A Million Miles From Home

I read once of a couple who, having decided to shun the trappings of modern city life, fled to a remote Scottish Isle, finding themselves by degrees falling into complete harmony with the seasonal ebb and flow. In winter they would retire shortly after darkness fell in late afternoon, sleeping long and waking late; in summer they would make do with a mere three hours rest and not feel any the worse for it. So it is here in the Pacific coast rain forest of Costa Rice. We have no modern devices to distract us, no TV, no wi-fi, no bars, restaurants or street lights. All we have is nature, and this we are surrounded by. In fact after three days we find our cycle is already being dictated by the environment. It becomes dark at around 5.30pm and after an early dinner we can sit out for a short while watching lighting flash thunderlessly over the ocean before slumber beckons at 9pm. Our wake up call around 5am is provided by the Howler Monkeys beginning their blood-curdling Baskerville Hound growling and by the squeaky-wheel cries of Black-billed Toucans. No man-made device can be nearly so effective. 

Our bungalow here at El Remanso Lodge in the south west of the country is placed at the head of a forest cloaked valley, providing an uninterrupted view of the sea a kilometre distant. The raging surf pounding on the grey sand beach is an ever present background noise; at night surprisingly loud, thunderous even. The breeze from the sea wafts up the valley to provide most welcome cooling and is used by vultures, hawks, kites and the like as a means of soaring effortlessly in search of a meal. Flowers of all colours, shapes and sizes provide nectar for hummingbirds and butterflies whilst fruiting trees offer their bounty for many species of colourful bird. Trails through the dense forest provide access to another world of tall sentinel trees, twisted vines, tangled roots and buttress where millions of leaf cutter ants form flotillas of tiny green sails marching in purposeful ranks. Smaller ants excavate their nests under the soft red soil pellet by pellet, individual insects struggling with a weight that in equivalent terms would crush us. The spoil from the mining piles up like so many miniature volcanoes over the forest floor. Major industry on a macro scale.

Last night a storm raged out to sea, flashes of sheet lightning flooding the troubled sky, painting the night forest in stark monochrome relief. The caressing breeze became a more violent wind enticing the Pacific surf to pummel the thin stretch of beach in angry cascade. The monkeys don't like such events, howling in protest at the interruptions to their slumber. Yet somehow you accept the disruption, recognise it as a natural response to an elemental phenomenon, roll over and fall asleep.....if you're lucky.

From our elevated vantage point we can see, far below, Brown Pelicans and Great Frigatebirds gliding along the coast. This morning I watched a group of 15 pelicans glide across our eye line for a count of 53 seconds without a wingbeat between them. Quite masterful. During the course of the day the vultures begin to cruise the slopes, mainly Black and Turkey, but today a magnificent King Vulture joined them. Other raptors, Swallow-tailed Kites and a White Hawk have joined the list over the course of the past 24 hours. As I have been writing this post we have become surrounded by a foraging flock of mixed small birds, tanagers, honeycreepers, vireos and many I haven't yet been able to identify. Toucans surreptitiously glide into a nearby tree where they deftly pick small berries from a cluster, holding the prize in the end of their multi-coloured mandibles before, with a quick flick, sending it down their gullet. Scarlet McCaws Screech from hidden tangles whilst butterflies, some as large as a saucer glide across the dappled glade or sip the nectar proffered by almond blossom. As dusk falls, a Common Pauraque (a nightjar), sits on the lawn from where it will make forays into the dusk for moths and other flying insects, bats flit around after the same fodder whilst frogs, cicadas and crickets chirrup and squeak to each other from the undergrowth. 

It is a wildlife paradise that can be measured scientifically as being so many thousand miles from home, but in emotional and spiritual terms it is light years from our everyday existence. 

