Tag: wildlife

A marsupial duck?

We were still in Peru, but now further north and east of the Andes for three days, drifting along on the Ucayali River, a tributary of the Amazon:

The Sungrebe, Heliornis fulica, is a most unusual bird. It’s not actually a grebe, despite its name.

A shy bird of the Amazon basin, it only weighs about 130g, or 4oz. When disturbed, it flies low over the water:

Its tail in flight is bigger than most other aquatic birds:

It is most closely related to the rails, but its main claim to fame is a unique child-rearing adaptation found in no other bird in the world.

The Sungrebe egg incubation period is very short, 10-11 days, and the young are born completely featherless with only partly formed bills and feet. They are helpless. So the father takes charge. Cornell’s Birds of the World explains: “After hatching, the male parent is more active in caring for the young, sheltering them in a shallow pocket under his wing, which is formed by a pleat of skin. The pocket is made more secure by the feathers on the side of the body. The young are carried this way even during swimming and flying.”

I highly recommend this discussion of how this might be done:

https://tetzoo.com/blog/2018/11/29/pouches-of-the-sungrebe

As they get a little older, they may carry them on their back, like loons do:

Back in the day, we thought men who carried their babies around were fearless, breaking gender stereotypes, and seriously cool.

And indeed they were, but it turns out Sungrebes got there first.

Flying jewellery

The cloud forests are inhabited by a plethora of rainbow birds, flitting through the thick vegetation, hiding behind leaves, and rarely stopping long enough for me to enjoy. So lodges often put out feeders for hummingbirds, tanagers, and other passing species, and that gave me a chance to see some.

Chestnut-breasted Coronets are a type of hummingbird, and very argumentative:

Tanagers, by and large, seem more peaceable:

Blue and Grey Tanagers
Palm Tanager

The hotel leaves out fruit for them, which attracts not only them but also larger birds like a Dusky Green Oropendola:

Dusky green oropendola

The tanagers forage for forest fruits:

Saffron crowned tanager

but they cannot resist the free offerings:

Blue necked tanager

There were other fruit-feeding birds in mixed flocks with the tanagers:

Thick billed. Euphonia, male
also a Thick-billed Euphonia, sub-adult male

And hanging out in the grounds a glorious Andean Motmot:

Clouds of orchids: “Wingless birds in air”*

We stayed in the Inkaterra Macchu Picchu Pueblo Hotel, in the cloud forest, next to the station where the trains arrive from Cusco (or Cuzco). It is a thirty minute bus ride from there to the archaeological ruins. The hotel was once a tea plantation, and is surrounded by lush grounds, including an orchid collection, and lots of birds. I thought you’d like to see some orchids. I have identified them when I can, with the help of iNaturalist of course.

Many of these orchids are epiphytes, using another plant as their home base, and getting nutrition and water from the air, rain, and any debris on which they grow. They are not parasites on their host plant.The humidity of the cloud forest is ideal habitat for them. Some were hard to miss, flamboyant in the way we expect orchids to be:

Epidendrum syringothyrus

Anguloa virginalis
Epidendrum genus

Some hid shyly under their foliage and were easy to miss:

Kefersteinia orchid

Others were smaller and more discreet, grouped many on a stalk.

Brassia ocanensis

Golden Dancer Orchid

Many were very tiny, but exquisite once you found them.

The last two grew right out of the centre of the leaf

Pleurothallis microcardia
Heart-shaped Pleurothallis

I am starting to browse the orchid catalogues….

* In 1906, the Peruvian poet José Santos Chocano, known as El Cantor de América, wrote this poem entitled The Orchids (translated by Alice Stone Blackwell):

Freaks of bright crystal, airy beauties fair,
Whose enigmatic forms amaze the eye—
Crowns fit to deck Apollo’s brows on high,
Adornments meet for halls of splendor rare!
They spring from knots in tree-trunks, rising there
In sweet gradation; winding wondrously,
They twist their serpent stems, and far and nigh
Hang overhead like wingless birds in air.

