Ciblek Mania

Let's look more closely... It's a bird—a common potoo, to be specific. Potoos are similar to our North American nightjars—the whip-poor-wills and relatives—in that they are large-mouthed, nocturnal birds that fly around catching and eating large flying moths and other insects.

Part of the common potoo's survival strategy during the day, when it's resting, is to use its cryptic plumage to blend in. It perches on top of a broken tree stub or branch, and points its bill and head upward, looking for all the world like a part of the tree. Look how well this bird blends in!

We were taken to a roosting common potoo by our guide at Asa Wright Nature Centre. The bird was perched on a distant snag, inside the canopy, but we were able to digiscope it. While taking photographs and a bit of video, we saw something remarkable happen.

Here's the video I took, combined with a clip I shot a few days later. I hope you enjoy it.

It's really hard to leave the incredible setting of the Asa Wright Nature Centre verandah, but if you want to see certain species of the centre's wonderful forest birds, you've got to hit the forest trails. Our first morning, after breakfast, we met our guide Roodal Ramlal at the foot of the verandah stairs. He took us down the main trail and into the forest. All around us we heard insects droning and birds calling and singing. Lizards scooted across the path. We kept our eyes peeled for snakes, but, sadly, saw none.


From the dappled sunlight along the upper path, we entered the forest proper, stopping only to identify birds: a golden-olive woodpecker, a cocoa woodcreeper and a cocoa thrush—birds which prompted smart-aleck comments from nearly everyone ("I'm cuckoo for cocoa thrush!")


Jeff Bouton, who works for our trip's sponsor, Leica Sport Optics, contorted his body into all sorts of shapes to get that perfect digiscoped image. This was Jeff's second trip to Asa Wright, so he knew (but only hinted at) what we were about to experience.


Before long we were at one of the spots where manakins could be found. How did we know this? Well, there was a sign...


Actually, there were two signs. One pointing us to the correct spot, the other telling us more about the manakin species we were seeing and hearing: the white-bearded manakin.


A small group of about a dozen male white-bearded manakins was making noise and flitting about a few feet off the ground on the right side of the trail. We stopped and spread out to try to catch some of the action with out eyes, binoculars, spotting scopes, and cameras.



Soon one male stopped close by.And he showed us why the species is known as white-bearded manakin, by puffing out his throat feathers in a partial display to a nearby female whom we never saw.


Soon the forest underbrush was alive with male manakins, flashing about in streaks of black and white. Stopping long enough to strike funny poses, puff out their bearded throats, and do a little dance.


And then the birds came even closer. They seemed to be completely oblivious to our gasped exclamations and beeping, whirring cameras.

Then again, we were nowhere near the top of their must-impress list. That skulking female manakin was the object of their attention. And I have to say, even I was impressed with the energy and singing and dancing prowess that was on display that morning.

But this was just one of four separate, mind-blowing birds we would see on this day, on this trail, in this fabulous place. One of them, I've already shared with you prior to today's post. It was the bearded bellbird.

Tomorrow I'm going to throw down a bit of white-bearded manakin video.

I've heard several well-traveled friends say that Asa Wright Nature Centre in Trinidad is an excellent destination for a bird watcher's first tropical birding experience. All of the characteristics of a tropical birding experience are present at Asa Wright: jungle/rainforest, amazing plant and animal life, heat and humidity. But the diversity of bird species present is not overwhelming.

Whereas a first trip to Brazil might place you in a spot with 25 to 30 tanager species and close relatives, (Costa Rica has 45 tanagers, Panama 42) Trinidad has about 15 tanagers and relatives. And this holds true across many of the tropical bird families. So it makes for a less confusing introduction to tropical bird watching.

But I believe that Asa Wright is also ideally set up for digiscoping tropical birds. The feeders at Asa are teeming with visitors. The elevated verandah is surrounded by trees and perches used by the birds coming and going to the feeders. Farther out but in plain view are more distant trees used by toucans, tityras, tanagers, and raptors that don't visit the feeders. And the trails! The local nature trails have lekking manakins and singing bellbirds that are regular as clockwork. More on that tomorrow.

All of the images in this post were digiscoped from the verandah (that's how the locals spell it) at the Asa Wright Nature Centre in Trinidad. These are just my "keepers."

