binocs (so no photo proof), but man it was an incredible bird.  So gorgeous.  Here’s a link to some photos: (http://www.google.com/images?q=scarlet%20thighed%20dacnis&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1120&bih=616 )  I’m still thrilled!!

As I was walking up to lunch today I saw another great bird: a juvenile Crested Caracara.  The thing was such a dork!  It was clearly not ready to really fly yet, so it was running around on the ground.  It would make short leaps and sort of flap its wings, but no real flight.  And it kept tripping over things as it was walking and running with its wings out to the side and scaring itself by tripping.  Man it was hilarious.  Talk about the awkward teenage years, this bird was just so doofy and lacked any confidence at all.  (Yes, birds can have confidence.)  I really hope to see it again before it learns to fly.  It must have fledged from the nest within the last week I bet.  Pretty funny.

The next great thing that happened today, while I was cooped up in the dining room working on my paper, was that all of a sudden Matt ran inside and yelled, “kettle of migrating hawks!” and then ran back outside.  Of course I had to follow!  So I ran outside and sure enough there was a group of at least 200 birds in the sky.  It was so cool!  I’ve never seen a migrating kettle like that.  (Yes, a group of hawks is called a kettle.)  They were swirling around and spiraling and the flock seemed to be rolling (or boiling) and yet they moved SO quickly over us.  Within a couple minutes they were just specks in the distance.  It was so cool!  They seemed to be mostly Swainson’s Hawks with some Broad-winged Hawks mixed in.

Those were the major highlights of my day today.  Yesterday was insanely wet and rainy and thunderstormy all day, but today was pretty clear so that was kind of nice.  I was able to run today (but not yesterday) and it was a good jog so I’m feeling pretty good.

Honestly I can’t think of a single note-worthy and exciting thing that happened yesterday other than a couple nice conversations with people, so not much to report there!

I did get invited to spend some time with the crew that’s here from OSU in the next few days so that’ll be nice.

Lifers (for here) for today:

1.      Swainson’s Hawk (I’ve seen them at home but not here until today)

2.      Scarlet-thighed Dacnis!!

So that’s 158 species!

And, for the first time in a few days I didn’t take a nap today (I haven’t been sleeping very well at all), so I’m super tired tonight.  Bed time!!  Goodnight all.

Another Wednesday here in sunny Costa Rica!

I still love these Anole lizards that hang out on the outside of the cabins.

Chestnut-mandibled Toucan.

Dragonfly!

Purple-crowned Fairy. One of my favorite hummingbirds.

Even with two adult Caracaras in their nest there were two Swallow-tailed Kites harassing the nest. Pretty crazy.

I honestly think he thought he was hidden. Silly Agouti.

These signs suddenly showed up today. Maybe the gardeners (who put them up) know something the rest of us don’t know….

Hi everybody!

Guess what!  I only have 11 days left here.  This is crazy to me!  I’m excited and sad.  Very strange feelings going on.

Sorry for my absence yesterday from the blogging world, but I’ve been doing the exact same thing for the last two days straight, and it isn’t that exciting, so I didn’t have all that much to talk about.  Ha.  Figured I wouldn’t bore you.

Basically I’m in the writing phase of my research project so I’ve been camped out in the dining hall the last two days working on my project.  The writing is coming along pretty well and I’m hoping I’ll have a few days where I don’t have to write at the end of my stay here.  Although writing here is very difficult because I get distracted SO EASILY.  How can I not when there are constantly birds flying by and people to talk to?  I just can’t help it!

Anyway, that’s seriously what I’ve been doing for two days straight.  Pretty exciting stuff.

Tonight I went a little crazy and had one whole beer and spent about an hour of my night socializing with people just for the fun of it.  Ha.  Getting pretty wild here!

In addition to writing and researching things today I also applied for a volunteer position at school for spring term.  Kenny and I both applied and if we get to be involved we’ll be helping monitor House Wrens.  It’s a really small time commitment and Kenny and I are both perfect for it so I hope it works out.

And finally, for the big news of the day.  I found out today that I’m going to be going to Alaska this summer!  I’ll leave just a couple days after I graduate and I’m headed up to Barrow, which is the northernmost city in the United States, for 6 weeks.  I’ll be part of a project that has been going on for many years now to monitor Steller’s and Spectacled Eiders, which are two species of sea ducks that are both listed as Threatened.  I’ll be volunteering for the project but my airfare will be paid for and they provide food and housing as well.  It’s a pretty sweet deal and I’m really looking forward to it.  I’m feeling a little crazy for wanting to go to Alaska just 3 months after returning from Costa Rica, but that’s okay.  And I’m pretty thrilled about the potential to see polar and grizzly bears (and hopefully not get mauled) and Snowy Owls as well, plus tons of other new wildlife and such.  Believe it or not I haven’t spent too much of my life on the Alaskan Tundra so it’ll be a crazy experience!