Lonely, like pensive heads, all fetterless.
Lofty and free they bloom; by no dull chain
Their flowers to any tyrant root are bound;
Because they too, at war with pettiness,
Desire to live, like souls that know no stain,
Without one touch of contact with the ground.

The Spanish original goes like this:

Caprichos de cristal, airosas galas
de enigmáticas formas sorprendentes,
diademas propias de apolíneas frentes,
adornos dignos de fastuosas salas.

En los nudos de un tronco hacen escalas;
y ensortijan sus tallos de serpientes,
hasta quedar en la altitud pendientes,
á manera de pájaros sin alas.

Tristes como cabezas pensativas,
brotan ellas, sin torpes ligaduras
de tirana raíz, libres y altivas;

porque también, con lo mezquino en guerra,
quieren vivir, como las almas puras,
sin un solo contacto con la tierra . . .

An archaeological backdrop

[We have just returned from a trip to Peru. This was not primarily a nature trip, the central goal was Macchu Picchu, and it lived up to expectations. But this is a nature blog, not a travel/history blog, so I am only going to show you the natural side of this fascinating country. You’ll have to look elsewhere to learn about Macchu Picchu as a historical site.]

Macchu Picchu’s splendid isolation in the Andes at 8000 feet (2500 metres) is set among steep mountains and wild, lush cloud forest, home to spectacled bears, but the site itself was abandoned nearly 500 years ago, and is now inhabited mainly by tourists.

Nonetheless, there is nature to be seen. Macchu Picchu is in the tropics, only 13 degrees south of the equator, so although it is high it is not too cold. There are alpaca (a domesticated animal) wandering around, some hobbled and some free, grazing in places a lawnmower can’t reach:

There are wildflowers, most interestingly this brilliant scarlet wild begonia, Begonia veitchii, from which our modern garden plants are descended:

At dusk, we saw two Northern Vizcacha, Lagidium peruanum, resting and grazing, not bothered by nearby tourists:

They look as if someone had crossed a rabbit with a squirrel, but they are actually related to chinchillas:

They live in rocky areas, at elevations above 3000m, and they hide in rocky crevices, and eat grass. This pair could be part of a much larger colony of up to 75 individuals.

Basking on a warm Incan rock, silhouetted against the distant mountains, was a Spiny Whorltailed Iguana, Stenocercus crassicaudatus.

Its name comes from the unusual arrangement of scales on its tail, an overlapping series of concentric rings:

Unlike most iguanas, it is a carnivore. Almost all the iNaturalist observations of this lizard come from Macchu Picchu, presumably because the rest of its remote high mountain range its almost totally inaccessible to amateur naturalists.

Our insect expert Alfonso found this splendid beetle, Ancistrosoma sp, a sort of June Beetle, which in turn is a type of scarab:

Nature has a way of persisting, especially if the human residents have moved on.

Next time, orchids of the cloud forest.

Glimpses of wet fur III

I had not planned on any more “wet fur” posts, but this was irresistible.

Ten days after the fish-eating otter in my recent post, a group of three appeared.

One sunbathed on a small rock.

Two swam around in formation for a bit, catching the occasional fish, and moving northwards up the pond as I followed quietly in the bushes.

Some diving and splashing, and then they suddenly turned towards the shore, and me. The one in front had a fish, and the other was shadowing him in the hope of a mishap:

The owner of the fish needed to get out of the water to eat it, and to protect it from its marauding sibling, so it headed for the closest option, a fallen branch sticking partly out of the water.

Still a bit low down:

With some difficulty, it hauled itself high enough for safe eating:

Teetering slightly precariously on its inadequate perch:

it set to work:

As the branch slowly sank, the second otter lurked close by, just in case:

Their teeth are impressive:

There were no slips, and the second otter, crestfallen, swam away hungry.

PS Here is a picture of the otter’s teeth, showing its four huge canines, from Tumlinson et al (2022)

Glimpses of wet fur II

The day after I saw the beaver, a even more special encounter..

