The other side of the ball

   One of the fun things about stitching temari is that not all sides of the ball can be seen at once. If one doesn't do so well on one side of ball, it can be displayed with the preferred side visible and the other side as unseen as the dark side of the moon.
   I just completed a 16 face ball with kiku or chrysanthemum stitch in the four hexagons and the other shapes filled in with swirl stitch.

I tried both solid color swirls as above and swirls where I lightened the color as I got close to the center of the shape as in the next picture.

I enjoy trying different color combinations of different sides too. (Perhaps I just have a low tolerance for boredom.) I also tried different greens with the same blue on the various kiku sides.

This was my favorite color combination.

The colors of this ball were inspired by a little bird found in Monteverde. While not extremely rare, it's very difficult to see because it hides in clumps of mistletoe high in trees. It's the Elegant Euphonia (euphonia elegantissima).

The nitty-gritty: I learned how to mark this ball by following a tutorial in the Temari Challenge Yahoo group. The marking is called C8 to pentagons and hexagons. The 16 faces consist of 4 large hexagons and 12 pentagons. Thanks again to Joan Z., who led the tutorial.

Tropical colors

Green is a predominant color in tropical forests. Small splashes of color have a big impact. Here are some recent photos Mr. Rududu took recently in the Monteverde area. Blue-gray tanagers sometimes puncture flowers and drink nectar from them without doing any polinating.

This insect was inside a plastic bag; the photo shows its fuzzy underside. It was awaiting identification inside a plastic bag so the background looks kind of artsy.

For some reason, scorpions look blue under a black light flashlight. It sure looks prettier than under normal life—and it makes me want to get a black light flashlight to inspect my house with.

Orioles before breakfast, motmots before dinner

   In our annual migration as birdwatchers, we have returned to Monteverde, Costa Rica to escape Wisconsin's cold. Although it can be cool and misty here in January due to the altitude, today was perfect for being outside in shirtsleeves. Before breakfast I spotted another migrant, a Baltimore oriole. I wonder if it's one that delighted us with its song in Wisconsin's summer.

This isn't a photo of the one I saw this morning although it was probably in the same tree near our house. We've been too busy unpacking and organizing to do bird photography so the photos in this post are from Mr. Rududu's archives. During the day I put out the fruit platform and soon had birds coming to it. The first to arrive were the Blue-gray tanagers.

Before dinner, the Blue-crowned motmot showed up for his (or her) last minute snack just before dark. The motmots are surprisingly regular about the times they come to eat. Last year we had a nesting pair that came twice a day every day. I couldn't really see the details at dusk today, but this is what the bird looks like in better light.

Ah, it's so nice to be back in Monteverde!

Mountain of death?

   This past weekend we went to Cerro de la Muerte in southern Costa Rica. Many tourists wrongly assume the highest mountain pass on the Inter-American Highway is called the mountain of death because of the condition of the road. The road is quite good now and the name comes from earlier times when people walked or rode horses from their hot, lowland homes and sometimes died from hypothermia in the mountains when they over-nighted at chilly high elevations. Fortunately, just before we pulled out of the driveway I decided to run back into the house and grab a wool stocking cap and gloves which I ended up wearing most of the time. We were birding at elevations of 2200-3640 meters (7218-11,942 feet). Even in the tropics it is cold up that high.
   My "target bird" — the one I most wanted to see on this trip—was the Long-tailed Silky Flycatcher. I don't know how we missed it on our other trip to this area, because it was almost the first bird we saw when we got out of the car and we saw it very frequently for the entire 5 day trip.

    Sometimes birds were hard to see due to fog. This was the way it looked when I saw my first Silky. There's a reason they call them cloud forests.

   We stayed at Savegre Hotel in San Gerardo de Dota and were extremely pleased with our cabin, the food, and the extensive trail system. The primary cloud forest above the lodge is made up of mostly oaks but if you are used to oak forests in the U.S., you will find they look very different in the tropics. Notice that it can be sunny in the cloud forest.

Tropical trees often don't have branches until an incredible height and this tree was so tall I couldn't get any of its branches in the photo. This particular Quercus bumelioides was named tree of the year in 2010 by InBio, Costa Rica's National Institute for Biodiversity.

