Author Archives: AWOlivieri

Visit to Butterfly Paradise

Posted on by

Sigue en espanol

Recently, four SVBC members spent the morning visiting Butterfly Paradise, part of a development called Osa Mountain Village about halfway between Palmar Norte and Ojochal on the Pacific Coast. This is an easy drive from San Vito and the views from the road going up the hill are breathtaking.

View from Osa Mountain Village. Photo by Harry Hull.

Dave Fishell, the owner-designer-builder of this new outdoor butterfly vivarium, gave a brief talk on his ongoing efforts to manage a natural environment for his winged charges while keeping track of species counts and hatching pupas. Butterfly life cycles are complicated, involving egg-laying on specific host plants, the eating machines we know as caterpillars, pupation periods and the dramatic emergence of a re-arranged life form: the adult butterfly.

He has exciting plans to expand with an adjacent, open air hummingbird garden. We spotted a Bat Falcon perched across the road, Swallow-tailed Kites swooping overhead and heard many other birds vocalizing in the adjacent forest so we are rooting for Dave to create a birding destination as well.

A thrilling experience for would-be or even accomplished natural history photographers, we plan to offer this new day trip whenever interest is expressed by members and friends. In fact, we were so inspired we’re working on a new photo gallery for this website of butterfly beauties commonly seen in the Coto Brus region. We will announce this with a ‘post’ when it is ready to view so you won’t miss it.

Harry Hull with a new friend. Photo by Alison Olivieri

An added bonanza of this pleasant excursion is the proximity of three excellent restaurants in Ojochal: Citrus, Exotica and El Castillo. Also of note, we’ve been told by Jarvia Fishell, Dave’s wife, that Osa Mountain Village offers other activities including canopy tours, zip lines, overnight jungle excursions, vacation rental properties and more so we look forward to exploring this destination further with all of you!

 

Visita al paraíso de mariposas

Recientemente, 4 miembros del Club de aves de San vito  visitaron por la mañana  ‘’Butterfly Paradise’’, parte de la empresa llamada  ‘’Osa Mountain Village’’ aproximadamente a medio camino entre Palmar Norte y Ojochal en la costa pacifica.  Es un viaje sencillo en automóvil desde San Vito y por supuesto con unas vistas del camino subiendo la montaña que quitan la respiración.

Oruga de mariposa ‘morpho’. Photo by Harry Hull.

Dave Fishell , el dueño-diseñador–constructor de este nuevo vivario de mariposas al aire libre, nos dio una corta charla de sus continuos esfuerzos para ofrecerle un ambiente natural a sus amigos alados mientras intenta mantenerse al tanto de la cantidad de especies y pupas eclosionadas. Los ciclos de la mariposa son complicados, envuelven la puesta de huevos en plantas huéspedes especificas, las maquinas de comer que nosotros conocemos como orugas, periodos de población y el dramático nacimiento de una forma de vida  totalmente nueva que llamamos mariposa adulta.

También encontramos muchas plantas interesantes para expandirse con un jardín de colibrís al aire libre. Pudimos observar un halcón, Bat Falcon (Falco rufigularis) posado al otro lado del camino y Swallow-Tailed Kites (Gavilan Tijereta) descendiendo por nuestras cabezas en picada después de escuchar muchas vocalizaciones de aves en el bosque adyacente. Esperamos muy impacientemente que Dave cree un destino para ver aves.

Este lugar ofrece una experiencia inolvidable para fotógrafos interesados en la historia natural, planeamos ofrecer este viaje de un día, cuando el interés sea de nuestros miembros y amigos. De hecho nos ha inspirado tanto que estamos trabajando en una galería nueva para el sitio web de las bellas mariposas comúnmente vistas en el área de Coto Brus. Se anunciara con un mensaje cuando este listo, así que no se lo perderán.

