When I tell my non-birding friends that we saw quite a few owls in Costa Rica, many of them are surprised.  The common perception is that owls are indeed woodland creatures, but that’s “normal” woods — not, you know, the “jungle.”  I suspect this monolithic concept of owls — where “owl” pretty much equals “great horned owl” — arises in part from our being exposed from early on to things like halloween images of owls perched in leafless trees over tombstones, defining owls glibly as creatures not only of the night, but of deciduous woodland.  For many, it even takes some getting used to think of owls as desert creatures, living in and on saguaros, and eating scorpions and other Sonoran fare.

So the concept of tropical owls takes many people by surprise.  Of course, owls are at home in rain forests as much as woodlands and wetlands and tundra.  Just not the same owls in all of those places, for the most part.  There are in fact many species of tropical owls in central America, some endemic to Costa Rica, others widespread in tropical habitats from Mexico to South America.

One of the latter is the aptly named Black and white owl (Ciccaba nigrolineata).  They are birds of moist forests.  They also can be found in urban and suburban habitats within that range, much the way Great horned owls successfully exist in proximity to human settlements.

<< Black and white owl scratching its itchy face (digiscoped by C.Gómez)

This Black-and-white owl was roosting in the central city park in the town of Orotina CR, high in a tree it was sharing with a sloth, spending the middle of the day preening itself and scratching its face with its strong-toed yellow foot. It could only be seen by standing directly below its branch and looking straight upward.

From an owl’s viewpoint, a city park is a good place to hunt large insects, like cockroaches, and small mammals, like mice and bats.  From a human point of view, it was humorous to be enjoying such an excellent owl in such an urban setting: we were surrounded by ice-cream vendors, mothers strolling their babies, pan-handlers, too-cool teenagers eyeing each other, and romping, boisterous children, as we craned upward in broad daylight at an owl who seemed to care nothing for all the traffic noise and people far below it. The owl’s primary concern seemed to be that its face itched. As it scratched like a cat, rapidly kicking at its facial disc with a talon or two, bits of down fluff, owl dander, and even a contour feather drifted down unnoticed onto the activity and bustle in the park below.

This is the seventh installment in a series. To read all the episodes, click here: The Ganskopf Incident or on The Ganskopf Incident category in the sidebar to the left. The earliest posts are at the bottom, scroll down to read them chronologically from the bottom up.

Under the pretext of flexing limbs cramped from sitting and drawing the loose bundles of owl-shaped straw, I had stood up, stretching, and casually meandered over to the table where the sleek Dr. Danneru had left his notes and his Ganskopf artifact momentarily unattended. I was just being nosy. Then I saw the piece he was studying.

On a padded black tray at the scholar’s workplace, next to a page or two of neatly written yet oddly illegible cursive notes, lay an artifact which bore little resemblance to any of the objects I had drawn, except that it too was an owl, or, at least, partly an owl. It looked extremely valuable: the craftsmanship was masterful, and the style, at least to my eye, absolutely unique. It could have been Ghanan, Ainu, Mohenjodaroan, or Q’arafhu, except that it didn’t look exactly like any of them. It was only about four inches from top to bottom, but it was elaborately carved from a solid piece of honey-hued, translucent amber. Or, possibly unfossilized tree resin: as I bent closer to see the details it seemed to emit a gentle coniferous smell, pleasant and distinctive in my nostrils. The ambient fluourescent light passing through the amber to the dark fabric below made detail difficult to see, and I leaned closer still, sliding my magnifier glasses up my nose, to be sure I knew what I was looking at. This near, the resinous scent of the piece was clearer, too, and I drew in a deeper breath in the hope of identifying it.

There was movement behind me, and warmth; hurriedly I straightened and turned, to find Dr. Danneru standing just off my shoulder with a fresh mug of hot tea in his hands. Chin tucked, he was looking down at me with one eyebrow raised in mildly disapproving inquiry, no doubt waiting for me to explain why I was sniffing his artifact. My magnifiers, still high on my nose, enlarged his features alarmingly, making him appear closer than he was. I was annoyed; I had only been looking, but his odd pyrite eyes and that magnified hoisted eyebrow made me feel guilty, furtive, and I snatched the glasses off of my face. “Just curious,” I muttered, and stepped away, farther from the object, and from him.

