Un Momento: the Three-Wattled Bellbird

BONK... EEK!

That's the sound that the three-wattled bellbird makes, a call that can be heard for up to a kilometer away.  While I did not actually take the picture above, I did in fact see an individual of this highly valued bird species in the wild twice now.  The bellbird is second only to the quetzal in terms of the tourist attraction for advent bird-watchers in the Monteverde area.  Males of the species carry these three long "wattles" which they use to court their mates.  The males will find a perch high up in a tree and sit there and call for hours, hoping to attract females to mate with.  Interestingly, bellbird calls are thought to be learned rather than genetically determined, because their recorded calls have changed over the years, and two distinct calls exist within the species.  There are even a small number of individuals that make both calls and are considered “bilingual”.  Unfortunately, bellbird populations have been rapidly declining.  Because they're such a unique and noticeable (through their call, they’re actually very secretive and hard to see) species, they're one of the poster children of the conservation movement in Costa Rica. There’s a movement to create a bellbird corridor, which will hopefully help to restore bellbird numbers to what they have been previously. 

The first time I saw the bellbird was a Sunday morning in San Luis.  After having breakfast I sat on the porch reading in a rocking chair, and I could hear the call getting louder and louder.  My host mom came outside and said, "Get your binoculars," and we proceeded to go on an adventure searching for the bird. We walked down the road a bit and encountered two other women looking for source of the sound and they pointed us in the right direction.  Lorena and I climbed through a coffee and banana patch and we finally found it.  I let Lorena use the binoculars first, and luckily I managed to catch a glimpse of it just as it flew off to another perch in the area.  I walked back to the house feeling as if I’d experienced something wonderful and rare in this unique ecological setting.