So now you know everything I know.  I hope everyone is well and life is being good to you.  Pura vida!

Todo me parece bonito.

Delicious shaved ice sort of drink. I woke up from a nap to one of the bichos handing this to me.

What a perfect beach.

More perfection.

Beginning of sunset.

Sunset.

Loved the clouds.

Hermit crab!

Orange!

Sunburned me on the beach.

The whole group! Daniel, Michael, Leslie, Me, Mateo.

Pretty flowers in the Garden. This shot is from today.

Lizard at our banding station on Saturday. Anole lizard.

Beach.

Snowy Egret in the corner.

Willet + reflection.

Snowy Egret right after catching a fish.

Cangrejo!! There were tons of these!

Hi everyone!  I hope you’re all well!

So, this is the story of my beach day yesterday:

The day started at 5am when we were on the road headed toward la playa.  The drive there was a lot of fun.  I had already been on part of the road toward the beach when I went to that indigenous village, Boruca, forever ago.  But a lot of it was brand new to me as well.  Technically I had also been on that road during the bus ride from San Jose to San Vito, but I was asleep for almost all of it so that doesn’t count.  Anyway, the drive was really pretty and fun and we just listened to music and enjoyed the ride.  It took us a couple hours and then we were at the beach!  We went to a place that is a national park and is called “Parque Nacional Marino Ballena.”  It’s a beach that not too many Gringos go to, so that was neat.  It was just north of the Osa Peninsula, in case you want to know exactly where it was.  When we first got there we saw Howler Monkeys in the first five minutes, before we had even parked the car.  They were just in the trees right next to the beach.  Unfortunately by the time I got my camera out they were in the thick part of the trees and I couldn’t get any good photos.

After finding a parking spot and such we almost immediately went for a walk down the beach.  We saw tons and tons of little crabs (cangrejos!) that live in holes that they dig in the sand.  They don’t let you get very close, usually.  But we did find a couple groups of them that were away from their holes for some reason so we chased them a little and when you got close enough they would turn and hold their claws up totally ready to fight.  They were so cute.  We also saw a ton of rock crabs during the walk, and some fish swimming in the shallows near rocks.  And we saw Howler Monkeys a second time!  Again we got really good views of them.  And again I didn’t have my camera!  But we definitely saw them well enough to see that the males have very, VERY large…testicles.  They’re huge.  Ha.  So we watched them for a while and played with the crabs and watched some birds (yes I got some lifers!).  Then we decided to jump in the ocean!  The water was so warm, like bath water in the main body of water but it was literally hot to the touch in the shallows.  It was so neat.  And the waves were huge!  We were easily in to our shoulders at times just diving and jumping around and what not.  I haven’t been in the ocean in a very long time, and I don’t think I’ve ever played in it like that so it was a great experience.  It was SO salty though!  Salt so intense that it almost hurt when it got in your mouth.  And my eyes were stinging so bad!  It was all worth it though.  And the sun, oh the sun.  It was so hot there, and very humid.  In fact, when we weren’t walking or playing in the water we were in the shade because it’s too hot and intense to sunbathe.  I applied sunscreen many, many times and still burned a little.  Just on my face and my shoulders, and my face burn is already gone and my shoulders are close.

Anyway, the rest of our day was basically filled with lazily watching birds and napping and playing in the water some more.  Normal beach stuff I guess.  It was a great day.  And initially we made a rule that there was no English allowed, but eventually we broke that rule.  We did pretty well at first though!

Unfortunately, although it was a great day, it was also a very long day.  Everyone decided that we should watch the sun go down, which was fine.  But after the sunset, as it was quickly getting very dark, we realized that someone left the music on in the car and we had a dead battery.  We were so lucky that we found someone who had jumper cables and was willing to help.  It took a very long time and some “Tico magic” to get the car started, but finally it worked and we were on our way.  But of course we couldn’t turn off the car so we didn’t stop and get dinner as we had planned, so I never ate dinner last night.  So between being sunburned, not eating dinner, the day being very long, playing in the waves, and a tense drive home (the driver drives a little fast for my comfort), I was completely exhausted and barely functional by the time we got home around 9pm.