Un agregado fantástico a esta excursión es la proximidad con tres restaurantes en Ojochal llamados: Citrus, Exotica y El Castillo, también se nos ha comentado por Jarvia Fishell esposa de Dave que ‘’Osa Mountain Village” ofrece otras actividades como canopy tours, zip lines (o cables para deslizarse en línea recta), excursiones al bosque nocturnas, renta de propiedades para vacacionar y mucho mas, por lo que esperamos explorar en mas detalle este destino con todos Uds.

 

Butterfly Paradise Day Trip

Posted on by

Please join us for a day trip Sunday, September 9, to Butterfly Paradise near the coastal town of Uvita and for lunch at Citrus Restaurant in Ojochal.

Hesperid Butterfly. Photo by Alison Olivieri

We will meet at 7:30 am at Finca Cantaros to carpool to this beautiful new butterfly garden, arriving there around 10:30 am. We will hear a talk by the designer, builder and owner Dave Fishell after which we will be free to take photos and look around on our own. The admission fee will be $10 per person with children under 5 admitted free.

At about 11:30, we will head up the coast to Ojochal for lunch at Citrus Restaurant. Lunch will cost about $20 per person. We plan to be back at Cantaros by 4:30 or 5:00 at the latest.

Please join us for this fun adventure: let us know if you plan to come so we can organize a carpool by sending an email to: sanvitobirdclub@gmail.com and DON’T forget to bring your binos and a camera.

Report from Scotland: Falconry and a Lurcher

Posted on by

A glorious morning. Photo by Michael Olivieri

Dramatic landscapes abound in the Scottish Highlands and, if you also like large, strong men in kilts and distilled spirits, then Scotland is the place for you. We recently visited the eastern Highlands, close to the Burgh of Tain (settled in 1066), and enjoyed watching burly and brawny men play Highland Games along with touring the Glenmorangie Scotch Distillery, visiting an inhabited castle, watching rabbits hide in prickly gorse, riding on a wee ferry, oohing and aahing over puffy lambs AND, say it with me now: b-i-r-d-i-n-g!

Falconer at Dunrobin Castle. Photo by Alison Olivieri

To start us off in that direction, we saw a Falconry Demonstration at the Dunrobin Castle in Golspie. Still inhabited by descendants of William, the first Earl of Sutherland, this castle is the most northerly of Scotland’s great houses and the largest in the highlands with 189 rooms! Pictured in the photo here is a Harris’s Hawk, native not to Scotland but to the southwestern US and as far south as Chile. This raptor is popular with falconers all over the world.

Something especially fun about birding in Europe is that no bird has a name remotely like, for example, Red-collared Foliage-thrower-upper. All the birds have sensible names. The name of the one species of swallow is “Swallow”. Any swiftlike bird you might see is the “Swift”. The kingfisher is a “Kingfisher” and so on. This makes it a whole lot easier to ID them with confidence; for example, a plump white, rust and black bird bobbling in a river? It’s the Dipper!

One of our favorites has the unfortunate name of “Buzzard”. It is a sizable and handsome raptor with honey-brown plumage, seen everyday hunting over the hills and fields. As we were there in mid-August, those fields and the moors were turning purple as the heath and heather began to bloom.

Heath and heather, blooming together. Photo by Michael Olivieri

A final note about Scotland, every third or fourth person had a well-behaved dog on a leash. We saw many breeds not commonly seen anymore like Irish Setters that require endless exercise and many Border Collies.

Lilly at the Fringe. Photo by Alison Olivieri

The most unusual dog we saw was a Skye Terrier. It was almost as big as a Basset Hound and looked like an enormous caterpillar but our personal favorite (in addition to the Golden Retrievers at our B&B) was Lilly, a Lurcher who was part of a street performance at the Fringe Festival. She is 2 1/2 and was recently rescued in London by the Ives family with whom she lives in Grimsby North East Lincolnshire. This was her first vacation in Scotland and, believe me, she was a sensation in Edinburgh!

Going to Heaven

Posted on by

Unidentified Butterfly (Photo by Alison Olivieri)

The other day, Liz Allen and I went to heaven. At least, if there is anyplace resembling heaven anywhere on earth, this would be it. And it’s only about two hours northwest of San Vito, near the town of Uvita on the Pacific Coast.

