birds

[Tad Eareckson]

So Saturday morning I'm sitting at the north position on a round table with seven other birders - all high powered (unlike Yours Truly). Dining room faces south and walls are largely open in that direction.

http://photofeathers.wordpress.com/2014/01/

http://photofeathers.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/img_0082.jpg

I look down at my bowl of breakfast cereal - granola, milk - and there's a female White-Chested Emerald Hummingbird...

http://www.kesterclarke.net/galleries/birds-of-guyana/hummingbirds/white-chested-emerald/
http://www.kesterclarke.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/IMG_0823_White-chested-Emerald-Amazilia-brevirostris_WEB-595x720.jpg


Kester Clarke

...also facing south and belly down and spread-eagle in the bowl on top of aforementioned cereal.

Nobody's seen how she got there.

I gently lift my soup spoon with the bird and next bite I was planning on taking, she starts fluttering. I cup her in my hands and take her to the rest room for a rinse and hand her off to Tom, one of the staff guides. He checks her out and she takes off back towards her herd at the feeder arrays just fine.

Nobody's ever heard of anything like this happening before. I go back and achieve rockstar status by finishing my bowl of cereal.

Wednesday I'd scored a couple new species for my landing-on-my-fingers-and-folding-wings list - Copper-Rumped...

http://www.hbw.com/ibc/photo/copper-rumped-hummingbird-amazilia-tobaci/perched-yerette

Fayard Mohammed
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eflen001/10849242345/

...and White-Necked Jacobin...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pazzani/5543919694/

Mike Pazzani
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastingimages/16340839793

Pedro Lastra

...Hummers. As the light starts to fade the Lesser Long-Tongued Bats...

http://www.planet-mammiferes.org/drupal/en/node/38?indice=Choeroniscus+minor

Merlin D. Tuttle

...start to merge with and replace the hummers at the sugar water feeders.

http://www.bochnik.com/trinidad/trinidad2016.htm

http://www.bochnik.com/trinidad/longtoungedbat1693b.jpg

Hmmm...

I quickly reach the conclusion that I'm gonna have zilch success getting them to land on me but they're also fruit (and insect) eaters and were savagely attacking the pineapple, papaya, banana, watermelon on the feeding stations...

http://www.rshirley.com/tnt/bat_fruit.html

Richard Shirley

...below the veranda.

I go down and extend a hand to near a favored cut of pineapple and immediately turn off the flow. Hands in pockets the attacks resume. So they're not crazy about monkey hands - probably for a good reason.

Take my hands out of my pockets after a bit and they tolerate. Gradually extend hand knuckles-first, the flow continues, start getting brushed by wings. But they're dragging the long cut away from me as they attack it.

I grasp the other end and pull it back. Makes it easier to tear off chunks. They ease up on worrying about me and get back to worrying more about each other. I worry a little about a having a finger mistaken for a piece of pineapple but never get nipped.

I pick up the cut and center it in my hand and became part of the normal background. Lotsa relaxed, firm, extended contact with the little guys.

Then they seemed to shift modes - abruptly stop attacking fruit but continue sucking the hummer feeders dry.

Then early the next morning the fruit feeders get replenished, the bats swarm, I get lotsa contact again. And with the sun rising the viewing gets progressively better.

Was at the Asa Wright Nature Centre about twelve hundred feet up in the eastern end of the Andes starting Wednesday morning. This (2017/01/03) morning the guy who served as our guide for most of the stay ferried a couple from Ontario down and west to the airport for their hop to Tobago and the two of us on back to the east, northeast to near the northeast extremity of the island, and west to our second lodging of significance - the Mount Plaisir Estate Hotel...

http://www.bochnik.com/trinidad/trinidad2016.htm

http://www.bochnik.com/trinidad/balcony.jpg

...on the north coast beach at Grande Riviere.

En route at around:

10°39'41.94" N 061°04'33.03" W

I'm looking out the left / passenger's seat window I see a pair of the birds I'd most wanted to nail this trip - Channel-Billed Toucans. The Keel-Bill is in the same genus and the national bird of Belize. Got a crappy partial look at a fast moving one of those in the forest canopy at Aguacate Lagoon in the Spanish Lookout area last year. Now I've got this pair close at a bit above eye level with the sun behind me in a lone tree with zilch foliage. Fuckin' dream shot.

"TOUCANS!" Like a ten year old kid whose wildest dream has just come true. The motherfucker barely turns his head and eases off the gas not a millimeter. "Sorry, it's too dangerous to stop here. Maybe we'll be able to see them from a quarter mile down the road and around the bend." ("Yeah, get fucked.")

But of course on a fairly identical stretch of the same road it wasn't too dangerous for him to pull over to take a cell phone call ten or fifteen minutes later.

I will hate that sonuvabitch to my dying day. That was probably my first and last shot at seeing this bird in this lifetime.

Angry and depressed now as night is falling. Shortly after arrival I did a clean-up and clothes change and had a rather horrifying look to see just how swollen my legs had gotten. Clotting problems stemming from my 1983 lower abdominal malignant tumor experience - and an officious idiot nurse overly challenged by common sense and grade school arithmetic precipitated more damage in that department around the Thanksgiving period.

