Tikal Dreaming

It was a bird I had always dreamt of. The ocellated turkey. A jungle turkey, a turkey not of dry upland hardwoods or pine flatwoods, but of humid tropical lowland forest. Not only that, but it was colorful, extravagantly beautiful, every inch of it a masterwork. I had seen a few poor images of it over the decades, but nothing could have prepared me for how beautiful the ocellated turkey is in life. I saw my first ones in 2006 at Tikal, when I was working with my little Olympus point-and-shoot. On the 2007 trip, I was ready for them with the Canon digital SLR."Ocellated" means "having eyes."

I'm posting about beautiful exotic birds today because it's still only 48 degrees, spitting rain, and I just read that the entire apple and peach crop in our area has been destroyed by freezing temperatures. I am thinking about a late summer and fall without sweet, snappy Honeycrisp apples from Grimm's Green Acres, without local peaches. I am thinking about the irrevocability of night after night of temperatures in the low 20's. I'm thinking about the people who have spent years cultivating these fruit trees, seeing all their effort go to nothing in a single cruel April week. I am thinking about five bluebird eggs, due to hatch tomorrow, in a box in my front yard. I am thinking that I should be able to help somehow, and knowing that I can't.

I went to find my asparagus today and the tips of the fat shoots are squishy and brown. My bleeding heart is a flaccid pile of limp yellow spaghetti, dotted with pink. Daffodils are prostrate, their flowers deflated like used Kleenex. The lilac is wearing a limp greenish-black shroud, when it should be opening its first sweet blue blossoms. The birches and willows are clothed in hanging, weird-smelling forest- green scrappets that used to be new leaves. Daylilies are translucent, deflated. The Russian prune hedge, once snow-white, is khaki brown, as is the old gnarly pear. I took pictures of them in their glory, which lasted exactly two days. April 11: There is not a flower or butterfly in the yard. Sometimes it hurts to be tuned into nature.

And so, tropical turkeys. Turkeys who know no season, who are beautiful year-round, who have never felt frost or even chill. Turkeys who wake up to day after warm, sunny day, who give a throbbing love song that sounds like a lawnmower starting up, who toss their electric-blue heads and strut around the ruins. Who sort through thousands of ornate feathers, rearranging them, beautiful and unconscious as Degas' preening dancers.
I was on a quick trip to the restroom (they are few and far-flung at Tikal), getting ready to head down a long trail with Bill and Jeff Gordon. I was hurrying. They were waiting for me. But so was grace. There, walking slowly through deep shadow, were four ocellated turkeys. On the trajectory they were taking, they would emerge into sunlight in a few minutes. Time stood still. I forgot the trail, the guys, the restroom, everything but the turkeys on their slow march toward sunlit glory. I hunkered down and waited, following them at a respectful distance, wallowing in their beauty, "spirit open to the thrust of grace," as Bruce Cockburn wrote.

We should be able to linger, able to stop and gape for awhile, no matter what we are doing, no matter where we are supposed to be. It is the essence of living well. We think our plans and schedules are what matter. I am sure now that it is everything else that happens around our plans that really matters. John Lennon knew it. "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." You don't "take a second" to cuddle your child. You cuddle your child, and let everything else wait. You don't "wait until I have time" to call your mom, your husband or your wife. Bruce again: Life's short. Call now. And from Zick: Stop. Gape. Take beauty in when and wherever you find it. Like the lilacs, it could be gone tomorrow.

More Figgy Fun

This picture's for Sharon and for Robin Andrea: A disapproving chachalaca. I caught her eating palm fruits early one morning and she took a dim view of the intrusion.

We're finally home for a little while, back from the Ohio Ornithological Society's Owl Symposium near Oxford, Ohio, just about as far away from home as we could be and still be in our own state. We were too darn busy playing music and giving talks and emceeing to take a single picture, but we trust our buddies will send some soon so we can tell you about it. Lots of fun, connecting with friends, and further adventures in sleep deprivation. After two weeks of living out of suitcases, Bill and I are staggering around like a couple of Frankenstein's failed experiments.

