birds

[Tad Eareckson]

2019/01/20. Next stop Tarcoles, Villa Lapas, 09°45'24.67" N 084°36'41.68" W, another big industrial birding center. On the boundary of Parque Nacional Carara.

Minor monkey invasion in the morning at the Biological Station - Howlers and Capuchins in the branches and on the roofs. Lotsa cameras and iPhones blazing away.

A younger female staffer shows up in front of the office area with a little bat in her hands. I ask if it's alive, pretty much knowing that it can't be. But it so looks as if it is. It isn't.

She brings out some obscure mammals guide and we very quickly zero in on Mexican Funnel-Eared. Really exquisite, beautiful, delicate little thing. Too bad about the dead part.

Get rolling, retrace our route to Bagaces, emerge from the forest into the range and agricultural areas.

I crest a rise and from the left a smaller Iguana...

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

The world record sprint speed for lizards (21.5 miles/hour) was attained by the Costa Rican Spiny-Tailed Iguana (Ctenosaura similis).

...decides his optimal cover will be under the car. I swerve, brake, slide sideways, miss the damn thing. "What happened?!" "Iguana. Suicidal iguana." Feeling pretty good about not killing him.

Revisit our Scissor-Tailed Flycatchers and pick up some nice Crested Caracaras. Hard to get tired of either of those.

Pick up the Pan-Am, split off south on 23 to 27 east to 34 SW to Tarcoles. Hills and moderately heavy traffic most of the way so I gotta do all the driving (again).

Tarcoles area is something of a tourist zoo. Crocs tend to be a big draw.

http://www.expedia.com/things-to-do/tarcoles-river-tour.a436520.activity-details

Tarcoles River Tour - North Pacific Coast | Expedia

I've already seen enough to last me the next two or three years but it seems that thousands of others haven't. Just getting into Villa Lapas is moderate hell. And the place is set down on the Rio Tarcolitos so it's not like there's likely to be a helluva lotta vertical to burn with respect to parking options. Arrive, there isn't, big surprise.

The place is packed, I've got ONE doable looking parking option, the cars on both sides of it are asymmetrically crooked as hell, and the approach is short and steep. I ask HM to step out and help guide me in.

The steep part has me scared shitless of stalling the engine. Coming close to twisting my head off checking and rechecking clearances. Starting, aborting, adjusting multiple times. Finally think I'm set pretty well based on my alignment with respect to the car on my right, gotta be good on the other side too 'cause I'm not hearing anything from Air Traffic Control to the contrary, OK, let's put this baby to bed.

CRUNCH.

Then HM comes in with the "HELP". Starts telling me about all the stuff I was doing wrong while he was doing his potted plant imitation. It would've been WAY too much trouble to just say, "Stop." a couple seconds BEFORE impact. And then my brain kicks in and I remember the last time I'd asked for his "help" in handling a dicey parking situation on Tobago two years prior. Should've fuckin' known.

Couple hours of hell in store... Massive embarrassment, language barriers, nonexistent Alamo phone support, driver's license, passport, glove compartment stuff, crime scene photos, motorcycle cop... And my victim's a male housekeeping staffer.

And somewhere in the course of all this crap HM tells me that we won't be able to stay here tonight.

WHAT?!?!

In his trip planning he'd left 2019/01/20 open as an option day, hadn't made reservations for anywhere. Also didn't make reservations as the day grew near and Villa Lapas had become THE option. Couldn't be bothered to pick up the fuckin' phone and do a goddam thing at any point in our long drive south. Didn't tell me to just pull up to reception and leave the engine running while he ran into the desk and checked to see if anything was available. Any one of those options would've required the firing of half a dozen functional brain cells. Sunday afternoon, how could there possibly NOT be anything available here?

JESUS FUCKING KERISTE!!!

So what the hell are we doing NOW? We'll just drive back towards San Jose and stop and check places until we find something. BRILLIANT! Keep doing the same thing over and over again until we get better results. Why didn't I think of that?

I go into the lobby, light up Google Earth, zoom in on Tarcoles, click on the first lodgings icon I see, pick up the phone, a minute and a half later we're set at Hotel Carara for the night for chump change. 2.1 klicks from where we are now, 1.2 klicks from the intersection at which we'd turned left instead of right an eternity ago.