Also... As careful as I tried to be the fuckin' chiggers had a field day with me within the first 24 hours of bird excursions. And I'm thinking at the moment that I must've been hit by a second wave yesterday. Looks like advanced smallpox and the itching is agonizing.

These trips - Belize, Montana, Trinidad-Tobago - have me upright and pounding trails, slopes a lot more than I can sustain. Legs swell up and I need to be reclining with them propped up for a couple days to start looking a bit human again. I'll need to skip the next couple mornings' scheduled bird outings to have a hope of getting back on track.

To end for now on a happier note...

Was sitting on the veranda composing the last three paragraphs looking out over the surf and ocean - Black and Turkey Vultures, Brown Pelicans, Frigatebirds... Then I notice some smaller birds flying low, skimming and dodging the waves, frequently snatching or attempting to snatch stuff from just below the surface. Petrels come vaguely to mind.

Then I get a good lock on something closer. "Holy shit, that's a BAT! Holy shit, they're ALL bats!" I'd known there were fishing bats but on the OCEAN?! Google search, Greater Bulldog Bats, ocean, yep.


---
Edit - 2017/03/16 00:40:00 UTC

http://bassariscus.me/places/belize/belize-2013-blog/
Belize 2013 Blog | bassariscus.me

Dave - 2013
Toucan Ridge Ecology and Education Society

Tonight we're mist netting (weather permitting) down at the stream. Greater Fishing Bats have been seen there so I've got all my fingers and toes crossed. Will add more tomorrow...hopefully with a picture of a Greater Fishing Bat!!!
...
Well...the finger and toe crossing worked!!! We got a Greater Fishing Bat - a lactating female - plus two other bats (two species). The Greater Fishing Bat has a wingspan that reaches nearly two feet across and has these massive feet that it uses to grab small fish from the surface. Their echolocation is so sophisticated that they are able to detect the fin of a minnow sticking out of the water only a few millimeters and the width of a human hair! They then drag their feet in the water and grab/spear the fish before flying to land and eat. Very cool bat! Only the third one of this species that I've caught (first two were in the northern part of Belize in 2003).

http://bassariscusdotme.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/fb-in-hand1.jpg

Note the really gigantic legs and feet that they use to catch fish.
http://bassariscusdotme.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/fb-legs1.jpg

A good view of the legs.
http://bassariscusdotme.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/fb-wingspan1.jpg

Upwards of 20 inch wingspan.
http://bassariscusdotme.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/fb-back1.jpg

The back is only furred in the middle portion - and yep this is normal.
http://bassariscusdotme.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/fb-face1.jpg

Another common name for this species is Bulldog Bat - as you can see from the face.

This is in the mountains about halfway along the Hummingbird Highway from its SE end to Belmopan - about where we saw the White Hawks with Mom and Kid in tow, 2016/01/05.

http://www.kitestrings.org/post9939.html#p9939

[JoeF]

http://www.redbubble.com/people/farflung/works/2249929-channel-billed-toucan

http://ih0.redbubble.net/image.4901084.9929/flat,1000x1000,075,f.jpg
Michael Sheridan

Top-drawer best wishes to you, Tad, in 2017.

[Tad Eareckson]

Thanks, Joe, and the same.

That bird, by the way, is a Keel Bill.

The photographer, Michael Sheridan, reported it as from Copan, Honduras and IDed it properly but some moron downstream labeled it as a Channel Bill and nobody's ever bothered to check and fix it.

Actual Channel Bill (at Asa Wright (courtesy Naturalist Journeys)):



And:

http://theworldmostbeautifulbirds.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-channel-billed-toucan.html

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1QKLeNeog3o/Vv1Ugn5FZtI/AAAAAAABiBM/1gKzGgijX1AQTbtDKyttDPFUdkRr5ISrw/s1600/2.jpg
---
Smoldered a bit less Thursday. Swelling came down overnight well below my most optimistic target and I was able to roll on our early morning guided foray and deal with physical stress no more challenging than a climb up a floor's worth of steps.

The primary mission was the endemic and critically endangered Trinidad Piping Guan...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenbuckingham/28183764635/

Stephen Buckingham
http://birdsandwords-larryz.blogspot.com/2016/04/grand-riviere-44-45-12-life-birds-2.html
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1Nl4uJi6PPU/VxFPF5VnlaI/AAAAAAAARhs/TmTjwW2-lP8qIRjK2C6IoxLV_y0j_MKFACK4B/s1600/trnidad%2Bpiping%2Bguan_0654.jpg

http://www.hbw.com/ibc/photo/trinidad-piping-guan-pipile-pipile/bird-high-trees-early-morning
Shari Zirlin

...but at the location less than three quarters of a crow flight mile from the relevant lodging there's a healthy concentration and they were conspicuous, loud, easy, entertaining.

And got a rather short but fairly good close look at a Toucan in nice light. Damn thing took off from that ideal perch and stuck around forever in a treetop - part of which did a good job of obstructing the view most of the time. Had two calling to each other before we were done.

Our guide, Nicholas Alexander, had been badly chewed up by chiggers the day before and that helped make me feel a bit less stupid.

