Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and Kiinkajou Night Walk

Day 3--Thursday,  February 13
Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve

On Wednesday, we had scheduled a three-hour Thursday morning guided tour of the Monteverde Reserve. We were scheduled to leave for the Reserve at 6:40, so we were up at our usual early hour and sat down to breakfast at 6:00 am. I cannot remember what I had for breakfast, but I think I'd decided to carbo-load for the three-hour tour, so perhaps this was the morning I had banana pancakes.

We met our tour guide, Daniel, in the lobby at 6:40 am. He was an enthusiastic birder and ebirder, eBird being an online database of bird observations. On the way to the reserve Daniel rhapsodized about recently dropping everything and traveling to the coast to see an eBird-reported sighting of a Palm Warbler. He saw the bird and was proud to add it to his life list. Another of our guides had traveled to see the bird also. Palm warblers are common in the southern portions of the US and have even been spotted in Oklahoma, but obviously this bird is a rarity this far south in Costa Rica.

Daniel had a Swarovski spotting scope and formal naturalist training behind him so was an excellent and enthusiastic birder. He could also get the scope on a bird faster than anyone I’ve known, including the Field Guides bird guides I have been with, all of whom were also excellent

Daniel, Rebecca and me on the trail

At the trailhead we met another couple, Suzi and Denis, Canadians who were also staying at the Lodge, though they had booked several overnights in other birdy locations. Suzi was a veterinarian and Denis a retired General Motors worker. The two were having a great adventure before a scheduled Veterinarians’ Conference. The four of us comprised the tour. I was happy about this low number of participants and also happy that we’d arrived early because the place is popular and there were many other visitors and guides rolling in.

Turns out that Suzi and Denis were from Beamsville, Ontario, only 20 minutes from St. Catharines, Ontario, where my cousin Hansi Tripe and her husband Rob live. If these couples ever met, I know the four of them would get on like a house afire, as the saying goes. Rob and Hansi are well traveled, both are birders, and Rob is a photographer. Suzi and I kept in touch and she sent pics and emails of their other adventures, some of which I will share in this blog.

The Monteverde Reserve straddles the Continental Divide at 4,662 feet above sea level and thus clouds lie atop it creating an almost mythical cloud forest. One expects to see Bilbo Baggins or some other mythical creature around each bend in the trail. It was chilly when we arrived and I almost wished that I’d worn a warmer layer under my rain jacket, but walking up and down the trails quickly disabused me of that notion.

Suzi and Daniel under some tree ferns on the trail

We had barely stepped onto the trail when Daniel spotted a Black-faced Solitaire. It was in a low tree close to the trail and Daniel had the spotting scope on it in a flash. Then he digiscoped pics of it (left) with each of our cell phones. 

Rebecca spotted a millipede on the trail. Daniel explained that it was a Yellow Spotted Millipede (Harpaphe haydeniana) also known as the almond-scented millipede or cyanide millipede. He explained that millipedes are very important decomposers in the forest and that this species secretes poisonous hydrogen cyanide . . . . enough cyanide to ward off its predators but not enough to harm a human. He told us that monkeys rub these millipedes all over themselves to kill parasites and to act as a repellant to other parasites. To prove that it was nonharmful, he picked it up and I held it, curled up, in my hand. I detected no almond smell.

A little farther along the trail Daniel spotted a Side-striped Palm Pit Viper . . . very high in a distant tree. This snake is green and was well camouflaged in the mossy, ferny, leafy greenery. It took us forever to “get on it,” and we asked Daniel how he could have possibly seen it. He laughingly explained that it had been in the same spot for three days and that he and the other guides knew just where it was. These poisonous pit vipers eat a meal and then curl up in a tree to digest it, remaining in the same spot for days. Daniel used my cell to digiscope the photos below of the viper, and I cropped and enlarged them. The original photos looked like nothing but leaves. When looking through my pics I almost threw them out.

Top two, digiscoped pix of the viper we saw; bottom, an Internet pic of the viper with its head showing

Daniel knew his plants, trees and flowers so  no part of the trail went unremarked. I had to control myself from taking too many plant and flower pix. A couple of good ones below but I must confess to forgetting most of their names and characteristics. The one left and top left in the grouping is a heliconia of course. It was so perfect that it almost looked artificial.

Daniel explained that small snakes lie await in these heliconia flowers for the hummingbirds that are always attracted to the heliconia's red flowers. When a hummingbird discovers a snake in the heliconia, it sounds the alarm and other hummers and birds gather to scold and warn of its presence. The second row down left in the grouping below is a photo I took of the tree ferns against the sky. Love these beautiful, lacy plants.

Suddenly we heard a band of spider monkeys high in the trees, We ran along the trail to where we had heard them but most of the band had moved away. One mother with her youngster was still in the canopy, however. We watched her meticulously groom her baby and watched the two of them move through the canopy—the mother followed by the baby who was learning grab-and-swing tricks with its long arms and prehensile tail—until they were directly overhead and then out of sight. 

We saw them much better than any of our photos suggest. The photo below left is Daniel’s digiscope, and the one to the right an Internet pic for a better look.

The bottom plant in the group plant photo (left) looks exactly like the ball moss I found in Texas on a previous birding trip, but I did not get a chance to ask Daniel its name.