    Many people go to San Gerardo de Dota to see the Resplendent Quetzal. We saw quite of few and enjoyed seeing them fly high above us. Easier photo subjects were the wonderfully comical Acorn Woodpeckers that come to the lodge's garden to eat bananas at the feeder.

   We were amused by how these Sulfur-winged Parakeets liked to sit so close to each other.

Continuing the humor theme, check out the "beard" on this ferocious little ball of fluff. He's the Talamancan version of the Volcano Hummingbird, one of the smaller hummingbirds in Costa Rica. It's hard to believe that such a tiny bird can live in the cold páramo above the elevation where forests can grow.

Home sweet home

   As we approach the beginning of the rainy season, many birds in the Monteverde area are starting their nesting. Finding good real estate is not easy in Monteverde, even for birds. Cavity dwelling birds need a large tree with a rotten center that they can excavate. We recently saw this Resplendent Quetzal working on this nest hole.

Here's a picture taken a few years ago of a Quetzal emerging from his nest hole.

Both parents of this species work on the nest, incubate the eggs and feed the chicks. The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and others provide artificial nest boxes that are sometimes used by Quetzals. The nest boxes are filled with wood chips so the birds can "excavate" them.
   In San Luis we recently saw a female Masked Tityra working on a nest in a dead snag as the male perched nearby.

For the last several years we've seen several species nesting or attempting to nest in the same trunk. The top of this tree broke off this season and its potential as a nest site must be almost over as it continues to rot away.
   Of course most birds don't want their nest location known and the cunning little nests of hummingbirds are particularly hard to find.  Besides being small they look like a little ball of moss, just another of many epiphytes growing on most cloud forest trees and plants. By the way, any hummingbird sitting on a nest is a female as the males don't contribute anything to the nesting effort. This is a female Purple-throated Mountain Gem.

   Other birds also camouflage their nests, such as this Slaty-backed Nightengale Thrush, a cloud forest bird that is difficult to see but whose beautiful song is frequently heard.

Birds generally will sit very tight on their nest without moving in the hopes of not revealing their location.  Too much disturbance by curious people is very stressful for birds and could result in them abandoning a nest. The photos in this post were taken through a telescope so as to not disturb the birds.
  Even the ubiquitous Clay-colored Robin has a beautifully hidden nest.

Finding nests is a challenge—Mr. Rududu is very pleased if he gets a few good nest photos in a year.

Odd happenings

  Last week seemed to be the week for odd nature sightings. Consider the Long-Tailed Weasel (Mustela frenata) that ran up to my foot while I was sitting very still. Mark Wainwright's The Natural History of Costa Rican Mammals notes that "Mustelids see poorly, sometimes failing to notice motionless, quiet observers".  What seemed particularly odd to me was that I was sitting inside the library at UGA Costa Rica at the time. There's a lot of wildlife around the campus but I really didn't expect to expect to see an animal that Wainwright calls "shy and rarely seen" inside. Unfortunately it startled me so much that I moved my foot and it left before I had time to really look at it in detail much less take a photo. The plus side of that was it didn't run up my leg. By the way, the weasel is in the Mustelidae family, which includes skunks. Many mustelids have large scent glands. There was an extremely unpleasant musky odor in the library after the weasel left perhaps because it was just as startled as I was.
  Another unusual sighting was a White-Throated Capuchin monkey that was traveling along at tree top level with its troupe of about twenty when it chose to jump to a branch that was just too small. I watched in shock as the branch broke and the monkey fell some 10 meters/over 30 feet. Since there was a lot of brush underneath I couldn't determine its fate but it was quite unsettling to watch it fall.
  To end on an upbeat note, one strange sight of the week was merely amusing. This male Three-wattled Bellbird (Procnias tricarunculatus) had a momentary wattle problem.

 Fortunately he was very soon back to bonking freely.

Recent sightings of the famous and not so famous

  Most people coming to Monteverde want to see the Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno). And who could get tired of seeing this emerald green and red trogon which is indeed resplendent?