All in all it was a great day though and I’m really glad I went.

Today was a day for me to rest and recover and be lazy.  It was exactly what I needed.  But of course tomorrow I need to buckle down and write about a hundred things!  Okay, not really a hundred, but it feels like it.  I have a few reports to bust out in the next couple weeks.  I’ll be spending a lot of time inside writing.  Woohoo!

Dinner tonight was really nice.  There are two new student groups here, one from Florida and one from Nebraska, and they both seem nice and polite!  It was very refreshing.  We sat and talked to some of the students from Florida for two hours and they were really interested to hear about what we were doing and just seemed like nice people.  It restored some of my faith in student groups.  Plus we met two of the Nebraska students who were making cute little lists of all the animals, including birds, that they have seen here so far.  They’re not birders but they just figured they should remember!  That was neat, too.

After dinner I heard an owl calling so I went owling but ended up not being able to see the bird.  I could tell that I was almost right under it but the vegetation was thick and I was in the Garden at night with only flip flops and it had started to rain, so I had to call off the search.  Oh well.

So here are my lifers from yesterday:

1.      Brown Pelican (yes I’ve seen these in the States)

2.      Willet (these too)

3.      Green Kingfisher

4.      Snowy Egret

5.      Magnificent Frigatebird

And that puts me up to 156 species for here!

So now I’m going to head for bed!  Buenos noches!

Banding again!

Cool moth tail! That’s the lady moth and she uses that tail to spread pheromones to attract the males. She was on my door.

This guy was on my window. Pretty cool looking, and large.

Yellow Warbler.

Eye-ringed Flatbill top of bill.

Bottom of bill.

Face shot.

White-lined Tanager female. Fun fact- the common name favors the males in this species and the latin name (Tachyphonus rufus) refers to the female.

Me with the Eye-ringed Flatbill.

Yellow-throated Vireo.

Bird foot! They’re cute.

One of my friends I made today.

My other friend.

Ahhh the Red-legged Honeycreeper. Love!

They’re so beautiful.

As if it wasn’t beautiful enough, the underwing is bright yellow!

Even their bite is cute!

Last one. :) I loved him.

Yellow-faced Grassquit Male.

My friend again. Cutey.

Cool orange blooms.

Close-up.

Waiting…waiting…

Howdy all!

Let me preface this with the fact that I got about 3 hours of sleep last night and haven’t napped today except for about 20 minutes.  I’m exhausted.  You might notice!

Today was another wonderful day of bird banding.  And even though there were already two banders I got to band quite a bit!  Both Matt and Fede let me take over their banding at various times.  There were probably 40 birds on Fede’s sheet and I probably banded 30 or so of those.  Not a bad day at all.  We were in a coffee field next to a little cow pasture and there was a creek running next to us.  That’s a pretty good setting considering it was a coffee plantation.  Plus I made friends with the two little dogs that belong to the landowner.  It was a fun day.  I did take a couple good bites to my fingers though.  One bird got either its bill or its nail (I don’t remember which) under my thumb nail and it’s still hurting.  Little jerk.  Anyway, it was a great day.  I know I have more stories about the day, but my brain is not working right.

We also spent some time in town today after banding.  That was fun because we went to a bunch of little clothing stores (Leslie wanted some stuff) and we got to check out places I probably wouldn’t have gone otherwise.  We even went into one store that advertised American clothes and it was basically a thrift store that had clothes from Old Navy and Gap and such.  That was kind of fun.  But then we had to wait for the bichos to come pick us up so we sat in the sun for quite a while.  That completely did me in for the day.  I was already a little tired but with the sun I was ruined.

We didn’t get back to the station until about 2:30 and then finally ate lunch.  Afterward I was completely exhausted, but I managed to go for an easy jog and then come back and take a shower.  Before dinner I napped really quickly, but it wasn’t enough.  And now here I am.

Tomorrow we are going to the beach!  The crazy thing is we’re leaving at 5am.  Some of the bichos (the field crew guys) are going with us and they were so excited so they wanted to go really early and spend a lot of time there.  It should be a fun day.  I’m going to take my binocs and camera and try to do some birding while everyone is lounging around on the beach.  We’ll see.

Today’s lifers:

1.      Yellow-bellied Elaenia

2.      White-lined Tanager

3.      Slaty Spinetail

4.      Wedge-billed Woodcreeper

5.      Red-legged Honeycreeper

So now that’s 151!

And now it is definitely time for bed.  Goodnight, everyone!