Shortly after this great sighting we came upon a greater one: a  Resplendent Quetzal! If the red-eyed tree frog is the iconic Costa Rican herp, the Resplendent Quetzal is its iconic and much sought after bird. Our first sighting was of a female and the digiscoped pic left shows her calling, and not in vain. Again I have included both digiscoped and Internet pics so that you can see these birds more clearly. Daniel nearly fell off the trail when the male flew in he was so excited. He digiscoped a pic of it also but it was so far back and had its back to us so my photo of the male is poor. 

Below is Rebecca’s better digiscoped photo and another from the Internet so that you can see the bird's long streamers.

These birds are startlingly lovely with their nearly three-foot long upper tail coverts and long primary wing coverts that make it appear that they are wearing a green shawl over a red shirt. They nest in tree cavities and therein lies my question: How do quetzals fit their long streamer feathers into the tree cavity? And for that matter, how do motmots with their long racket tails nest in bankside burrows?

To top off our quetzal sightings, Daniel heard an Broad-billed Motmot—a bird that is unusual for the area—not twelve feet from where we were standing. He found it, got the scope on it and used my cell to take a pic, but unfortunately I must have culled the photo because I could not find it. 

Suzi sent me Daniel's digiscoped photo of the broad-billed motmot (below) after we got home. It is not a very good look at this stunning bird, but I include it and an Internet photo below to give you a better look. At least in the digiscoped photo you can see how the bird got its name.

Speaking of motmot burrows, abandoned burrows make good refuges for Costa Rica’s orange-kneed tarantulas. We saw several over our stay.

Here are some orange-kneed tarantula facts:
These are burrowing tarantulas and the female stays in the burrow for much of the time, relying on her vibration-sensitive body hairs to alert her to nearby or passing prey. Once alerted, she darts out and snags a meal. Females of this species can live up to thirty years, males live about ten years. Also, the male is often eaten by the female after mating.

Other birds seen this day were a Orange-bellied Trogon and a Black Guan (below).

We came out of the forest and then went to the Reserve’s cafe for a cup of coffee, me, and cocoa for the others. Here we could sit comfortably on benches and watch and photograph the hummingbirds that came to the feeders. The Violet Sabrewing with its white-tipped tail was the star of the lot, and a lot larger than the others. Below are Internet photos of some of the hummers we saw. 1) Violet Saberwing, 2) Purple-throated Mountain Gem, 3) Green-Crowned Brilliant, and 4) Talamanca  Hummingbird, formerly classified as the Magnificent, but now split into Rivoli's Hummingbird and Talamanca Hummingbird. To complicate matters the Magnificent while still magnificent, has reverted to its original name, Rivoli’s Hummingbird, and is found from southwest U.S. to Nicaragua. The Talamanca Hummingbird is found in mossy cloud forests in Costa Rica and Panama.

All told a fun and successful morning. We ate a Lodge lunch and then retired to the room to write up our morning, organize our pix, and relax on the balcony with a piece of  cake from the Lodge’s coffee bar. While on the balcony, we spotted a white-nosed coati in the water garden stream under it.

After a bit of a rest we decided to explore the Lodge grounds and walk the Lodge’s sloth trail. We met Suzi and Denis at the trailhead and they walked with us. This trail descends sharply to a creek. While seeing few birds or animals, we enjoyed the walk. I picked up rocks in the stream looking for lizards or anything else but the stream seemed almost sterile, no fish, bugs or anything that we could find. Its currents had rolled and compressed the sand/gravel into golf-ball-sized stones, two of which I cleaned and kept for souvenirs (below). We ended our walk at the meditation lookout below the Lodge pool but saw little. Rebecca saw a sloth across the valley but Suzy and I could not get on it.  On the way back to the room we stopped at the front desk to reserved a three-hour night walk with Kinkajou.

That evening we were bused to Kinkajou’s Night Walk. We had debated going on it or on a bat night walk. I wanted to see the tiny (about the size of a wine cork) Honduran White bats (Ectophylla alba), also called Honduran Tent-making Bats, that roost under bent heliconia leaves, but in Costa Rica these bats are most often seen on the Pacific Coast and we were at elevation in the fog forest, so we chose the night walk.

Honduran Tent-making Bats

Before leaving for the walk we each signed a waiver releasing the tour company of any liability, and we were each given a small flashlight which we were told to use to see where we were walking.  Harold, our guide, had a larger light. We hadn’t been on the narrow up and down trail long before we came to a tricky descent with uneven dirt stair heights. Toward the bottom Rebecca and  Harold, who was holding her elbow both fell off the trail and onto their backs. Rebecca reports: “I tumbled down dirt stairs at the  beginning of the walk and fell flat on my back—skinned elbows, bruised tail bone. Bent my cane. Guide Harold held my arm through the entire walk, saying, 'excellante, muy bien, perfecto' to cheer me on."

At one point, we stopped before a tall, hollow Strangler Fig its multiple trunks entwined. Harold shone his light into the base and the tree lit up like a cathedral window.

On this night walk we saw a 1) Gray-necked Wood Rail, 3 ) Brown Jay (both birds sleeping soundly), 5) Two-toed sloth (a high ball of fur in a tree), Rufous-eyed Frog, Brilliant Frog, Common Dink Frog (see these in next post), Orange-kneed Tarantula, 4) Stick Spider (2), Glass-winged Butterflies and several Tiger Longwings hanging, wings closed, from the underside of a twig; also a large, unnamed pale cricket. All three frogs were surprisingly tiny.

That evening we returned to the lodge tired and injured but happy with the day’s sightings. Rebecca’s tailbone was sore and we wondered about the trustworthiness of her bent cane, but the bend did not kink the metal, so we deemed the cane trustworthy for the rest of the stay.