[Tad Eareckson]

2019/01/20-21. Hotel Carara. Bad news - it's on the beach so everything's pancake flat and we'll need muscle to get the car started again. Good news - parking isn't the slightest bit nightmarish.

They have plenty of ground level rooms available and let us have two for the price of one. A little on the primitive side maybe but I have no complaints - 'specially at this point in the day.

A pair of big noisy conspicuous Macaws in the trees at the entrance. (Another bird it's real hard to get tired of. (People will kill for them in Belize.))

Settle in, regroup as best as I can, dinner. Big round moon is coming up in the east beyond the swimming pool. I know we're due for an eclipse but 21 is the number I have stuck in my head - undoubtedly 'cause that's the UTC number for the entire show. But I get on the laptop to get up to speed and... Holy shit! It's 20-21 local! Tonight! Things are about to start happening.

I haul out my scope, set it up on the pool deck, get it on target. I don't say anything to anybody, totally ignore all the guests parked on the folding recliner chairs nearby with their heads all turning in my direction. Nobody else exists. Within ten minutes I have a fair sized crowd.

Also get the binocular mounted on the backup tripod to increase crowd quality time.

Penumbral begins at 20:37 local / US Central Standard Time. Penumbral occurs when the earth's disk is just partially blocking the sun's and good freakin' luck seeing anything going on through most of this phase. I don't understand this worth shit at the time and start feeling (looking) a bit stupid after I've announced the beginning of P1. But maybe 45 minutes later it's obvious that something big is starting to happen.

A major party erupts and people are having a total blast. I've gotta be on the scope every couple/three minutes to stay reasonably well centered. And shit! The flop's back and clockwise rotation ain't fixing anything this time. Oh well, I'll deal with it later.

There's a group of maybe five young Costa Rican guys (guests vacationing together) - all in stunningly good physical shape - who gravitate to the center of things and start taking on some of the retargeting duty. One of them's solid in English and serves as interpreter.

Time profile:

20 20:37 - P1 - penumbral begins
20 21:34 - U1 - partial begins
20 22:41 - U2 - total begins
20 23:12 - U- - mid-eclipse
20 23:43 - U3 - total ends
21 00:51 - U4 - partial ends
21 01:48 - P4 - penumbral ends

We're pretty good into early totality but the moon just keeps climbing, the viewing angle goes through uncomfortable to agony. For at least the last third of the show we're looking pretty much straight freaking up.

At lower angles target acquisition is brain dead easy. At higher my "gunsight" tube gets blocked / eliminated from the equation and it becomes a nightmare to reacquire. At one point I screw up and lose it and reacquisition was a minor miracle. I do my best to impress upon the guys the importance of staying on every second.

And then one of them loses it, I'm mildly pissed (but don't show it), takes forever, but he eventually gets it back. Major miracle at this point.

Clouds complicate things, the moon occasional disappears for short intervals, but the upper level wind speed is pretty high and we're never down for long.

Using a 45 degree angled birding scope for high angle astronomy stuff really sucks. If you want a nice, comfortable, enjoyable view of the later eclipse you lie back in a lounge chair and use the stabilized Canon 10x42s. But I know every one of us diehards - the civilized folk had all trickled off not long after the end of totality - saw it as a challenge to stay on to the bloody end.

They'd made me drink a big Imperial beer I hadn't wanted (the manager was really appreciative of what I was doing for his guests and had gotten me a lemonade I really did want and need much earlier), it was gonna be well beyond 02:00 before I'd be able to get things broken down, stowed, cleaned up and myself in bed and I knew I'd be in total shit shape when the sun next reared its ugly head. I was.
---
Correction - 2019/02/27 14:45:00 UTC

Just did a little more experimenting with the scope.

No, the gunsight DOESN'T get blocked. It sorta does, however, get eliminated from the equation UNLESS the driver has:
- an assistant flat on his back calling direction; or
- a small hand mirror to hold under the gunsight to get things lined up

When I muster the necessary enthusiasm I'll take the scope out, find a suitable straight-up target, find out just how much of a pain it is to actually pull this off using the mirror option. But I have zero doubt that it'll be a monumental improvement over the trial and error nightmare we were employing during showtime.

