As I was saying...

I wrote yesterday—and had written once before that—about the amazing number of different birds species living in the relatively tiny area that is Costa Rica. And whenever you visit another country with a different climate and geography than your own, you’re bound to see birds that make you wonder, “What is THAT?”

Exhibit A: the red-legged honeycreeper. I can see how it got the first part of its name. But honeycreeper? They feed on fruit, insects, and even nectar in a variety of forest habitats. The honeycreeper's thin, downward-curving bill is an adaptation to nectar-eating, but also allows the it to get at fruit and insects.  Honeycreepers are able to reach into the narrow cracks of ripening fruit husks to nip bits off the rich parts inside, long before birds with shorter, heavier bills can reach them.  In the same way, the bill fits neatly into cracks in tree bark and behind twisting vines to pluck out insects too small and hidden for other birds to find.  And as these tiny insects make up the majority of the red-legged honeycreeper's diet, maybe it should be named the red-legged bug muncher. Or maybe not.

This bird is very common in Central and northern South America from Mexico south to Brazil.  I saw this one on our first stop in Costa Rica, near the Arenal volcano. We were having breakfast one morning on the restaurant’s patio , when one of the staff came outside with a bucket of cut-up fruit. He stuck pieces on this multi-pronged piece of wood, resembling a tree branch. Within minutes, all sorts of colorful birds descended for their own breakfast al fresco.

Seeing this bird sent us scrambling for our cameras, and then for the field guide. If you visit Central America or another continent, you’ve GOT to have a field guide if you want to know what you’re seeing. I hope you get to visit Costa Rica. And I hope you see the red-legged honeycreeper.