It was 1990. The darkness was just beginning to brighten outside. My window was open, and a pleasant, cool breeze redolent with tropical perfumes tantalised my nostrils. It must have been about half past five in the morning, though my body probably registered as much later as I had passed through several time zones in the previous twenty four hours. This was the start of my first day ever in Costa Rica and I was in a hotel room in the capital, San José. A bird began to twitter starting the dawn chorus.
“That has to be a species I have never seen before,” I told myself and in a flash, I was out of bed, and dressed. Soon I was out in the streets that surrounded the hotel. They contained suburban houses with fine gardens ablaze with Bougainvillea and other tropical flowers.
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| Eyelash Viper - Costa Rica |
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I tracked down approaching the source of the song of that first bird of the day. It was a Rufous-collared Sparrow, a species that would fill the niche of the house sparrow, if house sparrows were not probably the most cosmopolitan of all birds. I had just made the acquaintance of the Rufous-collared Sparrow or Rufie as they are called by birders in tropical America, when a dark flash passed me like an arrow. Soon, it was stationary, hovering close to the flowers of a Bougainvillea, its wings a greenish blur. This was my first hummingbird. It had an orange brown tail and went onto my lists as a Rufous-tailed Hummingbird. Soon, I was enjoying a tiny owl. This was a Ferruginous Pigmy Owl sitting on a telegraph wire. Two American warblers joined in, and these were Tennessee and Yellow Warblers. I saw fifteen new birds before breakfast and one of the most amazing was a Blue-crowned Motmot that swung its amazing tail feathers backwards and forwards like the pendulum of a clock.