[Tad Eareckson]

2019/01/21. Near death - as I knew I would be. Stagger over to breakfast, take a stroll out back to the beach - wide, muddy, little bird action. Organize, load, try to get the car started with just the two of us. No freakin' way. Get my eclipse buddies out of the pool, thanks, bye, we're on our way. Drift north a couple klicks to the area just south of the mouth of the Rio Tarcoles, not very productive bird-wise here either.

Parque Nacional Carara is a major bird Mecca - extensive protected habitat, high level of biodiversity, easy shot from San Jose. Entrance at 09°46'51.64" N 084°36'22.65" W, we passed it on the way in the previous day. Need to kill some time before heading to Villa Lapas. Nice steep parking area. Lotsa guided tour groups, neither one of us is in any shape for anything more strenuous than hanging out in the entrance area.

Spiny-Tailed Iguanas stake out territories. There's a Black-Mandibled Toucan making a lot of noise in a treetop forever but after I have him located and locked up in the scope I have two seconds to enjoy the view before he splits. I hear a Macaw coming over, make the call, point, earn some points with the entrance area crowd. Bail for Villa Lapas.

If you plug "lapas" into the Spanish-English translator, by the way, you get "barnacles" or "limpets". That never made any sense to me when I was studying for the trip. The habitat is inland forest. Just investigated a little further and found that in Costa Rica it's a macaw. (I wonder what they call their barnacles.) Translate macaw to Spanish you get "guacamayo".

Doable parking option is easier this time but I get a competent looking staffer to execute this time. Cross a footbridge over the Tarcolitos to get a much needed lunch / rehydration exercise. Check in.

By the time I make it to Room 123 the fuckin' fan's been switched to Eleven. I dump my stuff and try to get some birding done but am mostly just miserable parked on a bench. Fortunately HM needs to return to the car or sumpin', I go in, the fan gets switched to One. I can live with One, maybe even appreciate One on occasion, maybe even on this particular occasion. The fan STAYS on ONE.

Not real fond of lawn sprinklers either. Villa Lapas had them going nonstop supersaturating every square foot of open area they could find at their facility. But that would be the only real complaint I'd have about the place.

Swap tripod center columns and heads - again.

No shortage of the usual Iguanas staking out territories, fair bird action beyond and above.

[Tad Eareckson]

2019/01/22. Still pretty fried. Midmorning roll back up to the Carara entrance - a bit under three klicks up the highway from the turnoff intersection - for more easy parking area birding for a while. Then back down to Villa Lapas for lunch.

In the reception area I'm in a conversation with on older woman birder - a Brit, I believe. Mention the incident with the Toucan at Arenal a week prior. And she's just had the same thing happen with an Emerald Toucanet - I forget where - 'cept with a fatal outcome. Pulls out the iPhone and shows me a beautiful shot of the beautiful bird, next frame it's lying lifeless on the grass. Lived thirty seconds after impact.

And you can look at her and see the impact of the impact. And a lot of the relief I felt when my bird recovered gets neutralized. And her experience still has to be better than Steve's with the Coyote two and a half years ago.

http://www.kitestrings.org/post9572.html#p9572

Back to the room area for more R&R level birding. I've picked up Rufous-Naped Wren, HM has found that they're constructing a nest and directs me to it. I get it in the scope. The little tree is decorated with arrays of huge fat thorns and I say, "HOLY SHIT! That's an ANT ACACIA!"

One of my favorite classes at the University of Michigan in the early Seventies was some tropical ecology lecture course taught by Dan Janzen. Put on these amazing slide shows on amazing topics. I'd forgotten the country in which he was doing his field work - along with his name. But the one thing that had stayed really hardwired in my head all those decades later was the symbiotic evolutionary relationship between these Ant Acacias and their Acacia Ants.

The acacia has shit in the way of conventional defenses - the thorns configuration is useless for stopping anything and there's zilch in the way of deterrent chemicals. Instead it produces these huge thorns the ants use as Quonset huts and nectar and, from the leaves, Beltian bodies for sugar and protein.