He didn’t reply; instead, the eyebrow hitched further up, his chin sank further down. At this moment Miss Laguna returned, putting her glasses on, and securing a stray lock of hair with a hair pin. As she did this, I noticed she still wore her purple technical gloves. “Oh,” she said, when she caught sight of me at the other table. “There you are over there. Are you finished with the straw owls?” I nodded, and answered they were ready to go back into secure storage. On an impulse I added, “Miss Laguna?” I indicated the remarkable amber piece. “I’d like to sketch this. Would it be possible to…” I trailed off, seeing her face.

“I’m afraid without Dr. Harrower’s authority that would be highly irregular,” the librarian’s brow crinkled. Was is my imagination, or had I heard what sounded like a genteel snort come from the man behind me when Miss Laguna had mentioned Dr. Harrower’s authority? “Unless,” she hesitated, looking at Dr. Danneru.

Applied to, the scholar finally spoke. “I’m quite finished with the piece for tonight,” he said. “And there is a journal I wish to consult – Miss Laguna,” he asked the librarian, “have Periodicals received the current OHQ? Yes? Then, in the matter of access to this piece, I believe my voice is quite as authoritative as Harmon Harrower’s…”

His voice, I thought suddenly: an eroded Oxbridge veneer over something smooth but more exotic. I’d heard it once before: on the phone… allegedly as my employer. But not Texan. I opened my mouth to say something but he was faster. “I feel certain,” he inquired smoothly, “that you were about to thank Miss Laguna for leaving this item unshelved for a little longer?”

Taking the hint I nodded, and went to get paper and something to draw with, picking up the first thing my hand touched, an aquarelle pencil in burnt umber. “Don’t rush,” Dr. Danneru advised placidly. “Articles in the OHQ are notoriously turgid.” As he turned, a little tea sloshed from his cup onto the floor, but he moved away without noticing. Miss Laguna had gone to retrieve the desired journal, and I was alone with the fragrant artifact.

To be continued…

… or, saving shots by going artsy…

Not all photos are created equal, especially if you’re an amateur photog like me who asks my competent but limited point-and-shoot digital camera to do things it wasn’t meant to do, like capture images of cryptic birds high in trees with too many leaves against the light on an overcast day through a fogged-up scope (see previous potoo posts) in a hurry.

And, some birds don’t have the courtesy to pose standing still six feet away in the open in the light for an hour while some fudge-fingered camera-camel like me tries to get a shot off before they get on with their lives finding scarce food, competing for mates, and evading swift-grasping predators.

<< app-altered digital image of an Orange-billed sparrow (photo and alteration A.Shock).  Orange-billed sparrows (Arremon aurantiirostris) are striking but rather skulking sparrows inhabiting moist woodlands from southern Mexico to northern South America, not terribly uncommon or hard to see but tough to photo.  A bold black-and-white head pattern, a lovely olive back, golden epaulette and neon orange bill make them distinctive as they hop about the shadowy forest floor in small flocks.

So, not all photos are created equal.  I have lots of “unequal” photos from trips, including this last Costa Rica visit.  Despite expert bird-finding leadership turning up an unexpected number of fabulous sightings by eye, dim and moisty cloud forests, furtive species (and you know who you are, Silvery-fronted tapaculo), and awkwardly-wielded umbrellas all cut down the number of useful pix to post here.  Some species (Quetzales for instance) I missed entirely; others, such as the Orange-billed sparrow, I only got blurry, distant, or otherwise unusable images of.  Photoshop (even the archaic version I’m still using) and iPhoto are both hugely helpful, and have saved many a photo for publication.  But now I have new tools — cribs, if you insist — to produce internet-ready images for this space from unpromising jpegs.  (Let me add FYI, in case the reader hasn’t read the fine print at threestarowl.com, that this is not a commercial blog, and I receive no compensation whatever for testing, using, praising, demonstrating, criticizing, or even just mentioning any product, service, or company).

