Costa Rica Part 2: Tropical Birds, Your Soul and Social Vultures

Note: Today marks a full year of this project. I’d intended to do a post about the project overall, how it’s turned out and where it’s headed, but I’m still caught up in the afterglow of last week’s Costa Rica trip, so I’m just gonna blast ahead, and come back to the “State of the Blog” issue sometime next week.

Special Note: This date also brings back odd memories of my childhood, as it is Greek Independence Day. Every year, on this day- or the Sunday closest to it- in the Greek Orthodox Church they would make a big to-do about it, and have us sing (I swear I am not making this up) the Greek National Anthem, a bizarre little tune with lyrics dominated by warfare, blood and death. There we were, a bunch of 10 and 12 year-olds from the suburbs with clip-on ties, bell-bottoms and Mod Squad hair-dos, singing about rising from the grave and killing Turks. Like I’ve said before, the Greek Orthodox Church is just weird enough to forever turn you off to organized religion without permanently screwing you up.

Let’s start this post off with a bang. Here it is, a male Resplendent Quetzal, Pharomachrus mocinno. If you’re any kind of a birder, you know that sighting this stunner is a Total Home Run. And what’s super-cool about last week, is that we saw Queztals- male and female- not 1, not 2, but all 3 days we were up in the cloud forest.

Tangent: I’ll explain “Cloud Forest” in tomorrow’s post. For now, you should know that they’re high, wet, dense forests that occur up in the mountains. At first glance they look a lot like like a “typical” tropical rainforest, but they’re different, cooler and very rare.

While I’m an amateur at pretty much everything I blog about (amateur botanist, amateur entomologist, amateur Spanish-speaker, amateur bike-racer… sometimes my kids make me feel like an amateur parent) I am a really amateur birder. I don’t have a “Life List”, it took me 12 years of living in Salt Lake to make it up to the Bear River Refuge, I don’t have a spotting scope, and I’m pretty lackadaisical about even refilling the feeders in the back yard. But I am telling you now, if you spend a week in Central America with a decent pair of binoculars*, and you come home anything less than completely enchanted with tropical birds, then you have no soul.

*The Nikon Monarchs were fabulous. Several of these photos I shot with my Canon PowerShot 450 through the Monarchs…

There are 6 species of Quetzals, all native to South or Central America. The Resplendent, the most stunning (my opinion), is the only one native to Costa Rica. It’s found only in the high cloud forests, is very rare, and its range has diminished considerably.

Tangent: The Resplendent Quetzal is the national symbol of Guatemala, but apparently hasn’t been sighted there for some years.

Quetzals are monogamous, territorial and have a distinctive call, which guides will mimic in their efforts to locate the bird. They’re extremely difficult to keep/breed in captivity and apparently will often kill themselves following capture (how they do so I’m not clear.) Quetzals have large eyes adapted to the dim light of the cloud forest interior. The male has a distinctive crest and 2 remarkably beautiful long, green “tail-feathers”, which are actually not tail-feathers, but simply “back-feathers” growing down over the squared-off “real” tail. The squared-off tail is common to the broader group of birds to which the Quetzals belong, called Trogons, which are stunners in their own right. What do they look like? Well, since you asked, we saw those too! Here’s a male Orange-Bellied Trogon, Trogon aurantiiventris, another simply gorgeous bird, that we saw our first morning in Monteverede, about 30 minutes after the Quetzals.

The diet of Quetzals centers heavily around a series of trees called the “Little Avocadoes”, which are actually a number of different trees, all within the family Lauraceae*, which bear miniature avocado-like fruits.

*Lauraceae is a worldwide angiosperm family of some 55 genera and includes everything from Laurel trees to Cinnamon to Sassafras. CR has ~130 Lauraceae species, more than 1/2 of which occur up in the cloud forests.

The Quetzals pass the pits, serving as a dispersal agent for the tree.