And the ants protect the tree like their lives depend on it - 'cause they do. They cut openings in the thorns so's they can move inside and raise their kids and patrol like nobody's business. Any plant that tries to grow into it gets chopped back. Any plant that tries to grow under it gets its head cut off. Any large herbivore that tries to browse it gets the crap stung out of it. Any insect that tries to nibble it gets driven off, deported, killed.

But astonishingly... If you're a Rufous-Naped Wren they're perfectly OK with you building a nest on it. That's something very interesting I didn't learn in school.

I zoom in and can see the ants patrolling the trunk. Then I go down to check it out close and personal. The Fer-De-Lance didn't scare me 'cause I knew he had no interest in hurting me. These things scare me shitless 'cause I know that they wanna NOTHING BUT hurt me.

I stand outside of the perimeter touch a point on the trunk a few times when I've got a couple centimeters of radius. I wanna see if they'll react to the scent. They seem to.

I wanna get a twig - without interfering with anything - for show-and-tell. There's a broken off dead dry one caught on a live branch that isn't doing anybody any good. I very carefully pinch the top (former inboard) end and lift it clear. Then I inspect the hell outta it to make triple sure I'm not bringing anybody back with me. Looks good.

Start walking back towards the room and I start feeling a little burning on the top of my right forefinger. I look at it, see a little wasp I think has gotten trapped in the hairs. Try to blow it clear.

I'd checked that twig SO carefully and thoroughly...

I didn't wanna kill her but I was so run down and miserable to begin with that I didn't wanna absorb any more venom. I used sub lethal violence but I doubt she survived long afterwards. The sting site burned a bit for about fifteen minutes.

I'd checked the thorns - two I think - very carefully for openings but I guess not carefully enough. There was no other way I could've missed her.

So as I'm preparing this post today...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomyrmex_ferruginea
Pseudomyrmex ferruginea

The ant and the acacia exemplify a coevolution of a mutualistic system, as described by evolutionary ecologist Daniel Janzen.

Then you check out the link to him and it's nothing but Costa Rica - mostly northwestern.

Another interesting note from that article:

However, not all is mutually beneficial: the ants relish the sweet honeydew produced by scale insects which suck the sap of the acacia and therefore protect them as well, effectively providing entry to diseases.

Plane takes off from SJO tomorrow at 14:05 local. Gear needs to be reconfigured accordingly.

[Tad Eareckson]

2019/01/23. Critical day, don't want ANYTHING going wrong before we're on that plane - and would prefer nothing going wrong after as well. Potential issues... stalling, traffic tie-ups, dropping off car and getting shuttled to SJO, lines, customs...

Car starting position is a little marginal and there are better options open now. Get HM to assist the downhill with a push, success, back into the best possible position. Breakfast.

It's about ninety yards from the point in the brick service road behind and above Room 123 to where the car's parked and neither of us is gonna survive that toting exercise. Plan... Get checked out, turn in key, evacuate room, stage all the luggage up above 123, HM stands guard, I go get the car started, back in, load, get the fuck outta here.

I'd like to have insurance for my starting spot. On my walk to I get joined by a big Aussie birder. "Say... Would you mind....?" I give him the background, sure, but would I mind turning the key just to satisfy his curiosity? Sure, always do that anyway to satisfy my own curiosity. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but we haven't been seeing much in the way of improvement as the trip's progressed.

I turn the key, total silence. "Wow." Gives me a nice boost and I'm in business.

Slowly, carefully start backing down the lane. Shit. One car per hour comes out of that lane and this one's timing is perfect. Squeeze over into something, he clears, make goal, we hurl everything into the car, get the fuck outta there.

I'm gonna roll into the Carara lot again so's we can safely and comfortably stop and get the car properly organized. A bit before the turnoff I have a Yellow-Headed Caracara flying parallel to the road close in on the left who soon parks nicely visibly on a treetop just ahead. We've had them fairly regularly on the trip but never, as I recall, parked. This is a shot I wanna get.

But my fuckin' binocular's stowed in my backpack on the back floor. I reach between the seats pull it up and into my lap, reach into the compartment, bounce the backpack onto the horn. So much for that idea - and bird.