Matters of the Heart

I watched a heart beating today, not my own or that of any fellow human being, but that of a tiny bird. A hummingbird, a White-throated Mountain Gem to be precise; such an apt name. This minuscule treasure was perched under the shelter of a rose arch, defending its patch of nectar rich flower border from would be usurpers. Between sorties to see off intruders with an indignant 'tick' and sip sugar rich liquid from the bountiful blooms, it would hold vigil from its favoured twig, twisting its head from side to side to allow its sparkling eye to search for potential rivals. So I carefully moved closer, wondering just how close I would be allowed to get before the little beauty gained alarm at something five thousand times it's bulk and thirty thousand times its weight. To my delight the answer proved to be about a foot, a mere twelve inches separating me from a true miracle of nature. From that short distance I could take in everything; the way the feathers overlapped like minuscule scales, each containing the ability of refract sunlight into glittering shards of multi-coloured iridescence; the way tiny grains of pollen adhered to the crown, ready to complete the mutually beneficial transaction when the next flower was probed by the long pointed bill, and I noticed the way the little mite's whole frame was moving in some kind of sycophantic motion with the beating of its heart. Of course the bird wasn't sitting there with its chest jumping around at a rate of 1,200 beats per minute, but some abridged, collective cardiac rhythm was clearly perceptible. A living, breathing, pulsing creature, so delicate, so vulnerable and so full of energy. And for a few moments, no more than perhaps thirty beats of my own sometimes troubled heart, I was privileged enough to be able to gaze upon it, and into its dark liquid eye, on a sunny morning high in a perfume scented garden surrounded by cloud kissed mountainous forest.

Some pictures of the delightful hummingbirds that abound in the grounds of our lodge.

Resplendently Humming

'Quetzal!' I exclaimed. No response, again: 'Quetzal!' 

Not a flicker from Marino my guide who was intently peering through his scope at some small bird tazzing around in the tree tops. I tried again.

'Quetzal!'

'It's Queetzaal' he said, reluctantly peeling his eye from the scope.

'No, there's a Quetzal. There in that tree!' I pointed to a clump of green foliage that simply lost relevance against the curtain of mixed greens facing us. 

'Oh, I thought you were practicing the pronounciation' he said in heavily accented English. Irony? Who would know?

And so, standing on a trail somewhere in the Costa Rican cloud forest, overlooking a sunlit valley, did our quest for this famous bird reach its comical end. We had been looking in and around an avocado tree for an hour or so, Marino occasionally giving a two toned call mimicking a singing male bird, but so far had drawn a blank. Not that the area was bird less, far from it; several colourful species had entertained us as they hunted fruit and insects in the high canopy of this pristine primary forest. But no Quetzal, until some pigeon or suchlike tumbled into a dense tangle of leaf, frightening a shock of iridescence to bolt out and perch in the tree to which I was now guiding my guide. 

Once found, this splendid bird, a truly Resplendent Quetzal, gave us wonderful views for the next twenty minutes as it occasionally tripped between tree tops, huge tail plumes waving in the warming air of a mountain morning. What a stunner:  peacock body feathers glowing metallic green and blue, deep crimson chest band, neat yellow bill and punk like head feathering. And of course those magnificent tail plumes that give the bird its name, it's fame and elevate it from just a trogon to something exotic and surreal. When it flew it gyrated through the air as a gymnast's ribbon with the tail plumes lagging behind the body to create a semblance of discord. When perched it became amazingly almost invisible. With the satisfaction of a vigil justified, we simply watched and photographed it, until with a twist and a turn it flipped behind a tree and became lost to view once again........

Our week in Costa Rica hadn't begun in such high fashion. The first couple of days were spent in Tortuguero National Park where the only way to reach the lodges lining the riverbanks of this area bordering the Caribbean coast is by water. Shallow draft boats zip up and down the waterways weaving between the trunks and roots of fallen trees taking people to work, to socialise and sightsee. There are no roads through the rain forest and few trails allow access to the deep, dark ranks of sentinel trees. To motor at speed along the wider rivers with a cool breeze blowing on your face is quite pleasurable, more so because being static on land is nothing short of hellish. The heat and humidity make everything an effort and even three showers a day do little to freshen you up. The rooms of our lodge had air conditioning on permanent deep chill mode so you are alternating between being in an oven and a fridge; not good for our fragile English constitution which sadly broke down, resulting in mild sunstroke with its associated sweats, nausea, headaches and such like. 