Tangent: Little Avocados are known locally as Aguacatillos. Aguacate is the Spanish word for Avocado, and supposedly is derived from an Aztec root meaning “testicle tree.” (I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s too good not to mention.) I always remember the word for Aguacate, because the word “Abogado” in Spanish is one of those words known as a false cognate, meaning that it sounds just like an English word (“avocado”), but means something completely different (in this case, “lawyer.”) False cognates are a source of frustration to novice Spanish students; one of potentially most awkward is the word “embarazada”, which means “pregnant”, and not “embarrassed” (though ironically you probably will be embarrassed after using it incorrectly…)

Avocadoes by the way- real avocados, the ones we eat- Persea americana, are interesting in that they’re native to Central and South America and appear to have been domesticated independently multiple times in different Central American locations. Today there are 3 main varieties (West Indian, Mexican and Guatemalan) with a number of different cultivars of each. Long-time readers of Fatty’s blog may recall that I am a huge Avocado fan. If there’s ever been a more delightful fruit…. Whoa. I’m spiraling into a plant deep-dive. Must… stop… Must… get… back… to… birds…

Ancient Mesoamericans considered the Resplendent Quetzal divine, associating it with the snake-god Quetzlcoatl. Though they prized the mail tail-feathers, they supposedly never killed the birds, but rather captured them and plucked the feathers. Today, the Quetzal’s predators include eagles and owls. In addition, Quetzal eggs and fledglings are frequently preyed upon by Kinkajous and this guy, the Emerald Toucanet, Aulacorhynchus prasinus, whom we spotted a bit later that same morning. That colorful beak isn’t just for show; it makes short work of eggs, nestlings and lizards.

Toucans, or Ramphastidae, are a family of 5 genera, all with brightly-colored feathers, and large, striking bills. They were of course a huge hit with the Trifecta, who wanted to know if every Toucan we saw was the same species at the “Fruit Loops Toucan.” Probably the most attractive Toucan we sighted in CR was this guy, the Fiery-Billed Aracari, Pteroglossus frantzii , which we spotted earlier in the week down in the coastal rainforest of Manuel Antonio. The Fiery Billed Aracari is more social than other Toucans, most of whom are fairly solitary.

We saw dozens and dozens of other forest and pasture birds. A favorite of mine at the Blue Banyan was the Scarlet-Rumped Tanager, Ramphocelus passerinii, (pic left, not mine) a cousin (same family, but different genus) of one of my local favorites back home, the Western Tanager. And the free Hummingbird Garden by the Monteverde National Park entrance is the best place to watch Hummers I’ve ever seen. But I’d be particularly remiss if I didn’t mention array of spectacular shorebirds we saw down in the mangroves and estuaries, including Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Tiger Herons and Tri-colored Herons, among others.

My favorite shorebird was one we missed this trip, but which Bird Whisperer and I saw in 2007 up on the Nicoya Peninsula- the Anhinga, Anhinga anhinga (Easiest. Latin. Name. Ever.) What’s particularly interesting about the Anhinga is that unlike most shorebirds- herons, ducks, geese, etc- it’s feathers aren’t waterproofed by oils. This helps it dive, swim and hunt for fish more effectively, but also means that its feathers become water-logged after a bit of time in the water. And so the Anhinga is most often spotted in its distinctive “drying” pose, perched on a branch, log or rock, wings spread in the air.

But one bird we saw almost everywhere, and which particularly interested me, was not a songbird or toucan or shorebird, but a vulture, specifically the Black Vulture, Coragyps atratus.(pic below, left, not mine)

Vultures are fascinating to begin with because although they occur worldwide, Old World Vultures, Aegypiinae, are not particularly closely related New World Vultures, Cathartidae, and in fact “Vulture-ness” evolved completely independently in both hemispheres. Old World Vultures are part of the same family that includes eagles and hawks. The family tree of New World Vultures is less clear, but it appears that they might be somewhat more closely related to storks and herons.

Convergent evolution is cool because it’s a great showcase of how evolution creates beautiful sophisticated features, mechanisms and species in response to specific pressures and environments, and how given similar pressures and environments, it can reliably produce similar, sophisticated solutions repeatedly. I’ve blogged about a few other examples of convergent evolution; 2 of my favorite examples are CAM and C4 photosynthesis, which we looked at last month. Another great example from the animal world is moles. “Mole-dom” has evolved independently at least 3 times: once in the “Laurasia” (Eurasia/North America), again in the Africa, and incredibly, a third time in Australia (a marsupial mole!)

