Ecotopia's Prism

In the final days of our 2010 excursion, we woke before dawn to a silent block of modest homes and cabinas in Tarcoles town. It was the end of our 2010 field work and our final excursion was helping kick off the annual Scarlet Macaw count held in August around Carara National Park. During the next three hours, we would watch the forest come alive from our vista high above the mangroves and river on our right, the town of Tarcoles in front of us, the Nicoya gulf and Peninsula forming the distant horizon, and the mix of forest fragments broken by pastures and housing developments stretching south. Behind us was Carara, the core of these biological and social communities.

Like the tide coming in that morning, waves of life would emerge from the dark green hues of the trees below us. We were strategically located on a hill allowing a view of one of three flyways the Scarlet Macaws of Carara used for their morning commute. After spending the night in the protected mangroves and along the Tarcoles river, the Macaws would spread across this region in search of food. But the white egrets were the first sights as they floated in small flocks moving north and south to and from the ox bowed river. A pair of white and black ducks fooled me as I strained to sight the first Macaws. They were moving too fast I thought to myself. The early darkness would not yet easily reveal the Lapa’s reds, yellows, and blues.
Cloudy banks of mist hovered in patches over the trees. More light came. Then, the call of a Macaw pierced through the sounds of the distant waves. It’s likely mate squawked back. Their squawks are difficult to describe but perhaps something like the scraping sound of a warped wooden chair sliding across bare floor. I peered uneasily through my binoculars and struggled to focus on the still shadowy canopy. Dropping them for a few seconds, I realized again how Costa Rica’s rainforest was a unique prism revealing our world in its many hues. In the morning light overlooking the jungle canvas, life began to explode before our eyes. It is only in this ecosystem one fully understands biodiversity at its climax. Here in the tropics, the pathbreaking scholars of evolution and ecology would forge their influential theories.

I soon sighted the morning’s first pair of macaws with my naked eyes. After a closer look through my binocular lenses, “one pair” (una pareja) I shouted to our record keeper. One of my students soon confirmed the couple departing the mangroves for points south. The sighting was relayed by walkie talkie to the count’s coordinator. The macaws kept soaring. Two, no, three more pairs. A rare quartet. More pairs. Sad Solos. This is nothing like the monotony of my home in the northwest where, like the thousands of seagulls around my balcony, a few species dominate. From this natural balcony near Carara, I saw egrets, pelicans on the coast, vultures, waves of green Amazonian parrots, a great blue heron, a massive wood stork, solitary flycatchers, and many more. Carara and its surrounding landscapes are home to more than 360 bird species.

Then, a falling tree groaned to its death towards the river and sent five Lapas fleeing. We recorded 86 Lapa Rojas that morning. But numbers, words and pictures could never do these sights and sounds justice. Only after engaging all of your senses will you begin to grasp the complexity of the flora and fauna of the rainforest. Darwin made the following observation in 1893. “In tropical forests, when quietly walking along the shady pathways, and admiring each successive view, I wished to find language to express my ideas. Epithet after epithet was found too weak to convey to those who have not visited the intertropical regions the sensation of delights which the mind experiences.” Immersion in these rainforests and communities may also help you gain a new perspective, a prism to begin seeing the world differently.