The wildlife in and around the rain forest was interesting enough, but there were no pathways to roam; no walkways to lead you around corners where surprises may, well, surprise. In short no real excitement. So with flagging appetites and sagging shoulders we were boated once more to the docking area to endure a subsequent eight hour motor journey south; greeted for our efforts on arrival by a violent thunder storm. Nothing for it but to go to bed by 8pm, hoping to catch up on lost sleep, but instead laying awake and wide-eyed, listening to the rain hammering down on the tin roof of our bungalow all night. The thought of getting up for a birding walk at 5am lost its appeal with every clap of thunder.

......but the Quezal has made it all worthwhile. And the gorgeous zipping, cantankerous, shining, beady eyed hummingbirds, and the tanagers, coloured with hues of sunset, and the multi-coloured confiding toucanets, redstarts, flycatchers, woodcreepers, woodpeckers...........

Doing Time

Alcatraz, La Isla de los Alcatraces, Island of the Pelicans, stands about 1.25 miles off the coast of San Francisco. It seems so easily accessible but in actuality is as remote as any offshore island can be. The freezing waters of the San Franciscan Bay together with its strong currents made it an ideal place to house America's most hardened and determined criminals. As the Con's quotation goes - 'If you break the rules you go to prison, if you break prison rules you go to Alcatraz'.

When early Spanish colonisers discovered the Bay Area sometime in the 16th century, the island was indeed home to large numbers of pelicans, so large were their numbers that when a cannon was shot across their bows the noise of the frightened birds taking wing was likened to a hurricane. One can only imagine the numbers of birds involved, even allowing for some fancy in the written accounts. Sadly no pelicans nest on the island today.

It must have been a bleak place to serve time; so close to civilisation, but no closer in reality than the moon. Only three people actually escaped from the prison, immortalised in Clint Eastwood's movie Escape From Alcatraz, although their fate was uncertain. Did they drown in the unforgiving waters of the bay, or did they manage to make landfall and wend their way to South America? Nobody knows. What seems clear is that the famous movies with the prison as a subject matter, Birdman of Alcatraz, The Rock and the aforementioned Mr Eastwood's epic, depict inmates in an heroical light. The reality is quite different; inmates were hardened criminals, psychopaths, murderers, violent individuals that fully deserved their incarceration. Spencer Tracy, Nicholas Cage, Clint Eastwood they were not: malevolent, murderous, bitter and twisted they were.

But the prison is no more, it closed in 1963. High maintenance costs associate with the wear and tear inflicted upon it by decades of extreme weather hastened its demise. The Rock was abandoned and once again left to nature. Now it is run as a National Park with thousands of visitors catered for every day, eager to get a taste of what incarceration on the Rock was really like. The answer is bloody awful! Extremely cramped cells, no privacy, stripped of dignity and out of sight and mind of the rest of humanity. Perhaps they deserved it, but it is hard not to feel a pang of regret that such things had to be. The thing that struck me though was that even amongst the most antisocial and hate filled minds, the need for some connection with nature was strong. One prisoner took it upon himself to make a garden on the bare rock, transporting and spreading by his own hand tonnes of soil. He built a greenhouse out of old window frames begged from the prison guards and grew flowers from seed. Today, In full spring bloom it was a delight; it became a haven for inmates as well who would linger there on their way to complete other chores. The human spirit needs to have some link with the natural world or it will wither and die.

Part of the Alcatraz experience nowadays is to have a look at the returning birds and other animals. Various National Park employees were dotted around counting pairs of nesting gulls and cormorants, letting interested people have a look through their scopes and generally informing them of the work going on. The fortunes of the birds seems on the up after a couple of bad El Niño years. Brandt's Cormorants covered flat slabs of rock and the concrete jetties; Western Gulls were everywhere else. A small colony of mixed Snowy Egrets and Black-crowned Night Herons occupy a cluster of shrubs and small trees whilst a pair of Great Blue Herons were tending their nest high in a eucalyptus. Ravens, Song Sparrows, Pigeon Guillemots and Blackbirds completed the avian cast and an information board told us that small mice on the island have evolved a colourway to match the grey of the concrete covering most of the site.

Alcatraz is a monument to inhumanity, suffering and pain, but as will always be the case, nature is healing the wounds and soothing the scars.