After return I suited up in the new swimwear I'd gotten for a Tobago snorkeling option and hit the beach. First deliberate swimming effort in over a decade. (Broke through the ice once off the South River some years back. Can't remember when.) The surf kicked the shit outta me, peeled my rash guard back off my abdomen, deposited about a pound's worth of gravel underneath it and my trunks wherever it could. Was relieved to get back to dry land alive.

Watched the ocean from the veranda as the day faded. Black Vultures, Pelicans, Frigatebirds, and cumulus clouds defined some spectacular thermals coming off the Caribbean.

Used my HourWorld app set for Port of Spain to keep track of where the sun was. Set was local 17:57 and I saw my first Bulldog Bat at 17:52. Over the course of the next two minutes a respectable collection showed up out of nowhere and then at 17:54 a falcon I was best-guessing as an Aplomado took a shot at one from a hundred feet or so. Came in empty 75 yards to our east.

http://www.bochnik.com/trinidad/trinidad2016.htm


That expanse of ocean was devoid of bats for the next couple minutes.

Consulted the book at dinner, Aplomados are really spotty on Trinidad and, oh yeah, there's a BAT Falcon...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shyalbatross/6591393785

Ryan Shaw

...and Bat Falcons aren't. And this thing was diving on a BAT. Must've been what it was. Consultation with Nicholas this morning lent weight.

Also pretty sure that on the previous Saturday afternoon I had an airborne Peregrine overhead as we navigated the cloverleaf sorta exit to the Caroni Swamp Scarlet Ibis tour boat landing. Guide 1 also pronounced that situation too dangerous for a pullover, with some ACTUAL justification that time, but he sure didn't make the slightest effort to get another shot at it after we'd cleared the actual traffic.

Left Grande Riviere Thursday morning after a visual Toucanless outing to the same place and a bit beyond again with Nicholas. Our host, Piero Guerrini, ferried us to the airport for the short hop to Tobago. Went east off the main drag a couple miles to take us to Galera Point - (north)eastern-most point of Trinidad, Caribbean/Atlantic switch point, the point at which this end of the Andes descends and disappears into the sea, my easternmost footsteps in the Western Hemisphere.

Then he let me explore the stretch of road at which I'd punched the Toucans location into the GPS receiver. Plenty of easy places to pull over, not the least bit impatient, nobody got killed or smashed up, no horns, the miracle for which I'd hoped didn't happen, double fuck Roodal.

Caught the earlier hop to Tobago on a mostly empty 737, got picked up by the Naturalist Beach Resort, drove for the first time on the British side of the road the automatic (was supposed to be four wheel drive, isn't) Mazda Familia with coaching from the receptionist, mostly helpful at the beginning, mostly the opposite as I was getting a feel for things, through rush hour traffic and over a horrendous narrow and viciously windy mountain coastal road. Surface paved and reasonably well maintained.

Better stop and post now. More later.

[Tad Eareckson]

So Tobago Morning One a bit pre dawn our guide, Newton George, shows up at our new lodging a bit late. He's world famous as God's Gift to Tobago Birding and wastes no time giving us the half hour monologue detailing his credentials and accomplishments. OK, they ARE fairly interesting and impressive BUT he's not the least bit interested in Yours Truly or anything he has to say.

As it starts to get light it doesn't much 'cause the weather's crap - still rainy season on these rocks. We pause at a stream where he notes frogs calling. What kind? Don't know, just know birds. (Great.)

We start winding up Roxborough Partuvier Road, the main drag across the island through the Main Ridge Forest Reserve - first road on Tobago that hasn't scared me totally shitless. In the gloom I see an interesting dark blob on the middle of a wire spanning the road. "Merlin. (Yawn...)" "Can I get him?!!!" I say, stupidly assuming that he'll continue on a hundred yards then gradually slow, turn around, re-approach at a steady slowish/moderate speed. "Sure!" he says as he slams on the brakes, throws it into reverse, accelerates backwards.

"Hmmm... Looks like he's flown off." ("No shit - DICKHEAD. Can't imagine WHY.") So Tobago's Living Ornithological Treasure is a total moron and I don't want much to do with him after that.

We follow a mountain stream on a foot trail down from the road. Rain's on and off, sometimes heavy. At one point I back up, stumble a bit on a wet root, recover. As I'm standing straight and still he gets a death grip on my right upper arm and maintains it for a couple minutes such that if I stumble again he'll be ready to save me. I'm wondering when he's gonna decide when it'll be safe enough to allow me to fend for myself. Didn't see any bruising but was still feeling it yesterday.

He points out a couple of small dark bats roosting under a rather huge jungle understory leaf a few yards away. No interfemoral membranes, I'm thinking Seba's Short-Tailed (fruit) Bats...

http://www.theonlinezoo.com/img/15/toz15256l.jpg


...like we saw hanging from the ceiling at the Community Baboon (Howler Monkey) Sanctuary visitors center in Belize. Web searches lend weight. But "bats" is as specific as Newton gets.

Highest point of the morning for me... Remember THIS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potoo

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Nyctibius_griseus_471885191_27f931630d_o_Crop.jpg

guy?

http://www.kitestrings.org/post6692.html#p6692

Never in a million years did I think I'd get a look like that at one of those (Common Potoo) in the wild. Excellent light, clear unobstructed shot, maybe 25 feet right over the beginning of a paved drive tunneled under the canopy.