A recent fairly unintentional acquisition of an iPad has given me tools that are similar to Adobe Illustrator and its kin, but are even more user-friendly: SketchmeeHD, SketchbookPro, and TypeDrawing.  Here is the step-by-step process by which I used these apps to turn an unusable jpeg image into a lively illustration for this post:

<< Far left, original unaltered shot of Orange-billed sparrow: subject too small to see.  Near left, cropped to zoom, the colorful plumage and bill are captured, but the lack of focus due to movement and low light is painfully evident.  Verdict: not publishable in either form.

So, I sicced the iPad app “SketchmeeHD” on the cropped version of the original jpeg.  This cool application renders an original image into an algorhythmically-generated series of layered colors and strokes, as if it were drawn from colored pencil.  It’s easy and quick for the operator (and entertaining, as the image is produced in stages as if being drawn before your eyes by an invisible hand), and nearly but not entirely idiot-proof: there are choices to make, such as opacity, density and substrait.

<< These were the results. It looks adequate artistically (click to enlarge to see pencil-marks), but it’s a bit mechanical looking, sterile.  Annoyingly, but not surprisingly, the lack of focus was faithfully transmitted from the source image, and not magically cured.  Worse, from a birder’s point of view — and probably a bird’s, too — all the distinctive colors have been muted to the point of dullness.  Where’s the olive back?  The golden epaulette?  The eye? The eponymous orange bill, for crying out loud? These are Important Characteristics, Field Marks, and not to be done without, even if this is not a field guide.  Especially if they’re only eradicated by the mere randomness of digital manipulation.  Verdict: insufficient improvement, unpublishable.

But, I have recourse.  At this point, I opened the SketchmeeHD-altered jpeg with SketchbookPro, another iPad app.  By “drawing” with my finger on the iPad’s interactive screen and selecting parameters such as color, point type, width and opacity, I was able to restore liveliness and color to the automatically-generated “pencil strokes” by adding my own hand-controlled digital marks which, even through the electronic medium, supply the human touch, visible in the finished version.

<< The final step was to use the app TypeDrawing to add the bird name caption.  This app allows you to enter type in a color, size, font of choice and place it in your image; the path of your finger on the screen determines the line and position of the text.

Verdict: Publishable illustration of Orange-billed sparrow.

The photos I use on this site, whether taken by me or others, are minimally altered for clear viewing, and never “faked” (except for fictional effect and with full disclosure). Altering photos to prove the identification or occurrence of a bird in a particular place or time is obviously just wrong (for instance, my Maroon-chested dove shots are unaltered except for cropping to enlarge the bird, and the video is entirely unaltered).  Images in this blog, for the most part, are intended to tell a story, please the reader (and myself), and provide visual interest besides text.  Most are digital photos.  Some, like the joyfully garish Resplendent Quetzal image are produced entirely from scratch from a blank “page” with SketchbookPro, driven by the touch-interaction of the iPad screen with my nail-bitten finger.

By contrast, an image like the Orange-billed sparrow above is heavily altered — in fact, it’s published only because of my ability to alter it. I do “real drawings” too with pencil, colored pencil, and water color, and to me the apps are not going to replace those techniques — they’re just a different medium than those more traditional paper-born tools, with different limitations and different advantages. Maybe you’re comfortable with this process, maybe not.  Possibly, by posting the techniques behind the results, I’ve made readers think less of a finished product like the Orange-billed sparrow image, as not being real “art”, or requiring less skill than a “real drawing”.  That’s up to everyone to decide for themselves.  Personally, I consider it illustration, and I’m thrilled to be able to present a pleasing visual image of a lovely creature that otherwise would have remained uselessly stuck in the craw of my computer.

Like most enthusiasts, birders can get excited about seemingly unexciting things. As proof, first there was the Maroon-chested ground-dove, a seriously exciting species that most of my non-birding friends think looks like a “boring” Mourning dove, but was easily one of the most thrilling sightings of the entire Costa Rica trip, which was full of thrilling sightings. Now, here is the strange, statuesque potoo, a bird so fascinating it can’t be distinguished from a broken branch. I posted yesterday on the Great potoo (Nyctibius grandis), but can’t resist adding more today, including another photo of the same bird.