Heaven’s real name is “Butterfly Paradise” and it is part of the Osa Mountain Village community. It looks like a 16-sided circus Big Top but instead of clowns and jugglers, it’s full of butterflies. We found ourselves surrounded by shining blue Morpho Butterflies and many other drop-dead beautiful creatures going about their butterfly business.

For you butterfly enthusiasts, we saw Malachites, Swallowtails, Crackers, Postmen and Caligos. Not only that, we found caterpillars and a chrysalis with help from Dave Fishell who owns, designed and built “Butterfly Paradise”.

So, I say, let’s all go to heaven! Admission is $12 per person; children under 5 get in free. We can arrange a tour with Dave and a group discount for a Sunday morning in September. Let’s plan to spend some time in heaven and then have lunch at Citrus or Exotica, wonderful restaurants in nearby Ojochal. Send us an email if you are interested with dates that work for you and we’ll make a plan!

Let the Breeding Bird Surveys Begin!

Posted on by

Eastern Meadowlark (Photo by Julie Girard)

In the mid-1960s, the US Geological Survey initiated a long-term, large-scale international avian monitoring program with the Canadian Wildlife Service called the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS). It was undertaken in response to the noted decline of songbird populations accompanying the widespread use of DDT for mosquito control at that time. (To learn more about this effort in North America, please click here.) Continuing to this day, the BBS is run out of the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, home to the Bird Banding Laboratory where records of all birds banded in the US are stored. Although rampant use of DDT has declined as a cause of songbird mortality, bird populations continued to be subjected to numerous omnipresent threats including habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, land-use changes, chemical contaminants and other problems. These issues occur worldwide and need to be closely monitored so that local populations are not lost and species do not become extinct simply because no one is paying attention.

In addition to North America, many other countries around the world use bird monitoring surveys to estimate populations, understand species’ distributions and discern decline. Although many professional ornithologists and biologists take part in these surveys, the vast majority of participants are local birders practicing citizen science.

Laughing Falcon (Photo by Alison Olivieri)

This year, Gerardo Obando of the Asociacion de Ornitologica de Costa Rica (AOCR) has taken the initiative and begun a national program of Breeding Bird Surveys! These surveys can be either a single place survey, like a garden, or a route with at least 10 stops, 200 m apart, for five-minute bird counts. The surveys must be completed between May 15 and June 30, the height of many of our resident birds’ breeding season.

Your bird club completed three surveys in mid-June consisting of one privately-owned garden, a route through Finca Cantaros (one of our Avian Monitoring Project field stations) and a route through the Wilson Botanical Garden. Very special thanks go out to Mauricio Sarmiento of the OTS Las Cruces Biological Station for helping record the GPS coordinates of each point along both of the routes. Next year we need to add more routes and we will need more volunteers to accomplish this! “Ace Birders” of the SVBC: please come join us in 2013 — we need your help!

You can read about this new effort — and practice your Spanish if you are not a native speaker — by clicking here.  We are proud to be a new Institutional Member of the AOCR, about which you can read more by clicking here.

The Departing Desvenains

Posted on by

Our VP Kate and her family, Patrick and Luca, recently left Costa Rica for Washington, DC, a city that Kate has described many times as one of her favorite places to live.

All of us who have enjoyed Patrick’s hospitality and culinary skills; who have walked, talked, birded and banded with Kate, and who have played with “Luca-paduca” will miss them terribly. But naturally we saw them off with a terrific Farewell Party at Las Cascatas and we wish them all the best the world has to offer!

‘Kate’s Last Walk’ photo by Landon Daft

This photo was taken on June 16 at the Wilson Botanical Garden to commemorate what will now be known as “Kate’s Last Wilson Walk”. Standing from left to right are Liz Allen, Barbara Keeler-Barton, Peace Corps Volunteer Darien Combs, Elena Murillo, Heysen Esquivel, Hellen Castillo, Wally Barton, Alison Olivieri, Judith Ippolito, Erick Ilama Loria, Joe Ippolito, Roni Chernin, Mark (who is taking over Morphose Mountain Retreat B&B) and Wendy Schulz. Kneeling in front are (from left to right) Kate Allen Desvenain, Edwin Borbon Abarca, Yoiner and Royce Schulz (really not kneeling). Special thanks to visitor Landon Daft for taking this picture.

