Sunday morning hike in the forest
Today´s walk in the forest was very enjoyable, and it motivated us to kick start our blog with this post. When you read, we and us, we are referring to ourselves since we are writing it together.
Salvador and Marielisa
An unexpected quetzal nest in the beginning of July
Despite the unusual rains a week earlier, Sal had the very special opportunity to meet two renowned mycologists, one from La San Carlos University of Guatemala and one from the University of Utah United States, we will write more on this later. But on their water-soaked hike scouting for mushrooms, a friend of Sal´s was pointing to a wind snapped tree that had a large hole in it. He was explaining that the Resplendent Quetzal make their home in rotting standing tree remains like the one he was pointing to. And as soon as he finished explaining this, they all were surprised to see that in the hole, now turned nest, was a male quetzal taking care of his young! Talk about good fortune! They should have all gone and bought lottery tickets that day!
Quetzal nesting behavior
From our experience, we have seen quetzals nest earlier in the year, April or May at the latest, but for some reason (extended dry season maybe) this quetzal was incubating his eggs. When the eggs have hatched, the male and female quetzal work very diligently to hunt and bring back food. This would have been normal during this time, but incubating in late June was an unusual sight for us. But quetzal behavior is a mystery, and we will keep making a note of what we observe over time.
Our plan was to go back and see the quetzal nest and try to observe and photograph what we could. Ideally, we wanted to see the pair, but we would settle for a glimpse of whatever we could get. We woke up with plenty of get up and go energy, taking a chance with the rain, we got our snacks, spotting scopes, binoculars, cameras, tripods, and drove to the trail head. We wanted all the time we could get in case we had a long wait.
Hiking to the nest
Mocca our cute, adopted Beagle joined us today. She once was a pampered city dog named Pinky. She had too much energy for apartment living and her family put her up for adoption. We adopted her and changed her name immediately to Mocca but nicked named her superdawg. She would run and do incredible feats all the time. But when we had her neutered her energy dramatically dropped. Now she just walks just what is necessary, not a step more. She will observe and wait to see if you are moving forward or just running back and forth. She is all personality!
Animal tracks along the way
As soon as we stepped foot on the trail, we noticed animal signs, some kind of animal had the whole trail dug up, we mean there were signs of rooting in the form of swirls with leaves turned up around the swirls. We are thinking coatis, since they roam in packs, but it could have been peccaries. Arnoldo (we call him Noldo for short), our forest manager, thought maybe it was armadillos. We will check our cameras to see if we can discover what animals are digging on the forest ground.
Edible mushrooms in the cloud forest
The trail we took starts off with a steep climb, this forced us to walk in what we have learned to be “a Mycologists pace”, dead slow. This slow pace allowed us to see different kinds of mushrooms, just like the ones that were photographed earlier when the Mycologist visited us. We gave it a good try at attempting to identify them, but we have way more questions than answers, this field is all new to us. We took a lot of pictures to identify what they are, but we do not want to pester our new friends with silly questions about “What is this? What is that?” We thought it would be best to look them up first to satisfy our initial curiosity and then ask if we got them right. We have not done this yet, and we really did not want to postpone this post, we have postponed writing our blog too much up to this point. Once the mushroom names are researched, we will update this post, hopefully with the correct information.
There are two kinds of mushrooms that we know for a fact what they are, they are Xaras (Lactarius indigo) and Anacates (Cantharellus cibarius). We looked up their scientific names today. We collect and eat these when we get an opportunity to spot them. Today was all about Xaras (pronounced “shAras”), there were plenty of them. These mushrooms are a beautiful blue color with beautiful blue gills under the cap. We made a mental note and cleaned debris around the mushrooms to collect them on our way back, this way they would be fresh and not crushed.
We hiked for fifty minutes, surprisingly it did not feel as challenging to us as usual, and even Marielisa admits it was not too hard this time. See, she is at her best on flat ground, but as soon as the hills show up, the struggle is real! But the effort is worth it because we really enjoy this forest and nature in general.
The male quetzal in his nest
Sal motioned us to stop… We were here! We stabbed our hiking poles into the ground, took off our backpacks, and pulled out our camera and spotting scope as quietly as we could. Soon we were crawling to get a little closer, pushing the limits of spooking our potential nesting quetzal, desperately wanting to observe this magnificent bird. There he was! Perched in his nest at the top of a very short standing but rotting tree trunk. Attempting to stay camouflaged, we remained kneeling catching glimpses through the leaves of the ground foliage.
He was right there! In front of us, the male quetzal living up to his reputation: a present father taking his turn at tending to his offspring. His small head and prominent chest proudly peeked ever so slightly out of his nest resting impossibly still, attempting not to not draw any unwanted attention. Our spotting scope takes the credit for allowing us to witness all the fine details of what was in front of us. We were literally mesmerized watching him blink! “Wait for it… wait for it…” blink! This was our first time witnessing the blink of a quetzal, even with a spotting scope you had to pay close attention to observe this.
The forest was foggy, we were enveloped in a surrounding cloud, the long hot summer had kept us from observing this since February. The cloak of mystery that the fog creates is how we remember this place, so it was a welcoming sight to see it again. But this caused us to get greedy, we could see the fog in our lenses, and we decided to get a closer look. The inevitable happened, too much noise and rustle spooked the quetzal and he took flight, landed on a low hanging branch, and before long he was gone as soon as he spread his wings once more.
