Another visitor-Collared Aracari

Another unexpected visitor. Every morning I wake up to the songs of the various toucans, the macaws vocalizing, the group of parakeets being really loud, the roosters and my African Grey talking, this morning it was " Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas ho ho ho..."we always start that in Nov. and he readily remembers it and starts saying it for Nov. and Dec! Anyway...I sort of do a mental check half asleep that I hear everyone and that they sound alright. It would be horrible to wake up and not hear any bird noise! But this morning the Aracaris were particularly noisy and they have a very high pitched song. I rolled over and that was it.

Later on when I was up I walked outside to do the morning rounds there was a Collared Aracari in the tree near our flight cages. Again, like yesterday, I quickly checked that it was not one of ours (we have 4) and then realized that he was visiting. They are not from this zone, so he has to be an escaped pet. He looks older and is not very afraid of us. He also lands right on top of the cages and came to the feeder to eat. So, that is good that he is eating. That is the most important factor, that he now has found some food that he recognizes, we will keep the feeders full of fruit for him.

This is one of ours that we raised from a small rescued baby.

Will keep you posted!

5.9 Quake!

Friday night around 8:00pm I was sitting on the bed and it started to shake a bit, Jorge, my husband came into the room and I said "Earthquake!" He looked at me dubiously, then it got stronger and he said, quake! by then all the birds in the bird room were frantic, the whole house started to shake and we got up and opened the front door and it stopped! I ran into the pet bird room to calm them down, they were fine after a few minutes, a quick check of the sloth's revealed they did not even notice...of course, and then outside to the large flights where the toucans were frantic. It is a horrible sensation to stand there with a flashlight and try to get them to calm down when they are throwing themselves against the cages. We turned on outside lights and I went cage by cage, picking up stressed out birds and praying that come morning I was not going to find any dead. The key was to calm a group of four Swainson's toucans down because they were causing all the others to stress out. Mission accomplished I yelled to Jorge to turn off the lights. The macaws outside continued for a bit then finally settled down. I walked the whole property to check on the 11 owls and they all seemed to be fine.

The next morning as I lay in bed I listened for the familiar songs of all the birds and was relieved to hear the macaws screaming, and the toucans singing. A quick round at 5:30am revealed that everyone survived and seemed to be fine. "Gracias a Dios" Thank God, is what we say for everything here in Costa Rica!

Later in the day I noticed my little blind Rainbow lorikeet was not feeling well, not eating, so I reeled the cage inside and have her with heat and started antibiotics, just in case...I don't know if the stress from the quake affected her or falling in the cage from the startle. Today she is at least eating and looking a bit better.

My first year here in Costa Rica, years ago, we had a 5.5 quake in the night and one of the toucans was really stressed out. Several days after the quake he died of a very small hemorrhage that probably occurred when he hit the cage all stressed out from the quake....so one never forgets those horrible circumstances and of course tries to prevent them from ever occurring again.

In the wild the birds would just fly off into the tress I guess. Although I did not notice any wild birds flying around the other night. We did have 10 replicas all in the 2 and 4 range on the scale, so that is why the birds took time to settle down.

We have a new mealy Amazon parrot, who came in from the University Vet. School, will write about him soon! He is out on the porch screaming with the other 2 amazons...the noise, fun and stress never stops!