The Nidification of San Vito

Posted on by

Golden-hooded Tanager in nest. (Photo: Harry Hull)

This will sound a little strange to North Americans: “Winter’s in the air and nests are everywhere“! We are two months into our rainy season, aka tropical winter, and that puts us deep into the nesting season. When we stand still and watch, we find nests everywhere: under the eaves, high in the trees, low down in shrubs, under plant leaves, in tree trunk cavities and even on fence posts.

Common Potoo with its egg on a fence post. (Photo by Barbara Keeler Barton)

Because the nesting season started back in April we see now, in early June, fledglings chasing their parents begging to be fed. In a short walk this morning, I counted at least six young birds pestering adults: Tropical Kingbird, Cherrie’s Tanager, Variable Seedeater, Bronzed Cowbird peeping at a surrogate parent Rufous-collared Sparrow, Lesser Elaenia and Silver-throated Tanager. By the time they get to this stage, you can almost see the parent birds swiping their foreheads with the side of their wings thinking: will these young birds EVER learn to feed themselves?

A few days ago, an adult Blue-crowned Motmot led two young birds to our banana-papaya feeder and sat there alternatively stuffing pieces of fruit into the gaping bills of each of its offspring. This was, of course, a truly  thrilling ‘National Geo’ moment with my camera nowhere nearby.

Then, too, I recently caught a Fiery-billed Aracari peering into a large shrub outside our front door where a pair of Cherrie’s Tanagers are going for a second nesting. No doubt it was looking for food for its own young but it’s hard not to root for the littler guys.

Golden-hooded Tanager nestlings, 11 days old. (Photo by Alison Olivieri)

We are puzzling over what happened to two nestling Golden-hooded Tanagers that seemed ultra-secure in a hanging basket on our porch. The adults chose a safe-looking spot where the voracious local squirrels might overlook them, but they disappeared in mid-day while we had a little pool party with friends. They were 15 days old and didn’t seem big enough or strong enough to fledge. Maybe a snake wound its way up there or the squirrels managed to grapple up the beams after all.

Squirrel Cuckoo nest. (Photo by Aracelly Barrantes)

Predators and other dangers are everywhere here. First-time nesters sometimes build flimsy nests without adequate protection from heavy rains that are subsequently washed away. Hummingbirds in the ‘hermit’ group build nests hanging from the underside of large maranta or heliconia leaves that can be toppled over in strong winds or unrelenting rain storms. Trees fall over regularly at this time of year and raptors, like the Swallow-tailed Kites that come from South America to breed here, are constantly on the hunt. This is to say nothing about the many opossums, raccoons, weasels and snakes that patrol at night. Or humans wielding weed-whackers, machetes and chainsaws.

Because danger comes from all directions and at all times, birds must take counter-measures. My favorite is the swaying flycatcher nest attached to a wispy branch in a tall tree with the entrance hole on the side or at the bottom. It is an absolute marvel and one wonders how that clever pendant, retort or ovoid-shaped blueprint got started. No predator weighing more than a few ounces could ever get inside. We found a beauty at Finca Cantaros several weeks ago, painstakingly constructed by a Yellow-olive Flycatcher. In the meantime: go outside! Look around! It’s amazing what you will see.

Yellow-olive Flycatcher entering nest from below. (Photo by Harry Hull)

BirdSleuth Workshop at Las Cruces

Posted on by
Lilly Briggs leads the BirdSleuth Workshop in San Vito, May 2012

Lilly Briggs leads the BirdSleuth Workshop in San Vito, May 2012

As noted on this website under the navigation bar Community>Current Projects>BirdSleuth, we hope to help implement this Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology environmental education program in San Vito in some way, shape or form. To begin this process — and to familiarize us with the course material and classes — a day-long workshop for Spanish speakers was help at Las Cruces on Sunday, May 13, led by Lilly Briggs a Cornell PhD student in the Department of Natural Resources, and Jennifer Fee, the Lab of O’s Manager of K-12 Programs.