Although we saw lots of habitats in Guatemala, none was as salubrious for photography as the lowland forest of Tikal. In fact, the highlands represented an extreme challenge, with rain and cold or highly contrasting light on narrow trails. There, you’re lucky to get your binoculars on a bird, much less capture its image. So I’m back to the fruiting trees of Tikal for more fun.
Parrots are messy eaters; having fed and cleaned up after Charlie for 20 long years, I can attest that they put any other pet in the shade for messiness. It’s their job to be messy. They tear into fruits not so much for the flesh but for the seeds, and they drop and fling bits in a wide arc all around. This red-lored Amazon has got a face full of fig. It’s so lovely to see parrots being parrots—loud, messy, gregarious, loving and cantankerous, as they should be.

The poses he struck were terrific. Parrots are basically feathered monkeys—acrobatic, inventive and agile.

More messiness: Another red-lored Amazon attracted a large crowd near the entry gate by tearing into a pair of fruits known locally as huevos del toro. Bull’s balls. This is an incredibly glutinous fruit. I think he was after the seeds, clustered kiwi-like in the middle, and he was willing to get himself mighty sticky for them.

I can’t look at a wild parrot without thinking that they should never be kept in captivity. Yes, I’m a parrot owner, and I’m linked to Charlie for as long as we both shall live, which could be a pretty darn long time. Knowing what I know about macaws, I’d never buy a parrot again. But I was young and dumb, and though I didn’t realize it, my biological clock was going off, so I bought a baby macaw. Dirty cage papers, bite scars and bits of fruit stuck to the wall and all, it’s probably just as well. If I’d hauled off and had kids in my twenties, I wouldn’t have gotten Phoebe and Liam in the great cosmic roulette.

The Figs of Tikal

Me and my baby atop a temple in the Grand Plaza of Tikal, Guatemala. Photo by Jeff "El Jefe" Gordon. It's sweaty up there. Soundtrack: screeching red-lored Amazon parrots and burbling Montezuma oropendolas. Blurp-blurp-blooooeeeeepppkkksksksk!

In the tropics, one fruiting tree can make all the difference in your birdwatching experience. A lovely fig tree in the Grand Plaza is dripping with fruit, and hordes of birds are taking advantage. Tikal is one of the few places on earth where you can watch big, tasty birds like crested guans, curassows, and ocellated turkeys. They aren’t molested, and more importantly, they aren’t extirpated in parks like Tikal and Chan Chich in Belize. I spent six solid months in Amazonian Brasil, and never saw a wild cracid (the family name for the chachalacas, guans and curassows). Here, they’re present, and they are unafraid, a very unusual thing to be when you live in Latin America and are big enough to be edible. Oh, what a delight. I looove these birds, love to draw them as they clamber around in the fig tree, plucking fruit. They have a polished greenish patina on their feathers that reminds me of bronze. Not to mention their slate-blue facial skin and screaming red wattles. Here's a crested guan in flight, temple ruin behind. Yeah. Guan in flight. Happens every day in Ohio.Bill, Jeff and I set up on the flank of a temple at eye-level with the fruiting fig. It's not often you're at eye-level with a crested guan...
or a Montezuma oropendola. These amazing members of the oriole and blackbird family build enormous hanging nests, five to eight feet long. They're almost ridiculously loud, bold, and bizarre. Highly recommended.
Surreal, this, posting from Coban, Guatemala, telling you about the wonderful birds in this gorgeous little country even as I'm experiencing them. The Internet continues to delight and amaze me. Too soon, we'll be heading home. Bill and I are slated to play music on Friday night, February 23, for the opening reception of the Ohio Ornithological Symposium to be held at Hueston Woods near Oxford, Ohio. It's the OOS Owl Symposium. I'll be speaking on Saturday, Feburary 24, along with the incomparable Denver Holt of the Owl Institute. Bill and I will help lead field trips on Sunday. Yeah, we'll be fried crispy--racing home Thursday morning, driving across the state with kids and Chet on Friday. Yes, Puppy Supreme will be making an informal appearance at the Owl Symposium. Check it out! Hasta luego!