Birds of Finca Paraiso

Everywhere I turned at Finca Paraiso, Honduras, there was something that took my breath away. Bougainvillea petals, fallen into a shallow reflecting pool. Probably something that needs to be cleaned out every few days. Oh, please leave them.

A fabulous jungle fowl, keeping an eye on his hens in the torch ginger plantation.

 But there was so much more than chickens and ginger here. This living logo is a crimson-collared tanager,  Ramphocelus sanguiolentus. Like many in that genus, its bill is reflective silver. Wish I could have gotten a better photo, but I wish that about almost every bird I shot in the rain. Some of those Ramphocelus tanagers have reds so vivid they hurt your eyes. There's the crimson-rumped tanager in the humid lowlands of Costa Rica that, when it flew up, made me yell WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?? from my seat in a small plane coming in to land on the Osa Peninsula. Same kind of red as this one. Ow!

And, doubtless hoping to eat said tanager, a FEPO--ferruginous pygmy owl. Cute little buggers, they're death on songbirds. And the FEPO's monotonous tooting whistle, easily imitated, can bring in clouds of scolding birds.

Like many owls, they have a hard stare. This one reminded me of a hawk-owl that had gotten put in the dryer.

Oh, torch ginger. How I would love to grow you in my yard. I dug around and scratched the root. Yep, ginger. Mmm.

A collared aracari, Pteroglossus torquatus, or Belted Feathertongue in ZickLatin. It's a small toucan with weird greasy green, yellow and red plumage. Love those things, their springy hops and their crazy white goat eyes. They're tough on small birds, too--nest raiders. Toucans can be quite rapacious. 

I'm old enough to remember seeing aracaris in pet shops. Yep. Hideous, to see an aracari in a mynah cage, covered in its own feces, to hear that hollow bill clanging on cage bars. And more to celebrate, now that we know that's crazy, and we aren't legally permitted to do it any more. 

I'm not sure anyone has ever tried to put a motmot in a bird cage. Here's a turquoise-browed motmot, oh delightfully diademed one. Who thought up your jewelry, your sea-turquoise wings?

The motmot sits and waits for a katydid, lizard or frog to make the wrong move, then swirls down like gaudy death. I've found several motmots by hearing them bashing their prey, kingfisher style, against a perch.

Imagine living in a place where this fantastical being was a yard bird. No wonder they call it Finca Paraiso.

Paradise Farm

Finca Paraiso: Paradise Farm. What a perfect name for this shade coffee/banana/cacao plantation not far from Lake Yojoa, Honduras.

Yes, it rained. It rained a lot while we were there, which made it tough to take decent bird photos, but oh! how I love the other photo ops it opened up. Flowers look their best in the rain, no? Yes, roses happily grow in Honduras. Told you it wasn't all that hot and humid, Possum. If a rose can grow there, you can go there.

There were so many flowers, and they all looked so lovely in the rain. Here's a heliconia, favorite of hummingbirds and relative to the banana, starting to open:

I am glad this is not a strict birding blog, (I don't do strict anything, come to think of it), because I was enchanted by the Gallus domesticus chuckling about in the rain.

They were cleverly taking shelter under the huge heliconia leaves. We were sheltering, too, in an open concrete shed, waiting for the rain to let up enough to go birding. It eventually did. With my telephoto lens and the flock of wet chickens, I had fun the whole time.

The high point for me? Seeing an heirloom bronze turkey hen running off with a stolen tortilla.

One reason to enjoy travel in Latin America is seeing the pure heirloom varieties of farm animals at the little fincas. You'll never see those big ungainly white turkeys that are the norm in America. They'd never survive the truly free-range living conditions in Latin America, where it's every turkey for himself, and damn the tortillas.

This one's for DOD, who loved to travel, but never made it to Latin America. He sure stomped all over America, though, and boy, did he have stories to tell. Miss you, miss you, miss you.