11°15'11.85" N 060°35'11.78" W

On a horizontal limb rather than a broken off vertical stump, looked like he had no head but after a while one could find a bill tip pointed forward and horizontal and then a closed eye. And then an eye slowly opening to a fifteen percent capacity slit. Then the eye closing again.

Newton's much better with birds evolved to handle potential threats by remaining motionless in the dense forest than he is with birds evolved to handle potential threats by flying away at eighty miles per hour in open countryside.

Lunch Sunday at the Caribbean Kitchen way the hell up on a virtual cliff to the south of and overlooking Castara Bay.

TripAdvisor


Jason X. Nicholas

Weather, sky, lighting, colors intermittently stunningly beautiful. Looking down at soaring Frigatebirds...

http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/amigo/2014/08/08/

Three Amigos Birding
http://www.stephenburch.com/gallery/T&T/mfrigate.htm

http://www.stephenburch.com/gallery/T&T/Magnificent%20Frigatebird%20Little%20Tobago%2025%20Feb%2015_990.jpg
Stephen Burch
http://www.nemesisbird.com/birding/identification/magnificent-frigatebirds-determining-age-and-sex/

http://www.nemesisbird.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/IMG_2452.jpg
Alex Lamoreaux

...and wheeling contingents of Orange-Winged (Amazon) Parrots.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/96934864@N06/14152246523/

Steven Kaplandvm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/96934864@N06/13945563368/
http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50181570693_e1593cc6da_o.jpg

Steven Kaplandvm
http://www.kesterclarke.net/galleries/birds-of-guyana/parrots-macaws/orange-winged-amazon/

Kester Clarke
http://www.stephenburch.com/gallery/T&T/owparrot.htm

Stephen Burch

Sipping a margarita and feeling like a supporting character in a James Bond movie.

Then started thinking more about the James Bond connection here - which I just now discovered is likely entirely fake. Ian Fleming did NOT have a villa - and probably never even set foot - on Goat Island off of Speyside. But Fleming was something of a bird freak, wrote the novels in Jamaica, and took the name "James Bond" from the author of "Birds of the West Indies" with the American ornithologist's blessings.

We steamed by the island(s) late morning Monday en route to Little Tobago Island.

Disembarked and I brought up the rear of our group of six plus guide at Stop One at two hundred feet. Intercepted a three foot slender bodied snake as he was attempting to escape up a tree. Didn't know what he was but did know what he wasn't and was able to stop him with a gentle grab. He never got very alarmed and I was able to fully calm him in less than a minute.

Guide IDed him as a Cook's Tree Boa, I showed him while people took pictures, nobody else wanted to hold him, let him go about six feet up in his tree, and he was in absolutely no rush to split.

Hit a couple overlooks of an east side bay and bordering cliffs - the usual Pelicans and Frigatebirds - plus Red-Billed Tropicbirds, Red-Footed Boobies, a couple of our wintering Broad-Winged Hawks... Guide took us a dozen or two steps down from the second higher lookout and back under the canopy to show us a Tropicbird incubating her single egg on the ground.

http://www.richard-seaman.com/Birds/Tobago/LittleTobago/RedBilledTropicbirds/index.html

http://www.richard-seaman.com/Birds/Tobago/LittleTobago/RedBilledTropicbirds/SingleRedBilledTropicbirdOnNest.jpg
Richard Seaman

Really cool having a large pelagic bird like that totally unperturbed while parked face-to-face with as many humans as could be crammed in the available space three or four feet out.

I commented that her tail feathers looked like they'd seen better days. Those are what the Frigatebirds grab when pirating their fish.


Richard Seaman
http://birdquiz.net/tt-part3/

http://birdquiz.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Red-billed-Tropicbird.jpg

Returned to the boat, cruised back towards port a couple hundred yards, most of us donned mask, snorkel, fins. I donned mask and snorkel - apparently 'cause the operators had never before heard of anyone having Size Eleven/Twelve. So I propelled myself with breast stroking arms only.

Water temperature couldn't have been any more comfortable, clarity was fine, depth maybe ten feet. Coral was sparse but living, lotsa fish very familiar from lotsa nature shows. Think I was able to ID parrotfish at a minimum. Felt good to move under my own power without pain and having my situation worsen. Had been mildly worried about drowning as a consequence of my physical problems but as it turned out they needed to threaten me with a harpoon gun to get me back on the boat.

Made a couple of attempts to dive to the bottom but couldn't successfully fight the extra buoyancy of the salt water. Felt like a cork.

Back on the "mainland" I started thinking more about the snake ID and pretty much immediately reached the conclusion - "Bullshit." It was no fucking way remotely related to anything the slightest bit boa flavored and I felt stupid for letting myself get snowed for as long as I did. VERY similar in form to our rat snakes and a bit of web work got me Boddaert's Tropical Racer...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Boddaert%27s_Tropical_Racer_%28Mastigodryas_boddaerti%29_close-up_%2810346539504%29.jpg


...or something very close.

Nothing other than the name particularly in common with what we call racers in the US. If there had been I'd have gotten the crap bit outta me.