The long feathers over the tail can be up to 30"/76 cm longer than the squared-off tail itself. The best way to see a quetzal is to know where the fruiting wild avocado trees are. In this photo of a quetzal we saw this week, you can see a few of the small avocado fruits. They like to perch in or near such a tree for long periods of time. Once in a while they sally out to grab a fruit. They swallow the fruit whole and digest the thin layer of flesh before regurgitating the seed. Here is a picture of an unusually large wild avocado. Many are only half as long.

    Another sought after bird is the Three-wattled Bellbird (Procnias tricarunculatus). Although the metallic call it makes can be heard for a kilometer, it's surprisingly difficult to see one even when you are so close the call is almost deafening. The males call from the tops of tall trees to attract females. (Apparently the females also find their long black wattles attractive.) It was a pleasant surprise this week to find a male calling from a perch on the UGA Costa Rica campus that was easy to see and photograph due to a path up the hillside from the base of the tree. Since Bellbirds tend to use the same perches through the mating season, we hope to see him again next week.

  I don't get tired of seeing these beautiful birds whenever possible but I also enjoy seeing some of the less famous and flashy species of the area. It was fun to see the normally shy Green Hermit (Phaethornis guy) perching. This is a female.

Even rather unexceptional looking birds do interesting things. We recently found a group of Dusky-capped Flycatchers (Myiarchus tuberculifer) catching drone Azteca ants as they emerged and flew away from their host Cecropia trees. The flycatchers hovered briefly near the hole in the tree where the ants were coming out and grabbed them out of the air when they took flight.

No matter how many times one goes in the cloud forest, there are new things to see. The entomologist we shared this sighting with said he had never seen the drones emerging and we would have never noticed it without seeing the birds' unusual behavior.

A matter of perspective

   Birdwatchers often remark that there should be guidebooks showing the undersides of birds as that is often all you can see. When we heard something fall right next to us on the path and looked up, we didn't need any special guide to know that the bird right over us was a Black Guan (Chamaepetes unicolor).

We could still see it's blue facial skin and red eye, but most impressive were the fluffy thigh feathers that guidebooks don't even mention.
   On the same outing, we saw this Striped palm pit viper (Bothriechis lateralis) sleeping in a tree at the entrance to the Santa Elena Reserve. Fortunately for the sake of identifying it, we could see the thin yellowish line bordering it's belly.  Twan Leenders' Guide to Ampibians and Reptiles of Costa Rica says this snake is "common in Costa Rica, but because it is camouflaged and usually immobile, it is rarely seen."

Agreed. Even after someone told us which tree it was in, it took us a while to find it.
   Sometimes it's not the birdwatchers that are looking up. This Golden-browed Chlorophonia (Chlorophonia callophrys) seemed to be checking out what its friends were doing. It was in a large ficus tree with a couple dozen of the same species, feasting on the abundant fruit.

Frogs sitting in their little pond inside a bromeliad plant really has no choice but to look up. This little tree frog happens to have a home on a low branch and we've visited him twice and seen how much he can grow in a week. A guide said it was one of the smilisca frogs that are very common in Costa Rica. This is the first I've seen in the wild; I think a lot of them live in bromiliads that are well above human eye level.

Finally, it's fun to get down to bug level when possible. This leaf mimic was recently walking across the porch at The Ecolodge at UGA Costa Rica.

By the way, if you are really curious about the weather in the Monteverde area, check out UGA's weather site. Just keep in mind that around here elevation really affects weather, so it can be warm and sunny in the upper San Luis valley and cool and misty at the nearby Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve.

The tale of the Jaguarundi

  Yesterday we went to a new reserve in Monteverde called Curi-cancha. They don't have a web site yet, but you can find them on Facebook. The walk started out with the exciting spotting of a Red Brocket Deer (Mazama americana), an animal we had never seen before. Unlike the common White-tailed Deer we see so often in Wisconsin, this deer freezes completely immobile for several minutes when it feels in danger. That made it an excellent photo subject.

  Within minutes we were watching a group of six Golden-browed Chlorophonias (Chlorophonia callophrys) in a single tree.  We've never seen so many of this pretty little bird in one place. They were hopping about quite excitedly, so I was delighted that Mr. Rududu managed to get his photo.

  A little farther along the trail, we saw our first Resplendant Quetzal of the year, a beautiful male. He wasn't quite as easy to take a picture of since he was high in a tree full of leaves.