Get into the lot and safely parked, organize, breathe a little. Garmin and Waze indicate we're in good shape timewise. Highways, traffic in good shape and we get within a stone's throw of Alamo drop-off. Then I punch gas stations into the Garmin so we can leave it full and it gives us one a couple stone throws up the road. I think the situation was safe enough for me to kill the engine.

Went to goal, lost some time filling stuff out relevant to the crunch incident, got shuttled to SJO. The airport hoops weren't horrible and we got to our gate with a very comfortable time cushion. Brain at this point was running on fumes though.

24 hours prior to departure I'd checked us in to Southwest and scored us really good starting gate positions for boarding. Got something to eat, boarded, grabbed a window way the hell aft starboard/east.

Got airborne, as usual lotsa lower cloud cover but had some good views saying bye-bye to Costa Rica - including a pretty nice volcano summit.

Not all that long before Cuban turf starts becoming visible. There's a big Japanese - looks like family - group in the couple seats in front of us. Younger guy directly in front of me has his head turned sideways and his eye's glued to the surface. Yeah, kindred spirit. I have the Garmin running and shove it up to him. The rest of the flight it gets passed around all over the place and everybody has an absolute blast with it. (Sorry it wasn't you, 2H8008666. )

Hope all you assholes in the aisle seats between the wings enjoyed yourselves thumbing through magazines and playing video games. Me? I can't fathom passing up views and experiences like these.

Light's pretty low by the time we're lined up with Lauderdale - we've penetrated another time zone into darkness.

[Tad Eareckson]

I forget when it was we actually docked at FLL but the scheduled time was 18:00 EST. Departure to BWI. All passengers need to go through customs and out of the secure zone. And even though both legs are Southwest all checked luggage needs to go out to the carousels, get reclaimed, be checked back in at the counter. And, of course, all passengers need to go through the drill like it was the first flight of the day.

I was struggling through the mazes totally shot and dazed - attracting attention from the uniforms. "Are you OK?" "Yeah, thanks, this is normal for me." HM had taken the wheelchair option - and had really needed to.

Lose the shoes, put everything on the belt, go through the scanner. My legs are in surprisingly not bad shape, all things considered, 'specially the left one. Two TSA agents on the other side of the booth - a junior sounding (white) one and a senior sounding (black) one.

Junior has the rubber gloves on and is checking my legs for weapons of mass destruction. Gets down below my left knee, feels the abnormal girth and texture, thinks I'm trying to get Semtex on the plane. (Good thing you didn't start with my right leg - I'd have been shot five or six times by this point.) "No, I have clotting issues. My legs swell up after I've been upright and walking too much." (Like now.)

DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis) keeps popping into my head but I'm so fried I can't remember whether or not this is the relevant term.

Senior calms him down, "Yeah, I know what he's talking about." Checks me out, "Yeah, he's good."

"Well... Not actually GOOD. But... Thanks." Gets a laugh.

Get to the gate barely alive and starving to death. Yet nothing within a survivable one way march that's being marketed as food is anything in which I have the slightest interest.

Work on getting toys recharged and glasses cleaned. Again with the great boarding position but this results in me letting myself get RUSHED and when I've grabbed my aft starboard seat I find that a compartment of my backpack and the pocket within it are unzipped and I no longer have one of my cute little liquid carry-on legal spray bottles (lens cleaning solution).

And I've failed to get myself properly reoriented and several seconds too late I realize I'm on the wrong/east/Atlantic side of the plane. Oh well, solid nighttime. And I still get a lot of Florida coast, Bahamas, Cape Canaveral, ships, rising moon. And shortly after hitting South Carolina you have as much land as you can use anyway. May have ended up in the better position by mistake.

Scheduled to dock at BWI at 23:05, think we do it ahead of schedule. Based on previous negative experiences I'm worried about where my tripod bags are gonna emerge. I pin down a young carousel guy and he explains that if all the belts are on the same level - as in the current situation - the long stuff gets the same routing as everything else. But if there's a steep drop in the route long stuff can become problematic so gets special handling and winds up elsewhere. Oh. Thanks. (But how is the average jerk off the street supposed to know or find out about this?)

Weather back home had been arctic for most of our time away but temperature forecast for our arrival was pretty mild. But I was still worried about the abrupt transition from Howler Monkey to wintering Tundra Swan turf and layered up with everything I had. But it really WAS pretty mild waiting for the Lyft ride. Though Not enough to do much damage to the huge parking lot snow/ice monuments we saw all over the parking lots.