Walking On Water

A depression hit the mid Californian coast a couple of days ago resulting in strong westerly winds and raging seas. The surf pounding the rocks was quite spectacular; the consequent chill not so welcome and not something we expected. Isn't it always warm here? Obviously not. However, as we all know, it is an ill wind indeed that blows no good; as with onshore gales at home, so it is here - there can sometimes be surprises in store. 

Blue skies the following day found us taking a quick peek at Monterey's Old Fisherman's Wharf, the plan to have a brief look around the tat shops and maybe grab a cuppa. Instead our fate led, most agreeably, in another direction when it became clear the calm waters of the inner bay were playing sanctuary to some very unusual and quite beautiful storm driven birds. Aptly named storm petrels, Fork-tailed Storm Petrels to be precise, had been displaced from their usual haunts far out in the Pacific to grace the harbour area and mix it with sea lions, otters, whale watching boats and totally oblivious tourists. A local birder was there and remarked how unusual this sight is 'They should be 30 miles off shore' he said without removing his eye from the viewfinder of his camera. Another chap came along to say 'Wonderful and so rare'. He was a local boat operator and knew his business. That aside I don't think another person from the thousands milling around gave these wonders of nature a second glance. How sad I thought. 

But at least four folk appreciated the sight of such dainty creatures, floating, swooping, bobbing around on a mill pond, multi-hued surface, reflecting and distorting in kaleidoscope fashion the garish colours of the buildings lining the pier. It crossed my mind that these birds had probably never seen a human being before, may never see one again and will never again come as close to land. They will live out their lives dancing on the surface of the sea, walking on water, out of sight of the billions of humans inhabiting the earth. Such tiny waifs, so fragile, yet capable of surviving the worst weather the marine world can throw at them. If that doesn't demand respect I really don't know what does.

The petrels were a privilege, but not the only stray to bedeck the harbour. Numbers of phalaropes were busy picking tiny morsels from the water's surface, Red-necked and Grey. At times the species swam side by side providing a once in a lifetime photo opportunity to capture these northbound waders in their spring finery. About twenty or so birds were spinning around next to where we stood, more than I've seen in a lifetimes birding back in the UK. There must have been scores more dotted over the bay. Breathtaking. 

With both Red-throated and Great Northern Divers, Pigeon Guillemots, Brandt's Cormorants, grebes and gulls as a supporting cast it was quite a spectacle. But the abiding memory will be of those little petrels, tripping across the water, so buoyant they made hardly a ripple.

Having a Whale of a Time

The shrieks and whoops of delight looped around the boat as another hump backed whale breached the deep blue surface of the Pacific, lunge feeding on anchovies, mouth gaping, filling its massive yaw with tens of gallons of water amidst which hundreds of small fish had been trapped. The huge, barnacle encrusted head splashed back into the sea; a signal for whirling spirals of Western Gulls, Common Murres, Sooty Shearwaters and cormorants to home in on the spot in a frenzied swarm to pick off those few fish that had escaped the surge, floating stunned and disoriented; easy pickings for myriad sharp beaks.

A blast of spouting water as the whale exhaled: a wash of rancid, foul smelling air smothering the boat and it was gone, diving once again to herd the anchovies towards the upper layers of the shallow waters of the bay. Sometimes a small group would work together, synchronising their lunges, creating such a spectacle that only a wildest dream could imagine. We were surrounded by feeding monsters and didn't know which way to turn. The birds, thousands of them of many species, screeched and screamed: sea lions, dolphins joined the feast. We simply stood on deck and watched. Blessed that this once in a lifetime spectacle was ours in which to revel; exceptional circumstances had created ideal feeding conditions in shallow water close to shore allowing a few people on a few days to experience something even the skipper of the boat, a hardened, weathered soul, had seldom witnessed. And this excursion may well have been the last to be so favoured since strong winds and a turn in the weather was forecast for later in the day, forcing cancellation of further trips until conditions improved.

For two hours, which seemed as a few minutes, we soaked in the scene. The sounds, the smells, the sights. The salt laden sea breeze blasting the face, the wing tips of shearwaters surfing the tremulous undulating waves, the wailing of gluttonous gulls, the ceaseless flow of life darting all around seeking to make the most of the spoils of the bounteous depths. How more alive do you need to be?