Here in Utah, and throughout the Western US, we have just one species of Vulture, the Turkey Vulture, Cathartes aura. But C. aura is just 1 of 7 New World Vultures (technically 5 vultures and 2 condors), of which 4 occur in Costa Rica. The most prevalent and obvious vulture in Costa Rica is the Black Vulture.

Side Note: Black Vultures also occur clear up through Mexico and the Gulf states.

At first glance the Black Vulture looks like the same deal as the Turkey Vulture, except with a black head, and just a titch smaller. But you quickly notice that it seems to congregate in flocks (pic below, left- mine), and that behavior hints at the real difference between the 2 species: the Black Vulture is significantly more socially advanced. They scavenge in packs and share food location information. Although 1-on-1 a Turkey Vulture can usually take on a Black Vulture, the latter works in flocks and routinely drives the solitary Turkey Vultures away from carrion finds. (Their relationship isn’t necessarily always antagonistic; the 2 species often roost together.) Black Vultures often locate recent kills late in the day, and then return en masse the following morning, the successful carrion-locators leading their unsuccessful flock-mates from the previous day.

Interestingly, Black Vultures lack a sense of smell, and locate carrion either visually, or by following other vultures that can smell, such as Turkey Vultures, or the Lesser Yellow-Headed Vulture, Cathartes burrovianus.

Side Note: Most birds- including all Old World Vultures- don’t have a sense of smell.

The sociality of Black Vultures has enabled it to develop another behavior largely unknown to Turkey Vultures: they hunt. And as one of the larger things they hunt is newborn cattle, they’re regarded as predators by ranchers. The manner in which they hunt newborn calves is not for the weak of stomach; they disable the calf by pecking at its eyes, nostrils and tongue, sending it into shock, and then pecking the disabled animal to death. Black Vultures are the only New World Vultures that hunt cattle.

Like another bird we looked at closer to home- the Brown-Headed Cowbird- it’s hard to feel particularly sympathetic toward a bird whose lifestyle seems so creepy. But on the home front, Black Vultures look pretty good compared to Cowbirds; they’re attentive, caring (and monogamous) parents, sharing in chick-rearing duties and feeding their young regurgitated carrion for up to 5 months. And besides, some of the things we do to calves aren’t so nice either.

Next Up: So What About All Those Freaky Tropical Plants?

Costa Rica Part 1: Sloths, Monkeys and Vampire Bats

So here’s how this blog usually works: I’m out and about biking or hiking or skiing, and I see something interesting. I get curious about it, do a little reading/research, and then think Hey, this would make a great post, and then I deep-dive into it, come up with some lame graphics and do a post.

Sometimes I go away for a weekend- maybe to the desert or someplace- and see a whole bunch of interesting things, and then it’s a little bit trickier, because I have to pick which specific thing or couple of things I’ll blog about (because I actually do have a life with a family and job and stuff and can’t spend like 20 hours/day on this blog.)

But right now I am floored. Because last week, on our Costa Rica trip I saw dozens and dozens and dozens of cool things, any one of which would make for an awesome post. We’re talking mammals, reptiles, amphibians, bugs, birds, trees, flowers, ferns, mosses, clubmosses, lichens, fish- you name it. Seriously, I could do a different post on some cool critter or plant that we saw last week, every day for at least a month, and not run out of material.

But I can’t do that, because this blog is all about Watching the World Wake Up, and with the Equinox gone by while I was away, that whole deal is right around the corner, so what I’m going to try to do is this: 3 posts this week- one on mammals, one on birds, one on plants. Each will be sort of an overview of the cool creatures we saw last week, with “shallow dives” (if I can resist doing a “deep dive”) into 2 or 3 each day. And then, if I get through all that and still have time/energy/focus, maybe I’ll do a Bonus Post on all the creepy-crawly-slithery things we saw. Sound good? Here we go:

Best. Vacation. Ever.