Jennifer Fee setting up the BirdSleuth Workshop

Jennifer Fee Setting up the BirdSleuth Workshop

Las Cruces Biologist Ariadna Sanchez spent months planning and organizing the workshop and, to judge by the participants enthusiastic reaction, it was an enormous success. Nearly half of the registrants were teachers from elementary and high schools. Almost everyone else had taken the recently-offered OTS Naturalist Guide Course.

This educational program is geared toward teaching children to engage in and enjoy science. It is all about discovery and learning to record data, using Bird Journals and Cornell’s amazing public database, eBird. It’s also about having fun with hands-on activities that include making a personal bird journal, drawing and studying birds, learning bird families by sight and, finally, counting species and individuals.

During the nine completed classes, students play the Bird Survivor! Game and the Migration Game, both of which teach about migratory birds’ perilous lives as they fly north from Central and South America to breed and south from North America to return home. These games also lead students to think about social connections as they learn to view birds as international citizens. The concept of global cooperation can be well understood by connecting students from different countries that share the same species of birds.

Bird Survivor! Game

Bird Survivor! Game

Perhaps even more importantly, this program is about empowering children to find solutions to the critical issue of bird (and other wildlife) conservation: becoming Citizen Scientists and helping to solve problems on local, national and international scales. One of the most important classes focuses on creating a local Conservation Project and carrying it out.

BirdSleuth-International could be offered here as an ‘after-school Bird Club’: basically, an extended learning program. Or it could be used as the curriculum for a week-long or two-week Summer Day Camp. Or in some different way, that we have not yet discovered.

As we move forward with this exciting project, we will need the help of all our members in the form of creative ideas, financial support and local volunteer action. Please let us know how YOU can help by clicking on contact us!

Making a Bird Journal

Making a Bird Journal

Wilson Walk Report: May 12, 2012

Posted on by

Several new member and guests joined our recent bird walk in the Wilson Botanical Garden, including the youngest member of the SVBC, Elias Castiblanco U., participating with his mother, Kathleen Ulenaers, and grandmother, Philomen Schutters.

L to R: Barbara Keeler Barton, Philomene Schutters, Kathleen Ulenaers, Elias Castiblanco U., Pat Morgan; back row: Wally Barton. Photo by Alison Olivieri

New member Barbara Keeler Barton joined us for the first time as did Morphose Mountain Retreat guests Celia Lucente and Randy Bonsignore, vacationing here from Florida.

As for the birds, for the second time in as many months we spotted a handsome Rufous-winged Woodpecker actively foraging near the entrance gate. Other favorites of the morning were two perched Blue-crowned Motmots, possibly a pair, and a White-crowned Parrot that obliged us by sitting still for several minutes on a palm trunk stump.

Although new member Wally Barton did not actually walk with us, he did make it for “Coffee-and-the-List” and found the last bird of the morning, a male Yellow-faced Grassquit, bringing our total to 35 seen or heard species on our one hour and 45-minute outing.

Don’t miss the fun: join us for the next walk on May 26 at 7:30 am at the main entrance to the Wilson Botanical Garden!

Eyes Up!

Posted on by

It’s that magical time of the year when hawks and other kinds of birds are migrating to North America for the spring breeding season. We have had a message from Marco Saborio, photographer and birder extraordinaire, who says the weather on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica is not ideal, so many birds are likely to be passing overhead using an alternate Pacific side route. So we say, “Go outside! Look up! Watch for groups of migrating hawks!” and please let us know the species, number of individuals, date and time if you happen to see this awe-inspiring natural spectacle by going to the Contact Us page.

Broadwing Hawk "kettle". (Photo: Dave McCauley)