Our guide - whose name I didn't catch in the course of an extremely confusing reshuffled morning - was absolutely clueless on his reptiles. The island was crawling with Rainbow Whiptail lizards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_whiptail

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_whiptail#/media/File:Rainbow_whiptail_lizard_(Cnemidophorus_lemniscatus)_female.JPG

I'd IDed one before but had forgotten its name and this guy couldn't do any better than "lizard". Oh well, at least he didn't call it a gecko. And I didn't dislike him at all 'cause he didn't have his head up his ass.

Currently killing time at the Piarco International Airport for the beginning of the trip back to reality. The air conditioning seems to be dialed in for Americans. Just had to dig into my backpack to do the five layers required for me to become reasonably comfortable. Need to dump this now and start working on the next installment while the laptop is charging back up.

[<BS>]

Had been mildly worried about drowning as a consequence of my physical problems but as it turned out they needed to threaten me with a harpoon gun to get me back on the boat.

Sounds therapeutic. Would pool time at home be a tolerable substitute?

[Tad Eareckson]

Not really compatible with my Boo Radley lifestyle here in the US. But thanks for the thought.
---
Got into BWI last Thursday night 21:04 local. It was warmer OUTside that airport than it was INside the one in which I'd spent most of the morning a little shy of two thousand miles worth of latitude south. Was comfortable in the same Layer One - long sleeve T-shirt - I was using shortly before for steep ascents in steaming rain forests.

Reminds me of last year waiting to blow Belize for several hours at Goldson International - freezing to death, miserable, doors wide open, air conditioning the jungle... Great job on the environmental awareness and actions, guys.

Friday morning picked Quinn up from the pet shop at which I'd dropped her off for boarding on the evening of 2016/12/26. She looked and behaved fine. Had been in close company with other birds the whole time but was really cuddly on the drive back home. Again ecstatic to confirm that she didn't get bored enough to start plucking feathers ('cause once they start...).

Speaking of parrots...

Last full day on Tobago was the prior Tuesday. Spent most of it at the lodging recovering from the Little Tobago trip the previous day, watching the Bananaquits...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bananaquit
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7599082@N08/542690999/

Leon Bojarczuk

...and Blue-Gray...

http://www.birdsinfocus.com/show.php?absID=3097

Bob Gress

...and Palm...

http://photos.heinphoto.com/trips/trinidad/h805B41F#h805b41f

Scott J. Hein

...Tanagers coming into the second floor, forest side deck railing we'd baited with sugar water and orange juice.

Skipped lunch and made a late afternoon ascent back up to the Caribbean Kitchen for "lunner". Hummer feeders were cooking, got hit by a heavy but shortish duration rain, started becoming aware of a building din - like zillions of Starlings coming in to roost. "Wait a minute... This isn't Maryland and those AREN'T Starlings." Untold scores of super cute li'l Green-Rumped Parrotlets...

http://www.hbw.com/ibc/species/54685/gallery

Margareta Wieser

...pouring into a couple trees right in front of us.

My experience with Caribbean Parrots is that some species are freakin' EVERYWHERE and they're really noisy and you see fast moving flocks all the time. But when a couple hundred of them pick a nearby tree and park you can't BUY a decent look at a single individual. These Parrotlets were so dense and close, however, as to be a welcome exception to the rule.

Back at the feeders...

The Copper-Rumps are on the small end of the scale and it seems the smaller the hummer the less the fear of us big clumsy monkeys. And they're pretty common. So it was my easiest bird to get to land and fold. That evening I had two parked on my fingers simultaneously.

The Jacobins are also pretty common and that was my second easiest to land.

And finally got me a Ruby-Topaz:

http://animalia-life.club/birds/ruby-topaz.html

http://animalia-life.club/data_images/ruby-topaz/ruby-topaz1.jpg

Incredibly beautiful little guy - the iridescent flashes are absolutely electric, even is low light.

I'd been playing with them at the restaurant an afternoon or two before but wasn't landing any. Said OK but I AM gonna get some solid touches. When I'd get them sucking sugar water I found I could repeatedly bump them in their chests and they'd do no more than adjust their positions up and back down. A gentle bump from the big clumsy monkey from below versus a stab in the back from one of their enemy fighter buddies - not a problem.

I'd complained to a waitress we'd gotten to know that if they took the feeders down at dark they wouldn't get any bats in - knowing, of course, that that was WHY they were taking the feeders down at dark. She confirmed that that was management policy.

It occurred to me that, yeah, you'd freak out a few customers but in a place like that they'd be much more of a draw than a deterrent. They left them up for a while into bat time that evening and Mandy of Dave and Mandy from England tried to land them after trying late hummers. They'd watched and photographed me doing the hummers but I told her not to hold her breath on the bats.

And now that I've got my brain back in gear a little better... The bats, of course, CAN'T land on fingers the way hummers can. They'd hafta either hook with claws on their toes to hang upside down or go down on all fours - and neither of those are ever gonna happen on the artificial flowers with their homemade nectar.

When watching real time there's never any more than a split second hovering hesitation at a port and one wonders if they're actually getting anything for their efforts.

[Tad Eareckson]

So after breakfast on New Year's Day an Asa Wright guide herds us up and leads us down the trail to Dunston Cave - what I believe is the only place on the planet with relatively easy access to an Oilbird colony.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/onemoreshotrog/8680986074

Roger Sargent

I'd meant to take my Garmin nüvi 3590LM along 'cause I like to record key trip locations to see where I've been but realize partway in that I haven't. And before I realized that I hadn't I'd decided that there'd be no way in hell I'd be doing that trail again. So fuck, I'll just get the coordinates off the web and enter them.