<< Great potoo at La Selva OTS (digiscoped by C.Gómez)

I assure you, this is a different photo — look, the bird’s head has turned a skosh farther to its left, revealing BOTH slitted, bulbous eyes. The action of turning its head so slowly as to be nearly imperceptible is pure Potoo, and it was the most exciting thing the bird “did” while we watched it — in fact, it was the only thing it “did” other than hold perfectly still — thrilling us to the core (for another account of how even seasoned birders lose their cool seeing potoos — I would have sacrificed a finger to see it scratch its face with its foot!– click here). Since this potoo was safely perched high up in the canopy, we were lucky to see it in a fluff-feathered, neutral roosting pose, rather than the usual sleeked-down, beak-pointing alarm pose in which these birds are most often detected.

Those eye slits are part of what makes potoos cool. Each lid has three tiny notch-like folds in it — a so-called “magic eye” — enabling the Potoo to see with its lids shut. Most photos you can find of potoos show them in their diurnal cryptic perching pose, eyes closed. Open, their eyes are owl-like and, in most species, bright yellow. Here’s a link to photographer Michael Fairchild’s site, showing a potoo in mid-blink, with partially open eyes. You can clearly see the notches in the lid-skin: one near each corner, and one over the pupil.

Here’s another exciting Potoo fact, if you can stand it. Their cousins the nightjars have specialized whisker-like feathers at the corner of their mouths called rictal bristles, thought to be used to help catch or detect prey. Not Potoos — they have loral bristles instead; specialized feathers between their nares (nostrils) and eyes, at the base of their bills, like flycatchers and some wood warblers. Pretty amazing, right? Right?

That’s almost all there is to say, except: here’s a picture of one, trying its best to look like a tree trunk, and doing an expert job of it:

I’ve always longed to see a Potoo, and when we got to Finca La Selva OTS (known to most North American birders as La Selva Research Station) in Costa Rica, I was excited to hear that the La Selva researchers and guides (Joel was ours) had been seeing a Great potoo around recently. Sure enough, they re-found it, napping and waiting for night to fall so it could start its day.

>> Photo of Great potoo (Nyctibius grandis), at La Selva OTS (thanks to Charlie Gómez for digiscoping with my camera through his scope)

It was roosting high overhead against a light gap in the foliage, but we were able to get a pretty clear view of the bird through scopes, and we filled our eyes (and cameras) with the glorious obfuscation that is what Potoos are all about.

I admit that part of my fondness for this bird is on account of its name, Potoo, but even without the humorous handle, it would be an excellent organism: look at that huge coin-purselike gap of a mouth — it’s capable of opening all the way to behind the bird’s eye. It’s mostly gape — the soft-skinned corners of a bird’s mouth that hinge the upper and lower mandibles of the bill, and it’s unique among its nightjar relatives (whipoorwills, frogmouths, and allies) in having a toothlike projection on either side of the tiny beak. The Potoo’s large mouth is for catching flying insects in mid-flight, at night. Potoos typically sally forth off their perches in the dark, nimbly for their odd shape, to catch and swallow insects, returning to a perch to await the next fly-by snack. This bird’s eyes are closed for sleep/camouflage (a branch with eyes is a dead giveaway), but even still you can see they’re big, like an owl’s. So big there’s not much room for a brain, which is purportedly the same size as a hummingbird’s, a much smaller bird.

There are seven species of potoo, all native to Central and South America. Everything about the genus is distinctive — click here to hear a recording of its “song”, a loud, rough, croak-like call (I recommend the second one in the top row of samples). On the same page are excellent photos, which give a good idea of this bird’s strategy of sleeking its feathers, sticking its beak up and holding stock still in order to look as much like a broken branch as possible.

Yes, you guessed it, this is not a photo from the recent Costa Rica trip. I thought a frosty retreat from the steamy tropics was in order, and decided to insert this flashback of a favorite photo and sighting from a 2004 trip to the Antarctica Peninsula: a Gentoo penguin parent about to feed its chick. This is the bill-tapping action that encourages each bird to open wide to complete the transfer of semi-digested krill from the adult to the chick.