Lyft driver was friendly, helpful but another great example of how doing something all the time for a living doesn't necessarily make one any good at it. Driving wasn't dangerous but it was very jerky and erratic. Wasn't interpreting the nav very well either - even with us telling her what was coming up.

The driveway here is a major bitch. Road goes north, driveway angles off of it to the left / northwest and curves to the west while climbing steeply all the way to the top/house. We've had all kinds of professional drivers - up to county cop level - butcher the lawn in backing up or down mode over the years. I've seen a few drivers with their shit really together handle it really well but for us mere mortals the only way to do it is with a backup camera. And if the backup camera lens is wet and or dirty I won't back in. I'll turn it around tomorrow after I've cleaned the lens.

Lyfty insisted on taking us up the driveway. HM protests, I look at her backup display and side with her giving it a shot. Then I see that her intention is to drive forward and cut across the supersaturated lawn. Un fucking believable. I diplomatically reverse course.

Next day a month's worth of held mail is due for the dump. I'm home alone in the early afternoon and will intercept the carrier down at the street. But I fall asleep. And when I wake up there's a big stuffed crate on the steps and a trench along a stretch of the driveway that would make for fairly decent cover in a mortar attack. Executed - I can tell - while backing down post delivery.

And I can think of another recent situation in which a backup camera would've neutralized a major shitload of stupidity. In the US they became mandatory for all cars manufactured from 2018/05 on.

[Steve Davy]

Poor thing had to starve to death because I didn't react to the situation. I should have run him over with my truck!

I hope that I never have to see anything like that again for as long as I live.

[Tad Eareckson]

Not a decision I'd want to have to make, execute. I don't know what the wildlife situation is like in whatever neck of the woods that was but maybe a Golden Eagle, Mountain Lion, Black Bear, rival pack...
---
2019/01/24. High on priority list... Get the tripod situation dealt with. 15:20:59 UTC I fire off a note to Swarovski North America in Cranston, Rhode Island.

In under forty minutes I get this crappy semiliterate boilerplate response from their "Customer Relations Representative" asking for all the critical information I've just fucking given him, a bunch more crap that's totally irrelevant at this point, and a request for putting me on their spam list.

Wants to know:

Serial # of Item needing parts(s)

These fuckin' tripods DON'T HAVE serial numbers. (Guess how I'm starting to feel at this point.)

On the evening of 2019/01/19 after my guide buddies at Palo Verde had clued me in about the Connection Plate being screwed - rather than pressed - into the Center Column and I'd "fixed" the problem and rotated things back into their original primary and backup stations I'd played with the backup assembly (the one that HADN'T gone floppy on me). Couldn't unscrew it just using the grips and torque of my hands. Oh well, if it ain't broke...

So I'd finished the trip with the backup rotated to primary/workhorse and the original Center Column / Connection Plate assembly (now floppy) with the light DH101 head rotated to backup.

Somewhere between this and the next days' Swarovski communications I was playing with the floppy assembly tripod. And the Connection Plate / DH101 Head assembly just separates from the Center Column and falls (harmlessly) onto the carpet. And then my brain finally kicks in for the first time since the problem first manifested itself about a week and a half ago - when the first flop occurred the threads were STRIPPED. At any time the load had been unbalanced I'd been at risk of having the whole scope, balance rail, head assembly freefall onto whatever surface had been below at the time. All that had been keeping me alive was ten millimeters worth of a one inch OD plastic plug stuck into the top of a one inch ID aluminum tube.

On eclipse night we'd been shooting straight up for the later hours and in that period there'd been no balance whatsoever. The low point of the scope had been its skinny end and we'd had that cranked up to something approaching six feet - and the LZ below was concrete. And all that had been keeping five and a half thousand dollars worth of maximally unbalanced heavy optical gear from falling six and a half feet and crashing onto concrete was ten millimeters worth of stripped plastic plug stuck in the end of a pipe.

http://www.swarovskioptik.com/birding/tripods
SWAROVSKI OPTIK - Spotting Scope Tripods

WARRANTY

In addition to ergonomic design and innovative technology, our products are also distinguished by unmatched quality. We check every production step and every individual product for 100% quality prior to delivery.