So we get our target bird...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/onemoreshotrog/8680986740/

Roger Sargent
http://www.flickr.com/photos/onemoreshotrog/8680987474/

Roger Sargent
http://www.trinidadbirding.com/trips/2009_TT_11_Nov/11_11.htm

Terry Williams

...and extract ourselves from the jungle and I hit Google and:

http://asawright.org/about-oilbirds/
About Oilbirds - Asa Wright Nature Centre

comes to the top.

The Dunstan Oilbird cave is located on property owned by the Asa Wright Nature Centre (AWNC) with exact location 61°17'51.31"N and 10°42'55.29".

If you ASSUME they mean west longitude the "exact location" of the "Dunstan" Oilbird Cave - which they also spell correctly (Dunston) in two previous references on the same page - is in the North Atlantic about halfway between the north end of Great Britain and Iceland.

And if you unreverse the coordinates to:

10°42'55.29" N 061°17'51.31" W

you still end up over two and a quarter football fields east of where the Google Earth oilbird cave photos are clumped.

So I say if you want something done right... and gear up for an afternoon geographical expedition.

01 - 10°42'56.2" N 061°17'58.1" W
02 - 10°42'56.2" N 061°17'57.8" W
03 - 10°42'56.9" N 061°17'57.6" W
04 - 10°42'56.7" N 061°17'58.2" W
05 - 10°42'57.6" N 061°17'57.6" W
06 - 10°42'58.1" N 061°17'57.8" W
07 - 10°42'58.7" N 061°17'59.2" W
08 - 10°42'59.0" N 061°17'58.7" W
09 - 10°42'59.2" N 061°17'59.6" W
10 - 10°42'59.7" N 061°17'58.8" W
11 - 10°42'59.8" N 061°17'58.9" W
12 - 10°43'00.0" N 061°17'58.9" W
13 - 10°43'00.7" N 061°17'57.8" W
14 - 10°43'00.9" N 061°17'57.3" W
15 - 10°43'00.6" N 061°17'56.9" W
16 - 10°43'00.5" N 061°17'57.1" W
17 - 10°43'00.1" N 061°17'56.6" W
18 - 10°42'59.3" N 061°17'56.5" W
19 - 10°42'59.3" N 061°17'54.6" W

The first point is the cave entrance:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/11140862.jpg

Edward Rooks

and the subsequent ones are trail points - mostly switchback turns - back to the main drag trail coming south down from the Centre. Looks like:

http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5457/14037511444_72ed15089a_o.png


Crappiest shot at the satellite constellation was, of course, at the cave entrance / cliff face but the readings leading away are all nicely consistent and I'm confident in and happy with the results.

Sometime around 2017/01/03 someone had bothered to flip the coordinates so the sentence now reads:

The Dunstan Oilbird cave is located on property owned by the Asa Wright Nature Centre (AWNC) with exact location 10°42'55.29"N and 61°17'51.31".

Still no West designation for the longitude, Dunston still misspelled, Cave not capitalized, "exact location" is just off the southeast corner of the above screenshot...

I'd emailed all this data to a young female Trinidadian guide who'd expressed interest but never heard back from her or anyone else. Rather disappointing to see so little interest in getting things right from a world renowned facility like this.

[Tad Eareckson]

So about the first thing that gets pointed out to us upon arrival at Asa Wright late morning on 2016/12/28 is a BIG Cook's Tree Boa very conspicuously coiled way the fuck up in a bamboo stand next to the main drag a short walk back. Back lit, mostly just a lump, probably near max size at two meters, would've looked a lot like this one:

http://ianloydwildlife.blogspot.com/2014/10/trinidad.html
Mammal watching birder : Trinidad

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f8JTcG7HAY0/VDw1i5PiRPI/AAAAAAAABBw/NpvpInVjvOI/s1600/Cook's%2Btree%2Bboa.jpg

in the mangroves at Caroni Swamp back about a dozen crow flight miles to the southwest.

Do the full rez 1600 width link for a better look at the vertical slit pupil. One of the first things I did when I grabbed this guy:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Boddaert%27s_Tropical_Racer_%28Mastigodryas_boddaerti%29_close-up_%2810346539504%29.jpg


was check out his pupil shape to gain confidence that I wasn't dealing with something that could inject anything unpleasant. If my brain had been operating at better than 25 percent efficiency I'd have been able been able to throw boas out of the list of candidates at the time.

All over the three islands upon which we set foot, all the fuckin' time, all over the fuckin' web - Cook's Tree Boa. THERE ARE NO FUCKIN' COOK'S TREE BOAS WITHIN 130 MILES OF ANYTHING CONSTITUTING ANY PART OF THE COUNTRY OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO. They're endemic to Saint Vincent, the aforementioned distance to the NNW of T&T's nearest square foot of terra firma. That animal is a Central American Tree Boa, Corallus ruschenbergerii - not a Corallus cookii.

Un freakin' believable that a country with such a major eco-tourism industry can get something that major that universally WRONG. (I didn't discover the error until this morning.)