Quetzal behavior in Costa Rica
Our first ever nesting quetzal experience was in Monteverde Costa Rica. Several years ago we traveled there to witness what bird watching was like away from home. There we observed for the first time how a quetzal couple worked. We could not believe that the park rangers had the nest roped off so tourists could not get too close. But we were still close enough that no special equipment was needed to observe the nest. There were many tourists flashing their cameras, and emitting loud clicking sounds at the take of every picture. Not seeming to mind all the paparazzi fuss, the male and female took turns to nest and hunt, over and over, taking turns feeding and caring for their young.
Growing quetzal population
As our forest has slowly regenerated it´s quetzal population through our conservation efforts, nests are now a common sight, but our local birds are not as social, they usually nest at higher levels of the forest, and once our presence is announced, the female will scold at us asking us to leave. The docile behavior we witnessed in Costa Rica, is something we have not seen at home yet. So in conclusion we will have to work on being quiet!
With our experience in mind, Marielisa decided to give it a try to be super quiet to see if the male would come back, or maybe luck up and see if the female would return. She set up “camp.” Camp being a tarp over the forest floor with camera in hand she lay there at a reasonable distance staring at the nest. Sal on the other hand decided that walking down the trail would be a good idea, and maybe coming back after some time would be a good option.
As we were starting our waiting strategies, Noldo found us. We had announced ourselves over the radio as we were entering the forest, but we were not sure he had heard us so it was a great surprise to see him. Sal and Noldo were photographing bright red flowers on high branches in the oak trees down trail, as Marielisa waited.
The female quetzal guarding the nest
Hunger started to set in, and out came the snacks, and we all radioed to each other calling it quits. Suddenly, we heard the calling sound of a quetzal and Noldo spotted it in flight and saw in which direction it had landed. We glassed, attempting to spot it but were not successful. As we were losing hope the female swooshed over our head, landed on a low branch, stood there for a fraction of a second and flew off again.
Learning from biologists who visit the cloud forest
It was past obvious that we were not welcome and the rain was upon us, so we took the best decision we could: go home! We started back at a mycologist pace once again, and as we made our way home, we spoke about how over the years we have been fortunate to pick the brains of biologists and other experts that have visited us, always looking for something new, or something not seen or recorded in a while. Admittedly, we are a couple of untrained amateur naturalists but fascinated by all the natural wonders that live in this forest and we do our best at trying to grab on to bits and pieces of information like if we were putting a giant puzzle together.
Experiencing the winthrow of a tree
A slow crack in the distance turned into a strong crack and then into the roar of a falling tree, this brought us to a halt. “A windthrown tree!” – we said to each other. Yes, it’s cheesy but Marielisa insists she had to say it: “would it have made a sound if we weren’t here to listen?” We stopped and looked at each other, it was evident what it was, and it was a tiny bit (bigtime) scary and thrilling at the same time. Bearing witness to the many old trees on the ground we often wonder about that moment when the roots are too weak or too old to hold the weight of the massive trees in this place, the precise moment when they finally give way and allow the tree to fall. Well, we do not have to wonder what it sounds like anymore! We were relieved that it was far enough away that no one got hurt. This happened on a day with little to no wind, but we should remain cautious of windy days and stay off the trails.
We want to share more about our project for the windthrown trees and we will expand more in future posts.
Collecting the edible mushrooms on our way back
We parted ways with Noldo, he headed back to his cabin where he stays when he is caring for the forest and we continued walking in the direction of our vehicle. Shortly, we were collecting all the Xara mushrooms we had spotted earlier and a few more that we had missed. Our dinner that night was going to be delicious to say the least. We will share our recipe, passed down by our mycologist friends.
A virgin bromeliad garden
The trail passes by a patch of bromeliads that always looks like a skilled gardener had planted them with purpose. This occurs naturally of course, but we believe it happens when they fall to ground on broken branches. They were in bloom, most were on the ground, but some were on trees just right above the patch. It is a sight, and we always think that even if we tried, we could not replicate it at home.
In no time we were back to where we had spotted all the turned-up ground from whatever animal was rooting in the ground. Noldo claims that armadillos are the cause, but we are still not sure.
A hunting dog’s instinct in the middle of the forest
We thought we were almost finishing our hike and that our adventure for the day was over, when our beagle dog, Mocca, started barking and took off running… her hunter instincts must have kicked in! Well, so much for a lazy dog! She was off on a race chasing something! We worried for her, mountain lion and other cats are present here, so we did not want her to be hurt. Sal´s backpack has a whistle formed into his chest buckle and he began to blow it. We both were yelling for Mocca to try to get her attention and for her to come back. This forest is super dense, and visibility is very limited. After a few minutes of us trying to call her, we spotted her behind us on the trail. We were relieved to see her. Maybe being a little lazy saved her from continuing to run more. Beagles are not really known to stop a chase if they are after a scent. But our relief was short lived, she took off running again! And we repeated the whole yelling thing until we got her back, but this time we kept her close so she would not run off again. Whatever was causing all the rooting on the ground is probably what she was chasing. We wish she could tell us what animal it was, she knows.
Xaras, possible armadillos, male quetzal, female quetzal, windthrow, quetzal’s nest, bromeliads… what a day!
Our hike came to an end, but today was different, we were not commenting on how many steps we recorded but instead on what an experience we just had! Even though this path is one that we have taken many times, Noldo was right, there is always something new, be it a new bloom, a different kind of mushroom where you wonder if its edible, poisonous, or will it cure some disease someday. We saw the male quetzal, caught a glimpse of the female quetzal swooshing over our head, cannot forget the sound of that tree falling, Mocca chased for sure what ever was rooting on the ground, and we took pictures of bright red beautiful flowers hanging high up on the trees. What a hike, who could ask for more!