So here’s why Costa Rica is such a great vacation place spot for our family:

1- Beaches. Kids love beaches. Especially land-locked Utah kids. And also land-locked Utah grown-ups. (pic above = Twin A walking down to water at amazing, deserted beach we reached after 45 minute drive through Palm plantations. Beach stretched for miles in both directions, no one in sight but us.)

2- Animals. I recently shared my stunning insight that Kids Love Animals. CR’s got ‘em like you would not believe.

3- Country. CR is the safest, most 1^st-worldy country in Central America. Easy & safe to travel and explore with young children, and spouses who like clean sheets.

4- Plants. Yes, we all know I am a complete Tree Nut. CR takes plants to a whole other level of utter variety and coolness.

5- Language. I love speaking Spanish. The Costa Rican accent is the clearest and easiest to understand of any Spanish-speaking country I’ve visited. (Hardest = Spanish spoken by the guys at the Hertz rental car return at the Guadalajara airport 3 years ago. I have no idea WTF those guys were speaking*)

*Adding insult to injury: after asking one of the guys to repeat something for like the 3^rd time, he puts down his pen, looks at me quizzically, and says (in Spanish), “You don’t speak much Spanish, do you?”

Some Cool Costa Rican Mammals

We spent the first half of the week down on the Pacific Coast by Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio, and the second half up in the Monteverde cloud forest. Our first day in Manuel Antonio, we saw several of these guys: the Three-Toed Sloth, Bradypus variegatus.(pic next paragraph, right) 3T-Sloths live up in trees, doing pretty much a whole lot of nothing.

Tangent: Our hotel outside Quepos was a Total Home Run, and I strongly recommend it. The Blue Banyan Inn, about 20 minutes outside of town, has 3 cabinas (ours pictured right), beautiful grounds, setting, views, pool, (fabulous) breakfast included (for 5 of us) for- get this- $100/night. The owners, Jim & Barb, are a wonderful Canadian-American couple who maintain a preserve for injured/orphaned monkeys and have several, non-barky, super-kid-friendly dogs. The place is a home run (view from our cabin’s porch, left.) If you reserve, make sure it’s at the Blue Banyan, and not at the sister hotel, the Mono Azul, which is completely different.

Their diet consists of leaves, a low-energy foodstuff that encourages energy conservation and a minimum of action. They’re notoriously slow-movers, averaging something like 1/6 of one mile per hour as they move through the trees, and they can barely move on the ground. (They can’t walk at all on level ground, but have to sort of pull themselves along.) They sleep, eat, mate and give birth in the trees, most of the time upside-down.

The one thing they do descend to do- about once a week- is defecate, which they do in a whole at the base of a tree, then cover up. Why they descend to poop isn’t clear, but might be some sort of territory-marking behavior.

Here’s a cool thing about the 3T-Sloth: remember back in the Lichen post when I mused on why animals never “lichenized”? The 3T-Sloth is a step in the right direction; in the summer months its coat hairs can acquire a greenish tinge, the result of cyanobacteria growing on its fur, which may actually help to camouflage the Sloth.

There are 4 species of Bradypus, all occurring in Central or South America. B. variegatus is the only one found in CR, but another, more distantly related sloth, the Two-Toed Sloth, Choloepus didactylus, also is native to CR. 2T-Sloths are in many ways similar to 3Ts, but they enjoy a slightly more varied diet, and they’re far more vicious. While 3Ts will often hang off an arm when approached/picked up, a 2T will immediately slash out at anyone so bold as to attempt contact.

Sloths belong to an order of placental mammals called Xenarthra, which evolved in South America, and includes Armadillos and New World Anteaters. (Speaking of Anteaters, we saw those too. Here’s one we saw the same day up in a Palm.) About 80 million years ago, the Sloths split off from the Armadillos/Anteaters. 3 million or so years ago, following the Great American Interchange, all three groups migrated into Central/North America. The Tree Sloths only made it as far North as Mexico, but their cousins the Giant Ground Sloths made it clear up into the US. (We talked about them last Spring when I blogged about Joshua trees, whose leaves have been found in their fossilized dung.)