Not very far down the jungle trail from the main building of the Asa Wright Nature Centre, there's a sign that says Bearded Bellbird. When I first saw this, I thought "Right, like the birds always hang around right by the sign! How conVEEENient!"

Just then, the loud, ringing call note for which these birds are named clanged down from the forest canopy. There WAS a bearded bellbird and it was up there somewhere, calling repeatedly.

Moments later, Julie shouted "I've got the bellbird!" And she did. We scrambled into position to find the bird for binocular looks. Then we trained our spotting scopes on it. The bird was fairly close, reasonably well-lit, and every time it gave a note, its rastalike black wattles (or "beard") shook like wet spaghetti.

How sweet this was—my first decent look at a bellbird, one of those tropical species that jumps out at you from the field guide pages when you're dreaming of life birds. I'd heard bellbirds before. But seeing is bell-lieving.

I took a few still photos with my Leica digiscoping rig, then decided to shoot a short digital video. Here's what the bearded bellbird looked and sounded like at Asa Wright Nature Centre in Trinidad on Monday, July 20, 2009.

This series of images of a great kiskadee (coughing up a ball of what I assume are insect exoskeleton bits), was taken from the verandah of Asa Wright Nature Centre in Trinidad. In the last image, the bird looks almost relieved, and perhaps a bit embarrassed that the whole episode was captured on camera.

There are days (like today) when I'd like to be able to cough up a huge ball of stuff, if it would make everything better. On second thought, maybe there are better ways to make oneself feel better. Like playing a softball double-header. Think I'll try that instead...

As dawn arrives in the Arima Valley of Trinidad, the birds are the first ones to stir, followed shortly by the bird watchers. In between these stirrings, there is a very important thing—a ritual you might say—that happens in the gardens that separate the rain forest from the buildings at the Asa Wright Nature Centre: the bird feeders are filled.


I'd been hearing about the Asa Wright bird feeders for 30 years, at least. Twenty-one years ago, the very first article I worked on as the newly minted assistant editor for Bird Watcher's Digest was an account of birding at Asa Wright and Trinidad by Steve, Dave, and Karl Maslowski. Over the years thousands of bird watchers have made the pilgrimage to Asa, the first nature center dedicated to bird watching and conservation in the American tropics, and still one of the best.

When dawn begins her slow awakening, it is the voices of the forest birds that are your alarm clock at Asa. Each morning during our recent week there it was the bearded bellbird, the great antshrike, or the palm tanagers that awakened me. And then, when you wake up and realize where you are, you begin to move as rapidly as possible to get dressed and down to the main building—the original house that Asa Wright herself lived in—to get to what is probably the world's most famous porch, or as they call it at Asa Wright Nature Centre: the verandah! Yes, they spell veranda with an 'h' on the end, and I've got to tell you, the Asa veranda IS ah-inspiring.

Most of the feeder visitors seemed to enjoy the bread, but a few, such as the turquoise-browed motmot, and the crested oropendola, come in just for the fruit. The hummers ( a half-dozen or more species) have eyes and bills only for the nectar in the feeders, though they will occasionally nab a small insect flying over the fast-ripening feeder fruit.


The experience of verandah birding made the folks in our party want to stay put, right there. The birding was that good, and relaxing. But we had trails to walk, birding expeditions to take, and other places, other birds to encounter. If I am lucky enough to return to Asa Wright for another week sometime, I believe I will allot at least 50% of my time there to verandah birding. There's just nothing better than enjoying the birds of the topics from the comfort of a covered porch elevated over the feeders, with a commanding view of the Arima valley.

A constantly changing river of birds trickled through the trees surrounding the verandah, including many spectacular tanager species. Regular readers of this blog know that I have a soft spot for tanagers, so you won't be surprised to know that my first really good looks ever at the stunning bay-headed tanager made my knees weak.

I'm only sharing a fraction of the images and amazing birds I saw during our verandah sitting at Asa Wright. Our trip was filled with very talented birders, including our hosts Jeff Bouton of Leica Sport Optics and Mark Hedden of Caligo Ventures. Our fellow participants were Pete Dunne (of Cape May Bird Observatory and New Jersey Audubon) and his wife Linda, Kenn and Kim Kaufman (he of field guide fame and she of the Black Swamp Bird Observatory). To this we added the experienced guides from the Asa Wright staff, so you can be sure that very few birds were left unidentified. Leica sponsored the trip, the focus of which was digiscoping using the new Leica spotting scopes, adaptors, and digital cameras. I'll post more soon about the digiscoping. For now, let me just say that the Leica digiscoping rig is amazingly easy to use and the images (motmot, bananaquit, video in this post) will speak for themselves.


