Research TopicsWildlife & Fish: Bird Monitoring
Wonderful world, beautiful people and fantastic birds:
A season of bird monitoring in Costa Rica
On October 5, 2000, I arrived at the Caribbean Conservation Corporation's Tortuguero Research Station and began the most interesting two months of my life. My first venture to the Tropics was to participate in CCC's Landbird Monitoring Project and I found exciting work, amazing nature and wonderful people all in a beautiful place.
 The project, now in its seventh year, uses methods that are standard in the North and are becoming so in the Central and South in order to monitor bird populations throughout America as a whole. These mist-netting capture and censusing methods have proven very effective in building accurate demographic, abundance, migrational movement, and habitat use databases. I had long wanted to follow the migrant birds that I've studied and worked with in various regions of North America as they fly to and through the Neotropics where most of their complex lives are spent. The added opportunity to observe and study the Tropical resident species that I'd only seen in books made the decision an easy one and off I went. My anticipated excitement was immediately surpassed by real life as soon as I got there.
I had come for the second half of the fall migration season - the period of time when millions of southbound birds are concentrated by the constricted landmass of Central America. What a rewarding coincidence that such an important place to monitor birds happens to be one of the most fascinating on earth! Any waking moment brought new experiences with the flora and fauna those first few weeks (this tapered off to only many every day thereafter) and I was living a biologist's dream.
The natural wonders I encountered at first were simply overwhelming and impossible to describe here in this brief account, but in a nutshell, it was awesome in the truest sense. Initially, everything seemed arranged around the will of the multitude of ant populations everywhere . plants that depended upon them and the antbirds, ant-shrikes, ant-tanagers, ant-thrushes that followed them - wow! Then a couple days after my arrival, we saw a major migration movement with some 130 birds captured and 50 species encountered in a single six-hour effort (that's a lot!). About half of the captures were North American-breeding thrush species. One of these, the Gray-cheeked Thrush, had recently piqued the interest of everyone involved with the project. One had been captured at a mist-netting site outside of Toronto, Ontario in May 1998 that had been originally captured and banded at CCC in October 1996 . this is the sort of occurrence that bird banders live for - to learn with certainty that a bird has traveled from this place to that, to have been found using this habitat and that and to have survived all the obstacles in all that traveling - wow. I hope we see this world traveler (and many more like it) again soon.
 After my initial shock of constant amazement eased, I was able to channel my excitement toward the great job at hand. Opening mist nets, and conducting area searches, and migration counts became my daily schedule. White-collared Manikins, Slaty-tailed Trogons, Chestnut-mandibled Toucans, Great Green Macaws - the list goes on and on - all the tropical birds injected a newfound fascination for me. The brilliant butterflies, frogs, snakes, and monkeys of the rainforest kept my eyes wide open . I can't count the times that I could only utter "wow". And I will never forget being thrown back on my rear by a Green Sea Turtle while attempting to measure its carapace while assisting a turtle research team - what a thrill!
October's end brought the 25th anniversary of the Parque Nacional de Tortuguero and the weekend-long celebratory festivities that included a boat parade. CCC's good ship Doņa Lavinia was decorated with a huge Green sea turtle atop her cabin - a beautiful adult female that was laying eggs! I felt compelled to represent the bird project and decorated myself as a very large parrot using heliconia and palm leaves and fern fronds for plumage and a giant cardboard bill taped to my mosquito helmet. I was helped aboard Doņa Lavinia's aft deck where for the next two hours I squawked and beat my palm-leaf wings like a crazed psittid and had great fun . especially with the laughing kids and surprised tourists on shore and in boats. We all were very proud and pleased to be awarded the trophy for best of parade.
The beginning of November brought us fewer birds, as migration wound down. But odd stragglers and interesting species continued to show up . most exciting were the three White-eyed Vireos and two Black-throated Blue Warblers captured and the Myrtle Warbler, Yellow-throated Warbler and Fork-tailed Flycatcher observed - all of these with only a handful of records in Costa Rica (and the flycatcher only the second sighting ever at Tortuguero). Of the species captured or detected during censusing efforts, 33 are listed as priority species on the Partners In Flight / Audubon WatchList in one or more of the United States and seven of these on the U. S. National List.
 The people I met at Tortuguero are what really made my time there so memorable. What an exceptional group that made up the turtle research crews . talented biologists from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, France, India, United States and Uruguay . all working, playing and living together as a family with great dedication, respect and gusto. It was a complete joy to assist with the turtle projects. And the joy was greater, if possible, having these folks assist with the bird efforts. The wonderful people who make the research station such an enjoyable and productive place to work cannot be praised enough. Fredy, Zelmira, Gloria, Alex, William and "Pajarito" all made my (and I'm certain everyone else's) stay at Tortuguero a very special one - they are dear people who became friends.
The project enjoyed a successful field season. From August 9 through December 11, crews captured 2,414 birds of 97 species. An additional 50 species were encountered during 163 Area Searches and 535 Migration Counts. Uncountable amazing ecological encounters occurred. So many new friends entered my life. Immeasurable joy was experienced in a far too short time. What an enriching time of my life those months became . I know I will return because part of my heart stayed behind when I left.
Bob Frey, Arcata, California, January 2001
All photos courtesy of Tortuguero Integrated Bird Monitoring Program.
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