3-Toed, 2-Toed, whatever. Pretty much the same thing, right? Hardly. 3Ts and 2Ts diverged roughly 35 million years ago, which means that they’re about as closely-related to each other as… you are to this guy: Cebus capucinus, the White-Faced Capuchin Monkey. That’s right- New World Monkeys are the creatures most closely-related to human beings in the Western Hemisphere. They apparently arrived in South America ~35 million years ago as a result of the “rafting event” I described in the Darwin/Days Of Our Lives post and have diverged and evolved into a few dozen species, 4 of which are found in CR. (Click here for video of White-Faced Capuchin stealing Twin A’s hat.)

We saw White-Faced Capuchins all over the place- down in Manuel Antonio as well as up in Monteverde. My favorite sighting was in a Mangrove swamp North of Quepos, where we encountered 2 rival troops threatening and chasing each other (video here.) I first touched on New World Monkeys in passing back in the Color Vision post, where I mentioned that they didn’t share our “Old World Primate” trichromatic vision. The reason is that their ancestors split off from ours before we/they “re-evolved” full color vision. New World primates have kinda-sorta re-evolved color vision on their own, but to different degrees and through different mechanisms. Most of them, including White-Faced Capuchins, have evolved genes for “Blue”, “Green” and “Red” cones, the last 2 of which sit on the X chromosome. But only 1 of the genes- a Red or a Green (but not both)- occurs on any one X chromosome. So all males- who have only 1 X chromosome- are dichromatic, but they’re either Blue-Green, or Blue-Red dichromats- one or the other. Females, who have 2 X chromosomes (just like human females) can have either 2 or all 3 color genes, meaning that roughly ¼ of White-Faced Capuchin females are Blue-Green dichromats, ¼ are Blue-Red dichromats, and ½ are full trichromats. But Howler Monkeys, Alouatta palliate, (pic right = mother w/baby) which we also saw both in Manuel Antonio and up in Monteverde (video here- you gotta hear these guys) have evolved full trichromatic color vision in both males and females, apparently through what appears to have been a chromosomal abnormality (specifically a translocation) which subsequently spread throughout the population, such that the X chromosome of a Howler monkey today contains both a Red and a Green cone gene.

Tangent: It’s fascinating to wonder what other parallel traits New World Primates will or would or could or might evolve in future or alternate conditions. An expanded neocortex? Bipedalism? Tool use?

Nested Tangent: OK see what I mean? We’re only 2 mammals into the vacation and we’re already into all kinds of cool genetics and parallel evolution and such. I am telling you, CR is amazing! Go there!

We also saw Coatis, a Hognosed Skunk, a Kinkajou, and a Common Opposum (the first wild marsupial I’d ever seen) but the last mammal I’ll highlight is this guy- Desmodus rotundus , the Common Vampire Bat. (pic left = D. rotundus hanging from tree branch.)

Tangent: This right here is a reason to hire a guide. I never, ever, ever would’ve noticed these guys on my own, and we walked right under them.

There are 3 species of vampire bat, all native to Central or South America. Though each is monotypic (and therefore in a separate genus) they seem to have evolved from a common blood-sucking ancestor, implying that vampirism (I love that word) evolved but once among bats. Vampire Bats are of course way, way, way, way cool, for several reasons. Pretty much everyone knows they fly around at night, land on horses and cows, bite them and suck their blood. And most (lots?) people know that their saliva contains a mix of anticoagulants to facilitate blood flow. But here are 3 really cool things you probably didn’t know:

First, Vampire Bats have a “minimalist”, low-frequency-only sonar. The bats flying around your neighborhood at night are hunting bugs. As they fly around, they emit a relatively low-frequency sonar to help them “see” the world around them- obstacles, prey, etc. But when they “sight” a bug”, they “lock on” to their target with a more focused/directional, higher-frequency sonar that provides greater definition and clarity of the bug’s position, size, speed and shape, and maintain that high frequency until they catch the bug. In a sense, the high-frequency sonar is the bat’s equivalent of foveal vision in birds. (The high-frequency sonar is a higher-energy effort, so they don’t just blast it all the time…)

But a Vampire Bat has no high-frequency sonar- only low-frequency “scanning” sonar. And this makes sense because the creatures it’s “hunting”- dozing/sleeping horses, cows, goats, etc.- are large, basically motionless objects.