Yeah, right. Keep up the great work.

P.S. Same tripod from which a foot fell off on the first excursion of the Alaska tour for which I'd acquired it.

[Tad Eareckson]

2019/01/25. I respond to Customer Relations Representative's infuriating response to my request for help getting this brand new previous top-of-their-line carbon tripod restored to at least temporarily original functional condition.

For Marketing Purposes...
- What is your primary use of this product?

Primary use - birding.

Yeah. I use your top-of-the-line birding scope tripod for BIRDING. We've now eliminated train spotting from the list of issues you need to consider before figuring out how to get a seven dollar replacement chunk of plastic to me - asshole.

Hi Tad,

I have forwarded your information to our market naturist manager Clay Taylor to help clarify what you are experiencing for further assistance.

Oh good. Your market NATURIST manager. That sounds like somebody who should be able to start getting a grip on this issue in a couple more weeks - possibly even sooner. Moron.

Since yesterday - first day back home - I've known who Clay Taylor was/is. Stumbled upon him immediately when looking into digiscoping.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W2qGvIErMM


It's late Friday so I'm not gonna hold my breath waiting for him to get back to me. But I don't hear back from him Monday either. And as Tuesday business hours become almost totally evaporated I'm getting THIS CLOSE to TOTALLY UNLOADING on Customer Relations Representative douchebag.

Clay Taylor - 2019/01/29 22:30:26 UTC

Hi Tad -

My apologies for the delay in responding, but I was tied up at the Space Coast Birding Festival through yesterday...

OK, blood pressure back down from homicidal rage level.

I have forwarded your information to our market naturist manager Clay Taylor to help clarify what you are experiencing for further assistance.

But douchebag HASN'T forwarded my information. Too much trouble to forward my first meticulously composed note with the parts identified and named as they are in the owner's manual - or at least WERE before Swarovski deleted it. So Clay has no fuckin' clue what I'm talking about.

So I start from scratch, attach a PDF copy of the manual from my hard drive 'cause I'm not sure he even has one...

Oh!!! Gotchya. (Fuckin' FINALLY.) And he spends A LOT of TIME corresponding with me. (Probably appreciated talking with somebody who really knew what he was talking about. (I know I did - 'specially after...)) Been to just about all the same Costa Rica bird spots to which I've just hauled my/his scope system.

Confirmed some stuff about Swarovski I'd already figured out. They put their label on a lot of the non-glass stuff in whose engineering and production they've had zero part and input. My CT101 tripods were Velbon, those models (from Japan, East Asia) had been around since 2005, and Swarovski had NEVER had the ability to repair them or replace parts. (And yet when I purchased my two they were warrantied for two years.) The two (pretty much identical) tripods they started selling right after I got mine are Gitzo - French origin (seem to be tied into Manfrotto - Italian - nowadays) and Swarovski's a lot happier with that alliance.

With respect to my situation... The Center Column and Connection Plate are ONE component. The plate's screwed and GLUED into the column. If the plate can be unscrewed the two element component is broken. Bad news - they officially can't repair the tripods or replace components. Good news - they happen to have some spares of what I need around and by Friday I have one in my hands.

HOWEVER...

This is a duplicate of what I had fail on me before - while being used normally well within specs, lovingly cared for, rabidly protected from abuse. So I should continue on with the replacement component and expect better results? Clay assures me that he's never heard of this issue cropping up before but I don't wanna mount this configuration again, take it into the field, have the same failure, not be able to do the replacement we just did.

I also ask Clay - as I'd asked in my first communication to the warranty "service" - if the center column of their new top carbon tripod - 21 versus 5 kilogram capacity (and near twice the price) - could be swapped in for my CT101's.

2019/01/30 17:25:00 UTC

Nope - the CT-101 was made by Velbon, and the PCT / CCT are made by Gitzo. That's like asking to put a Chevy transmission into a Ford drivetrain.

So six days after getting the replacement component I've got a new "Swarovski" PCT (Professional Carbon Tripod) on the doorstep. And guess what happened when I went to verify that its high capacity center column was, indeed, incompatible with my CT101.