I saw two otters at a distance, swimming, diving, and apparently fishing. I swiftly headed in their direction, towards a spot which they often use in the wintertime, and just before I reached it I glimpsed one, through the trees, hauled up on a rock devouring a fish. There was a space between two branches at knee height, so I crouched down, slowly, and took these pictures.

It was in deep shade, with the sunlit water at its back, but the photos I hope still give a sense of its pleasure in the meal, and the power of its jaws.

I think it sensed my presence, but it was hungry, so it finished its meal:

The fish, I am told, is a hornpout, another name for the Brown Bullhead, a type of catfish.

In maybe six years of watching otters on this pond, I have never before seen one out of the water eating a fish close by. St. Cuthbert, the patron saint of otters, was watching over me. *

PS St. Cuthbert was a 7th century Northumbrian monk. The historian Bede tells that Cuthbert used to pray standing waist-deep in the freezing North Sea, and the otters used to come and lie on his feet to warm them, then dry them with their soft fur.

Glimpses of wet fur I

Mammals are the hardest things to see in our northern woods. But it’s been a good month for furry creatures, so I thought I’d show you a few.

I have been very worried about our beaver pond, because the water levels are extremely low, and it’s not clear that the dam is being maintained. But this week I saw a beaver, out of the water (rare), sunbathing on dry land in broad daylight, with glossy healthy-looking fur. It was there two days in a row in the same spot at 9am. It must have heard me, but it was far out in the pond on a mound, and felt safe enough to ignore me.


It was grooming too, using its webbed hind feet for a good scratch:

When it eventually moved on, the tail was the last evidence of its presence as it headed off to the right into the grasses:

As I walked on, I crossed a tiny stream that flows into the pond, and to my delight there was a small dam, freshly constructed.

If you look carefully, past the dam, on the righthand shore, there is a sort of landing, where the beaver has been bringing sticks and stripping the bark for a snack.

A Crane Fly that drinks nectar

Crane Flies are harmless, elegant insects that I sometimes find on my porch screens in the mornings.

The product of this encounter will be first an egg, then a larva (called a leatherjacket), then a pupa. They emerge from their pupa, and gradually dry out into their adult form:

Most of them have no functioning mouthparts and are unable to eat as adults, living only a few days, and focussing entirely on sex. They come in a range of shapes and sizes, this is a Giant Cranefly, Pedicia albivitta, whose body is 1.5 inches long::

Most Crane flies have elaborately veined wings like this Tipula dorsimacula:

Most have subdued coloring, but not all. This is a Ferruginous Tiger Crane Fly, Nephrotoma ferruginea:

Some are smallish, this Eastern Phantom Crane Fly, Bittacomorpha clavipes, has a 0.5 inch long body:

Geranomyia rostrata is an even smaller crane fly with a body length of about 0.16 inches. Its claim to fame is that it actually has functional mouthparts, and feeds on nectar as an adult. It does this with its unusually long, black, proboscis that can be more than half as long as its body.

It is usually near water, and this one was feeding on a Common Boneset flower.

While it feeds it bounces or bobs up and down, doing squats as it repeatedly jabs its proboscis into the florets.

Those extraordinarily long delicate legs are what is called “deciduous”. Just like the leaves on a tree, they can be easily detached from the body if a predator pounces, and like a lizard’s tail they can go on twitching to distract the predator. Unlike a lizard’s tail, they do not re-grow. Luckily, this one still has all six legs.

Why are rare things rare? And are they?

The iNaturalist app (iNat) has transformed how I and many others interact with nature. BiN (Before iNat) I would see something, and spend hours with one of a shelf-full of books trying to work out what I had seen. Now, I photograph it, enter a location, and show iNat the picture. And it knows! Or at least it gives me a shortlist of possibilities. It also shows me a map of where else it has been seen. Occasionally, mainly for small insects, it turns out it has hardly ever been seen in Maine, and I think, proudly, that I have documented a rarity. But have I??