  It's easier to find a quetzal if you know where the fruiting wild avocado trees are. This quetzal was near a tree with fairly large fruit for a wild avocado. The layer of flesh is quite thin; the pit is very large. The quetzals swallow the fruit whole and then regurgitate the pit.

   Later, a fairly large mammal crossed the trail. I didn't see it and Mr. Rududu only saw the tail. Looking it up later in The Natural History of Costa Rican Mammals by Mark Wainwright, he decided it was the tail of a large cat called a Jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi). There's no photo of this fleeting experience so I'm calling it the tale of the jaguarundi. Maybe that's just because I'm extremely envious. We've been told they are common in the reserve and it is the most commonly seen wild cat in Central America.
  It is always amazing to those new to tropical birding that it can be very difficult to see a parrot (or many parrots) in a tree when the air is filled with their raucous calls. Their bright green feathers make them very hard to see among the leaves. Even in this photos, it's a bit hard to see the White-front Parrot (Amazona albirons).

I'm really looking forward to exploring Curi-cancha Reserve more. Perhaps I will return with a tale.

What we saw from the porch

   It's exciting to get back to Costa Rica every year. It's not just leaving the cold and snow of Wisconsin behind—it's also the profusion of new things to see. On our stay at the University of Georgia Ecolodge this week, some of our best nature sightings were in the immediate vicinity of the main building, thanks to the general profusion of nature. I saw an American Redstart, the first one seen on the property. I have no photo of it flying past me, I'm afraid, but it lifted my heart to see it.
   There was a marvelous large praying mantis wandering about the porch. See how cunningly the wings look like leaves and the legs like twigs.

There was a lizard in nearby plants that was shedding its old skin.

Soon there was a lizard eating the praying mantis because it jumped into the plants where the lizard was. (The lizard was not fooled by the mantis's cunning camouflage.)
    One of the most common birds in Costa Rica is the lovely blue gray tanager. One just doesn't get tired of looking them, especially when it's been about seven months since the last one.

Cool ice

  Although it has been a mild winter in Wisconsin so far this year, some ice has formed on the lakes this week. Ice that breaks up and refreezes can make some interesting effects.

 The American Coots migrating south are concentrated into the area where the Yahara River enters Lake Monona.

   And if the natural ice isn't interesting enough, a neighbor makes interesting ice sculptures by freezing dyed water outside in household containers and stacking them in the yard.

Cranes scare bikers

On a recent bike ride on the 40 mile (64 km) Military Ridge Trail near Madison, bicycling traffic came to a complete halt due to some very agitated parents. There was a great hullabaloo while they called and strutted threateningly on and near the trail.

Was it respect for the birds or the fact that a Sandhill Crane is 4 to 5 feet tall (1.2-1.5 meters) and armed with a long sharp bill? It turns out that a chick that is only about a day old ignores parental efforts to herd it away from people—it likes the newly mown grass on the edge of the trail. Even there we could rarely see it because it was so tiny.

Eventually the parents switched tactics and tried to decoy us up a hill and away from where the chick  was. They just don't get it that bicyclists don't like to ride in tall grass, but at that point we felt it was safe to ride away on the trail and leave them in peace until the next cyclists came along. It looked like the new parents had a busy afternoon ahead of them.
Nitty gritty: Wisconsin had the very first rail-to-trail in the US and has gone one to develop an extensive system with hundreds of miles of car-free trails on former railroad beds. Most of them are surfaced with crushed limestone and a bike with fairly skinny tires can handle them. Between the trails and an amazing network of paved secondary roads, Wisconsin is heaven for bicyclists. And don't forget the cheese!

Celebrating the world's tallest flying bird

Continuing my series of temari inspired by cranes, I made one that reminds me of the Sarus Crane, the worlds tallest flying bird. When it flies, quite a bit of black is visible on its wing tips.

 You can learn more about this magnificent bird that lives in India, Nepal, and Pakistan at the International Crane Foundation's site.

 I wrapped this 3.6" (9.2 cm) diameter temari with DMC coton perle 8. Like cranes, this embroidery thread comes in black and white and lovely shades of gray. This is the first temari I've made with Nordic Gold thread. It really set off the sections of threads and made them look more like feathers. Compare it to the previous ball that I did before I got the gold.