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Katie and I set ourselves up in the tree house as if it were a blind, albeit a
very comfortable one with cofee and rocking chairs. |e key was to let the
wildlife come to us. We had learned over years that if you stay still enough,
long enough, on this property, the animals will eventually forget you’re
there.
|e scarlet macaws were the headliners, as they oven are on the Osa
Peninsula. We heard them long before we saw them: that guttural, rolling
RAAAAK call that is impossible to miss. Two pairs were moving across
the valley, heading from their roosting trees toward their morning feeding
grounds. Macaws are creatures of habit until they aren’t. You can learn their
typical routes and favorite almond trees, but they always retain the right
to improvise. We tracked these ones as they approached, our lenses up and
braced. |e orst pair gave us a decent pass — a clean crossing over an open
gap with morning light illuminating their red, blue, and yellow plumage.
We both ored of a burst of shots as they streaked by. I missed focus; Katie
nailed one frame perfectly, the two birds synchronized in night with
wingbeats downstroke and a clear green backdrop. |at’s the shot you wait
for: macaws with edge lighting and full wingspan, the jungle falling away
behind them.
|e aracari toucans were next to steal the show. A small nock of oery-billed
aracaris was feeding on a fruiting cecropia tree about 50 yards from the
tree house. Aracaris are the smaller cousins of the big chestnut-mandibled
toucans; they have vivid yellow chests with a slash of red and that comically
oversized colorful bill. |ey move in hops and nights that are hard to
predict — one minute gorging on tiny berries, the next nuttering to a
new branch. We trained our cameras on the cecropia and waited for those
micro-moments: a clear view of a bird with a berry in its beak, or two
aracaris interacting with each other, or one taking of. It was challenging;
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the leaves constantly blocked parts of our view. But patience paid of when
one aracari climbed to an outer branch in full view, looked our way (as if to
acknowledge us), then launched into a short night to the next tree. I caught
that takeof — wings half-open, feathers whirring, the bright bill leading
the motion. Not as grand as a macaw shot, but a little gem of action in its
own right.
Over late morning cofee, we got a surprise that almost made us spill our
cups. A troupe of squirrel monkeys suddenly descended on the trees right
around the tree house, moving fast. One moment it was quiet, and the next
the branches were alive with tiny bodies leaping and running and wrestling
with each other. Squirrel monkeys are the smallest of Costa Rica’s monkeys,
and they move like quicksilver. For a photographer, it’s mayhem — they’re
there and gone in a blink, and they rarely sit still. We had maybe two, three
seconds at a time to catch one paused on a vine or peering around a trunk.
We didn’t get award-winning shots in that frenzy, but we got something
even more valuable: the memory of being in their world, however brieny.
When you have wild monkeys practically at arm’s length, you stop worrying
about perfect focus.
As the day stretched into avernoon, the raptors onally showed up to patrol
the warming air. A crested caracara new low over the pasture, methodically
scanning the ground for anything edible. We got a few decent frames of it in
night, wings nat and eyes down – not dramatic, but crisp. |en a roadside
hawk burst from a nearby canopy perch and glided across an open space,
giving us a neeting but beautiful proole against the sky. It’s the kind of shot
that lasts maybe a second — you either get it or you don’t. |is time, I got
it.