And of course here in the Mid Atlantic US it's really hard to go wrong identifying any snake you see as a Copperhead - 'specially if you're a Scoutmaster with a hatchet or shovel and people of varying ages to protect.

[Tad Eareckson]

First full morning at Asa Wright, 2016/12/29, Roodal takes us south/down the main drag from the Centre. Main target seems to be the Bearded Bellbird...

http://millbraecameraclub.org/view_comp_photo.php?compId=99&id=9695&showAward=true

Bob Cossins

...the logo bird...



...for the facility. Ya hear them all the freakin' time and they're pretty easy to get in a scope from the veranda down the valley a ways. We get right under one or two of them but I never get locked on a good shot.

Did pick up a good and easy Collared Trogon:

http://www.trinidadbirding.com/trips/2009_TT_11_Nov/11_11.htm

Terry Williams
http://www.cuffie-river.com/gallery-abdool

http://www.cuffie-river.com/img/gallery/abdool/fa_01.jpg
Faraaz Abdool

which was nice, and got tuned into a cool little diurnal insectivore, the Lesser Sac-Winged Bat:

http://www.planet-mammiferes.org/drupal/en/node/40?indice2=Photos%2FVolants%2FEmball%2FSaccLep4.jpg


which does his hunting mostly under the forest canopy where it's usually a bit on the dark side - but we later saw one or two in full open daylight.

Roodal first pissed me off a bit by ignoring a couple very relevant questions.

Fast forward to 2017/01/02 on a trip to the east coast and Nariva Swamp. I'm in the passenger's (left front) seat of his van. The window won't operate and I'm under the impression (perhaps/probably wrongly) that it's an issue regarding the door not being fully shut. I recall him getting a bit bent out of shape when I opened and firmly shut the door when I hadn't previously while he was rolling so I waited until he was fully stopped at an intersection prior to a left ninety.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!"

(Nothing, dickhead. It should be pretty fucking obvious at this point that I've already done it.)
(I dunno... How 'bout you think real hard and see if you can come up with a plausible theory regarding what I did and why I did it.)

"I TOLD YOU not to open the door when the bus was moving."

(A - the bus WASN'T moving, dickhead. And - B - what the fuck does it matter anyway? If we unbolted the fucking door, threw it in the back, and continued on with Yours Truly seatbelted in as I am how would it make the slightest bit of difference?)

So we went on to the coast and swamp, picked up a few cool birds. (Black-Bellied Whistling (Tree) Ducks...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianlasenby/28248031746/

Brian Lasenby
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jake_paredes/15317881480/

Jake Paredes

...and Southern Lapwings...

http://www.stephenburch.com/gallery/T&T/slapwing.htm

http://www.stephenburch.com/gallery/T&T/Southern%20Lapwing%20Tobago%20Plantations%2021%20Feb%2015_990.jpg
Stephen Burch

...come to mind.) At one point we've got a Black Vulture (they're EVERYWHERE all the freakin' time on both islands (with rather light sprinklings of Turkeys)) gliding low straight towards us. An Ani...

http://www.bochnik.com/trinidad/trinidad2016.htm

http://www.bochnik.com/trinidad/smoothbilledanis.jpg

calls from behind him and I make a throwaway joke about the call of the Black Vulture.

"No, that was a Smooth-Billed Ani calling." Roodal patiently explains to the clueless American tourist.

He's been our guide for four and a half extensive trips at this point and is now assuming that I'm THAT FUCKING STUPID.

(Oh, thank you so very much for setting me straight on that point, sir. I shudder to think how lost we'd be without your experience and wisdom.)

I'm still smoldering about the car door thing - it's a totally fake safety issue and only a total moron would make an issue of it.

Holy shit! You're gonna launch without a:
- hang check?!
- backup loop?!
- locking carabiner?!
- hook knife?!

So I decide to run an experiment to prove the guy's a moron beyond any shadow of a doubt. How 'bout an ACTUAL safety issue? Let's see if he says anything about me not wearing a seatbelt.

Yeah, you can make a fair case that I'm also proving myself to be a moron. It's Russian roulette to some extent but with an ungodly huge cylinder. He's done zillions of Trinidad miles over many decades and likely hasn't been involved in a head-on of any degree of severity - or triviality. Plan is to leave it off, make it obvious that it's off en route to the next / Red-Bellied Macaws...

http://markavery.info/2014/08/17/oscar-dewhurst-3/

Oscar Dewhurst
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michel_giraud-audine/24375579443/

Michel Giraud-Audine
http://www.birdsinfocus.com/show.php?absID=3195

Bob Gress

...stop (abandoned World War Two Waller US Air Force Base), put it back on unobtrusively when I hop back in for the home leg.

Problem 1. The fuckin' macaws aren't half a dozen miles back up the road like I was thinking. They're about eighty percent of the way back home.

Problem 2. There's a rather spectacularly wrecked car in - I think - Valencia. Scene is swarming with cops - one of them with a really scary Uzi looking thing slung over his shoulder. I'm thinking drug wars.

