Baird's Trogan...Or Is It

Today was our free day at the station. We were allowed to do whatever we wanted but encouraged to head out for a hike. Yong-Ju and I wanted to go in a small group so we could be quiet so we roped Evan and Adam into coming with us. We headed out on the Miradores trail with the hope of finding the Catarata (waterfall) trail when it looped around.

We left at 7:30am. We kept hearing grunts following us on the trail. I was up ahead a little looking at a beautiful bird when I heard them yelling that they saw a capuchin monkey. I ran back but had already missed it. Later on, another group mentioned that the monkeys were chasing them at the same portion of the trail so we assume that it was them grunting at us.

The bird I was looking at that caused me to miss out on the capuchin monkey was what we believed to be a Baird’s trogan based off of the bird book we looked at. Victor (one of the chaperones) is an avid bird man and was vehemently denying that it was a Baird’s trogan. We figured that he was just jealous since he’d never seen one. But, then he said that it might be some sort of new thing since he’d never seen anything quite like it. We’re sending the picture out to a ornithology expert when we get back to the states.

Along the trail we saw more butterflies, crazy trees, leaf-cutter ants, interesting fungus, hummingbirds, and other assorted things. At one point I was a lot ahead of the group and came to a fork in the road. The signs were in Spanish and I followed the trail that I thought would lead me to the waterfall. About ten minutes later I realized I was lost. I sprinted (literally) back up through the jungle and thankfully found Yong-Ju, Adam, and Evan waiting for me at the fork in the trail. We headed out the other way and about ten minutes later realized that the trail I had been on was the right way to go. That’s the story of how I got lost in the jungle. The waterfall was magnificent to see and worth the 4.5 hour hike to see it.

When we got back to the station I spent the rest of the afternoon snoozing in Dan’s hammock and bird-watching off the porch. I saw another guan, a keel-billed toucan, a chestnut mandible toucan, a bizarre squirrel, an agouti, and a coati.

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"The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams."
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