Numbers can be low for many reasons other than real rarity; here are some of those reasons:

  • a thinly populated area, with few observers, true of my corner of Maine
  • it is only just starting to colonize an area, for a variety of reasons, so it may be locally rare but globally common
  • it lives in inaccessible environments such as marshes, or high in trees
  • it is drab and commonplace, so no-one thinks to submit an observation (house spider, ant)
  • it is hard to see and photograph, because it is very tiny, or well-camouflaged, or never stops moving
  • its numbers are indeed dropping, for environmental reasons such as climate change or habitat loss

I’ll show you a “rarity” or two, but hang onto that scepticism. One encouraging (but not at all conclusive) indication of rarity is that most of them don’t even have a common name! They have all been recorded 5 or fewer times in Maine. I’ve ranked them by the total number of observations, starting with the ones MOST often recorded, and ending with what might be the rarest:

Harmostes fraterculus has 1161 total observations, 5 in Maine. It is on a Common Boneset flower.

This is compared to 5800 for the closely related Harmostes reflexulus, including dozens in Maine:

Fourteen-spotted Leaf Beetle, Cryptocephalus guttulatus, has 667 total, only 1 other in Maine. This seems to be the extreme northern edge of its range. A result of climate change?

Stictopleurus punctiventris has 198 total observations, mainly in Canada. Only 5 others in Maine, 4 of them this year.

Pissonotus basalis has a mere 29 total observations, from Tennessee to Nova Scotia. None in Maine, except for me. This seems to be the best candidate for a real rarity, but it is very, very tiny, 3mm or o.1″and it also moved fast, so who knows.

To put all this in context, Maine has 370,421 observations of 6114 species of insects, and the most common observation, the Monarch Butterfly, has 4,523 observations. I suspect it would have far more but everyone knows what they are looking at, so they do not think to ask iNaturalist.

Do try it, it is a wonderful app, and you are contributing to citizen science when you upload an observation.

Sibling rivalry, and a singing heron

[My final Costa Rica blog post, I think.! Then back to Maine.]

On the Pacific side of Costa Rica, we saw two juvenile White Ibises (or if you prefer, ibes (Latin), ibides (Greek)!), Eudocimus albus. They were hunting for crustaceans in the shallows of a small river:

Their eyes focus on the tip of their beak, but they mostly forage by touch. The left-hand one found something:

and a tussle ensued:

The original finder hung on, and brought up a crayfish:

Drifting around the canals on the Caribbean side, in Tortugero National Park, there was a diverse heron population. My favorite was the Boat-Billed Heron, Cochlearius cochlearius. It has large eyes, and is mainly nocturnal:

It gets its name from the keeled bill:

The unusual bill is used as a scoop: the bill is lowered partly underwater and the bird walks forward, thrusting it in front. No other heron species does this.

We saw many Little Blue Herons, Egretta caerulea. As juveniles, they’re purest white:

poking around on a fallen tree amongst the bromeliad plants:

but more skittish that the Boat-billed Herons:

As they get older, their virginal white becomes splotchy:

until it is entirely displaced by the adult purplish slaty blue grey:

The Bare-throated Tiger Heron, Tigrisoma mexicanum, hung around the dock. This is not a wall-painting, but a real live heron:

From time to time it lifted its head, and gave forth its call:

They sing especially at dusk or dawn, and in the breeding season: listen to this video, which I’ve placed on YouTube in the hope that works (let me know if it doesn’t): https://youtu.be/pwoeHLOaHwM

Perhaps the most technicolor bird was this denizen of the littoral vegetation, the Purple Gallinule, Porphyrio martinica:

Like its drabber cousin, the Gray-cowled Wood Rail, Aramides cajaneus, it walks on floating vegetation and overhanging bushes:

PS Costa Rica’s location means it often serves as the southernmost part of the range for North American Species, like the White Ibis, and the northernmost part of the range for South American species, like the Gray-cowled Wood Rail. But yet other species are limited to Mexico and Central America, like the Bare-throated Tiger heron.