Make it by that mess but there's another pack of cops another hundred yards ahead and I/we get busted. Roodal starts lying, I have no choice but to go along with it. They let us slide. (Fine is about eight times what it is in Maryland.) Mega embarrassing but, oh well, the exercise itself was a stunning success. There's no law (I'm assuming) and no danger associated with making sure a door is shut at a full stop but we're gonna have a calf about it. BUT we're not gonna say anything about not wearing a seatbelt in the death position over thirty miles of dangerous roads with plenty of fast oncoming traffic.

Roodal can't really say anything to his front row passengers (and there aren't even seatbelts available for any subsequent row passengers) 'cause - as I'd previously noted - he's frequently minus his in the high birds / low cops areas in which we spend most of our time.

Fast forward again to 2017/01/03. The other half of Roodal's Group of Four needs to get to Piarco International WAY early for the hop to Tobago and we're due to get relocated to Grande Riviere the same day. One wouldn't wish an extra round trip up/down the Arima Valley road to/from Asa Wright on one's worst enemy and we happily volunteer to blow early, backtrack with Jim and Harriet to the airport, and proceed to our destination. We're saving the motherfucker A LOT of time, gas, wear and tear.

10°39'41.94" N 061°04'33.03" W - Toucans.

http://www.bochnik.com/trinidad/trinidad2016.htm
Trinidad Trip

Michael and Kelli - 2016/04/28

We are leaving Asa Wright today. We loaded up the van and car with all of our luggage and left earlier than planned for the long drive to Grande Riviere and Mount Plaisir Estate Hotel on the north shore of Trinidad on the Caribbean. We had hoped to stop at Simla, the William Beebe Research Station nearby but we did not. According to our itinerary we were also supposed to bird along the way and stop at the Toco Lighthouse. We did not. It seemed that Dave just wanted to get the drive over with. It was a three hour drive and he was returning the same day.

Standard Operating Procedure. Fuckin' boilerplate.

Roodal turns his head five degrees so he doesn't even hafta PRETEND to have not seen the Toucans. Maintains constant speed to get out of range as quickly as possible - punching the gas would've been too outrageously obvious.

He's made that same drive about twenty thousand times in the space of the past two years, knows every inch of it, could do it blindfolded. Maybe we could get a look at them where it's so much safer to pull off half a mile down the road. Yeah. Suck my dick, Roodal.

Birding the rough equivalent of the Hang Gliding Industry's tandem thrill ride.

I don't EVER AGAIN wanna go on a booked guided expedition with the risk of having a motherfucker like that in control of what's happening.
---
P.S - 2018/07/19 00:25:00 UTC

Inspired by a driver/guide incident on the way out of Denali National Park on 2018/06/11 involving my first and last (to date) Hawk Owl I've reviewed and am amending the discussion about the incident with the Channel-Billed Toucans.

Roodal certainly merits identification comlete with last name - Ramlal. And when one goes to the Michael and Kelli link above and reads a little more thoroughly than one did initially one finds that the last name of the referenced "Dave" is ALSO Ramlal. And that the reason for that striking similarity - not to mention the ones related to professional conduct - is that Dave is Roodal's son.

[Tad Eareckson]

Lest I give too much of an impression that I hated all of the T&T guides with whom we dealt...

2017/01/04, Guan site, Nicholas Alexander...

Knew his shit, did his job real well, LISTENED, interacted, laughter, revealed stuff he CARED about (same stuff I care about)...

At one point I noted an empty hummer feeder and commented. He said the property owners/managers stopped filling it 'cause the hummers were getting stung by bees, wasps and that they'd find little bird bodies under the feeder whenever they ran it. Got significantly bummed out by that intelligence.

Then later in the day back at the ranch my brain started kicking in and I said, "Wait a minute." This doesn't make any sense.

- Bees, wasps, hummers have been working the same nectar sources side by side for millions of years.

- I've never heard of this happening anywhere ever before.

- I just left Asa Wright where I'd had bees, wasps, hummers crawling all over my hands at the same time and nobody was getting significantly bent out of shape.

- I watched a hummer do a feeder port that was already being worked by a wasp. The bird just shoved his bill through the hole pushing the insect a bit to the side and everybody stayed happy.

- Hummers are getting stung at the feeder and instantly falling dead straight down beneath it? Uh-uh.

The only things that are routine significant threats to hummingbirds are other hummingbirds and nothing results from those skirmishes more serious than a few scratches.

Stuff that LOOKS LIKE hummingbirds...

http://www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek080715.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tyficker/14763374800/

Ty Ficker

...can also get beat up a bit.

Where I used to hang my feeder at home a Carpenter Bee would hover to stake out his breeding territory (the fascia board) and the hummers would engage in some inconsequential fencing rounds.

I check the web and THIS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaKInTXOdV4


is about all I can find. And that bird very obviously isn't even stung.

I bring my take to Nicholas the next morning and he instantly jumps ship. Always nice to see the effect of reason on a functional brain.

I can't think of any sane explanation for finding dead hummers under a feeder.

And if there were any truth to the issue then how come it's still out there hanging empty instead of having been put or given away?

It was one of those inverted bottle concept pieces of junk. Maintenance nightmares. The Crystal Paradise Resort where we stayed for a bit in Belize last year had zillions of moldy ones all over the place that had obviously been hanging around empty for years. My best guess is that somebody just got tired of keeping it going and invented an excuse to stop.