Enjoy!

(I didn’t have a weblog back then, so periodically I post flashbacks from this trip and a later Galápagos adventure, which were both fabulous voyages with family.)

…when you were in Costa Rica?  Yes.

Did you get a photo of a Resplendent quetzal?  No.

And was the Quetzal resplendent?  Yes.

Resplendent quetzales (Pharomachrus cocinno) are glimmering emerald birds who inhabit the dense, wet montane and cloud forests of parts of Central America. The males have splendid iridescent fringed tail plumes which trail extravagantly behind them, inviting stares and admiration from both female quetzales and birders, and challenging artists with inadequate pages.  During my recent visit to Costa Rica, several quetzales crossed our path, looking down on us from a secure height, feeding, drying wet feathers, or just loafing.  One adult male bird appeared suddenly overhead, so silently we almost missed him, while we were admiring hordes of busy hummers at feeders near Monteverde.  As with hummingbirds, the exact shade of a quetzal’s plumage depends on light and angle, and can look emerald, azure, glinting with gold, or simply black.  I’ve never seen a photo do the colors justice, let alone an unsubtle computer-graphic image like my effort (although it improves with enlargement, click on image to embiggen).

Throughout their range from southern Mexico to Panama, quetzales are endangered, mainly due to habitat loss.  They are frugivores, and favor the fruits of trees such as the aguacatillo, which has a sort of miniature avocado-like fruit.  Quetzales are cavity nesters, laying two eggs in old woodpecker holes fairly high in the canopy, and males and females share nesting duties.  During the day, nests can be located by the trailing tail plumes of el macho hanging out of the nest hole.  A curious feature of Quetzales is that, unlike most birds, their toes are arranged two forward, and two back.

Queztals or Quetzales?  Either is a correct plural; the first is standard in English, the second in Spanish.

The name quetzal (usually pronounced KETzul in english and ketSALL en español) is reportedly a word from the Nahuatl language, and refers to the spendors of the birds’ tails.  It’s likely associated at least etymologically with the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent.

Click here for an excellent photo essay on Resplendent quetzales by T.Beth Kinsey of Firefly Forest.

…a drastic chromatic aberration.

Living in Arizona there’s no room for complaint about the quantity and loveliness of the hummers which visit our yard feeders. In the Phoenix area we have Costa’s and Anna’s year round, Black-chinned in summer, with Broad-tailed and Rufous making migratory appearances. I’ve seen a brilliant Broad-billed just two miles from here at the Desert Botanical Garden, so it’s a potential yard bird, as well. Further southeast in the state, hummer numbers swell to around 17 species — by contrast much of the U.S. hosts only one species, the Ruby-throated.

So only a truly spectacular hummer turn-out would impress a southwestern observer. Without doubt, Costa Rica provided that. During a thirteen-day trip, in various habitats and elevations, we saw about 34 species of hummers. Most I couldn’t capture in pixels: with a zoom-impaired camera, the best chance I have for snagging hummingbirds in photos is at feeders. These three posed obligingly on and around the feeders of Savegre Mountain Lodge.

<< Green violet-ear (Colibri thalassinus). These were quite common, and quite beguiling. A bit crabby, too: when another hummer got too near, those violet-ear patches would flare outward. Very threatening; we quailed at the sight. This bird has new feathers molting in on its forehead, visible as tiny white quills, still wrapped in whitish keratin like shoe-lace ends to facilitate outward growth.

>> Right: male Volcano hummingbird (Selasphorus flammula). These little toughies are related to our norte americaño Selasphori like Allen’s, Rufous, and Broad-tailed, and are just as glittery green-gold-bronze. This Cordillera de Talamanca subspecies has a plummy sheen in its gorget, slightly visible in this photo.

And lastly, below is a female White-throated mountain gem (Lampornis castaneoventris) feeding at an aloe, or perhaps a Kniphofia, flower. Her mate (not shown) has a spotless white throat and an azure forehead, but the female is marked with a handsome rusty underside, the “chestnut-belly” of its species name, castaneoventris.

(All photos A.Shock)