And just in case you think we were far too bird-centric in our focus, I'll say that we saw at least five different species of large lizard on the Asa grounds, plus a handful of toads and frogs, and numerous colorful butterflies. Sadly (but perhaps fortunately) we did not encounter any of the snake species common to the Asa property.

One final thing to know about the verandah: It's coffes (or tea) in the morning; tea (or coffee) at the 4 p.m. tea time, then rum punch at 6:00 p.m. This is when most of the lively conversation takes place.

To learn more about the amazing history of the Asa Wright Nature Centre, visit the organization's website. To get a multimedia taste of what the feeder action was like on the verandah, check out this one-minute video I shot of bananaqits and a female green honeycreeper enjoying their morning toast for breakfast:

Today, July 24, is Julie Zickefoose's birthday. Last night, in a full-on assault on commemorating her special day, our band of birders went to Matura Beach here in Trinidad, to witness the nesting of the leatherback turtles. Being the Science Chimp that she is, this was a BIG DEAL to Zick.

Here are photos to document her night spent communing with these giants of the sea. We started off with a few hatchlings which the turtle nest monitors let us hold and examine. Then we walked up the beach to watch several adult females dig nests in the sand and lay their eggs. It was a magical experience and a good way to spend a birthday.

Zick got to see the laying female up close. Every so often she would grunt. By 'she,' of course, I mean the adult female leatherback turtle.

While the female turtles lay their eggs, they go into a kind of torpor where almost nothing will disturb them. During these minutes, it's possible to touch the turtles. Once the laying stops, so do the close human/turtle encounters


Special thanks to Jeff Bouton from Leica Sport Optics, for inviting us to visit Asa Wright and Trinidad on this Leica-sponsored trip.

Happy birthday, Jules!

About a week ago, Phoebe greeted me upon my return home from work with the news that she'd spotted the first copperhead of the summer. This is big, if expected, news. The copperhead was near the garage door, heading into a chipmunk hole. We waited and watched it for the next two hours. It was waiting for nightfall. We were waiting for it to come out so we could catch and relocate it.

Eventually it came out, while I was standing near it talking on the phone. I'm not sure who was on the other end of the phone, but they heard me scream out "The snake's outta the hole!" as I was hanging up.
We caught the copperhead and placed it in the bucket (shown above). It now lives in another place, far from our high-traffic garage.

I don't mind snakes, but I HATE being surprised by them. Where I am staying right now in Trinidad there are three deadly poisonous snakes in the jungle around us. Fer-de-lance, bushmaster, and coral snake are my three neighbors. They belong here—I am just a visitor. I hope to see one or more of these creatures, preferably before they see me, and, from a safe distance. So I'm being extra careful as I walk the forest trails around Asa Wright Nature Centre. No sightings thus far.

This place is amazing, even with the snakes. You can read more about AWNC here. And I'll be posting more from and about Asa in the days and weeks to come.

Neil Sedaka never sang a song about hearing lapwings in the rain, but he should have. I heard this southern lapwing yesterday afternoon—in the rain—at the TrinCity sewage lagoons, which smelled better than the Waterloo fishing dike we birded this afternoon. I'm sad that we don't have a big, dynamic, and noisy shorebird like the lapwing in North America. The killdeer is noisy, but not as large and in charge as the southern lapwing is.

I'm still in Trinidad, which is on the southwest edge of the Caribbean and on the northeast corner of South America. It is hot and humid and as birdy as anyplace I've ever been. Our group is based out of Asa Wright Nature Centre and we're all pining to spend more time on the centre's veranda, but first we have to visit some of this island's OTHER birdy spots.

Good night from 10º north of the Equator.

We spent the day birding around the Asa Wright Nature Centre in Trinidad. One of the very first birds seen well by our group during the early morning birding from the famed veranda was this male white-necked jacobin who was guarding the nectar feeders.

I'm using the new digiscoping rig from Leica and I have to say, it's getting some tastyawesome images.

More soon. Right now it's time for eyelid movies in anticipation of tomorrow's pre-dawn departure for the land of the Trinidad piping guan.