I decided to keep the goddam thing anyway. Everything's a tradeoff, this one's generally better - and heavier - built. I'll go out on a limb and say the kind of failure I experienced with the CT101's Connection Plate can't happen with the interface I'm seeing on this one. And the feet aren't gonna fall off 'cause a little dab of hot glue became too brittle. And has some special advantages in some special circumstances. I've practiced with it a lot and learned some useful tricks. And I now realize that a bit of weight increase doesn't really matter - seeing as how I can rarely hike out any significant distance from the car with just my binocular anyway.

[Tad Eareckson]

My unidentified - and unphotographed - Palo Verde hawk had been driving me insane ever since I struck out on the book and guides that afternoon - 2019/01/19 - at the Biological Station.

I'd been doing image searches and looking at ridiculously out-of-range stuff from all over Central and South America that might have strayed or been blown in. And I was just coming up totally empty with everything I tried. I was fearing that I would die still without the slightest clue.

And if I'd just taken a single goddam iPhone shot. I'd either have gotten it IDed in half a dozen nanoseconds or would've triggered a global stampede of ornithologists and birders converging on Palo Verde to try to get a glimpse of the new species I'd just discovered.

Now remember:

Tad Eareckson - 2019/02/26 02:50:26 UTC

But back in the room when reorganizing I find I no longer have the black nylon stuffsack I'd used for my baseball cap and sun protection hats.

the evening of this sighting? The end of the day that had begun with the Rio Tempisque boat tour?

First day back home - 2019/01/24 20:22:07 UTC - I get an email message.

Ghisselle Alvarado Quesada
Ornitóloga
Departamento de Historia Natural
Museo Nacional de Costa Rica
http://www.museocostarica.go.cr/

The previous day she's been on the boat tour - four days after we had. The stuffsack had a little plastic ID tag on it (as does most of my equipment stowage stuff), the drivers had it, she noticed and recovered it, wanted to know if I'd like her to mail it back to me. (Got it in the mail 2019/03/02 - just as my health issue was ramping up to the point that I could no longer post. (See my "open phones" - 2019/03/07 15:16:33 UTC.))

We had a pretty intensive correspondence going on for a while. It tapered off four days into last month 'cause at least one of us got immersed in other Costa Rican bird centered issues (like this trip report I'd been going blind compiling since the end of January) but 2019/01/28 23:28:20 UTC I ask her if she might be able to help me out with Mystery Hawk and give her my notes and observations.

Comes right back - 2019/01/28 14:18:53 UTC - with:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7908/40285868853_bc8bcf40aa_o.jpg



BULL'S-EYE. First shot. Goddam Roadside Hawk - Rupornis magnirostris.

And it would be a little like in the US if a non bird person were about to describe a hawk he'd seen in a tree during the drive home yesterday. You could answer "Redtail" without listening to any effort at description and nine outta ten times you'd be right. We'd seen a bunch of them in Belize and maybe one or two previous on this trip but:

- I think most of what we'd been seeing were immatures.

- In the field guide adult illustration you gotta look hard to see the face yellow that's obvious in this photo and was blazing in what I'd been looking at.

- Good freakin' luck finding a field guide illustration and/or description of the tail I saw and described. Although once you know what you're looking at you can do an image search on the species and find some good examples.
http://www.hbw.com/ibc/photo/roadside-hawk-rupornis-magnirostris/bird-perched-post-cleaning-its-tail

Ghisselle has this shot tagged 2012/02, Palmar Sur. It's in an Oil Palm plantation on the approach to Sierpe (where you ditch the car to take the water taxi into Drake Bay.) Incredibly lucky break.

And my guide buddies back at Palo Verde... Yeah I SHOULD have taken some shots through the scope. But I HADN'T. And they should've read my description and put a little actual thought into it. Should've IDed it for me in no time.

And HM, by the way, who's normally pretty good at this sorta thing and had gotten all the Grade A viewing opportunity as I'd had, had recorded this bird as a Collared Forest Falcon. Not even in the same ORDER. (Order being a notch under Class and the Class is Aves (birds).) I'd been thinking something close to genus Buteo and that's where it had been classified until fairly recently when they split it off and placed it in its own genus.