But this brings us to the 2^nd cool thing, which is that Vampire Bats augment their sonar with thermoreceptors on their noses that help them to hone in on veins where blood is flowing close to the skin of their victim. And there’s even an area in the vampire bat brain that looks somewhat similar in anatomy and position to an area of the brains of rattlesnakes which is associated with receiving/processing infrared images.

But the last cool thing is this: Vampire Bats appear to have benefitted greatly from European settlement. Horses and cows in open pastures or barns are far easier targets for a nocturnal blood-sucker than pretty much any native animal in the forest, and as a result it’s thought that Vampire Bat populations are much higher today than in Pre-Columbian times.

Of course there’s another reason why Vampire Bats are so interesting: when you think about them, you can’t help but wonder- do they ever bite humans? Apparently they do, but it’s not common. Our guide, a man in his 40’s who’s lived his whole life in the Quepos area, has never even heard of anyone being bit.

Next Up: Bird Watcher’s Paradise

In Search Of The Blue Piñon – Part 6 of 6

Note: I’m away and offline this week. I’ve set up an auto-post series of this Mexican-Tree-Adventure story in my absence.

Beto and I returned to the chocolate, retraced the rough road to the last junctions, and took the steep uphill fork we’d bypassed earlier, rocking and bouncing up a final kilometer or so to the top of the mesa, and turned North. As we crested the mesa top, the azules disappeared; at no place on the flat mesa top did I see an azul more than ten feet from the rim. The top of the mesa was a pleasant mix of meadows, oak stands, and groves of michoacana, and moments later we arrived at the construction site. We stopped, exited the truck, and Beto greeted the crew- four Mexicans who were apparently living at the site, and a fifth who’d arrived earlier in the day by mule. The crew included the fourth Pintero brother, “Seco”, who was friendly and curious about me, and Tomas, a worker who’d spent several years working in the U.S, and spoke excellent English. Beto and Tomas proudly gave me a tour of the site. (As the tour began, a cynical little voice inside me noted that no matter where you go in Mexico these days, you will eventually wind up on a timeshare tour.)

The half dozen “cabanas” were roughly 80% complete, in the form of adjoining two-story townhouses, each with a small balcony. As we walked through, I noticed sleeping bags in a corner here and there; the workers were boarding onsite.

Tomas and I chatted about his time in the U.S. He’d lived and worked in California for several years, marrying a gringa in the process. Roughly a year ago he was deported; Tomas believes someone reported him. His wife followed him home to Juchipila, but after several weeks declared that life in a small Mexican town wasn’t what she’d signed up for, and she packed up and headed home.

Miguel, Beto, Tomas. It was getting hard to chit-chat in this town without hearing a border-related heartbreak story. Long solo car trips in Mexico involve a lot of time listening to Mexican pop ballads on the radio. Separation, heartbreak, and possible future reunions are overriding themes of such ballads, and when you get out of the car and start talking to people in Mexico, it seems that the same themes keep popping up over and over again.

The cabanas were coming along well, and looked to be attractive, comfortable, and in a in a lovely setting, but it was hard for me to imagine how many tourists would make their way up there. Juchipila isn’t on the way to anyplace special, the drive from Juchipila to Cerro Pinones is long and rough. Other than botanists and botanist wannabes, it’s hard to imagine how many people would plan to travel to and stay on such a remote mesa, which except for the azules, is much like dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of similar mesas in central Mexico. But the brothers Pintero clearly believed in the promise of their project; on the road to the top of the Mesa we’d passed under power lines hanging from widely spaced towers following a straight line from the valley floor up to the Mesa top. Beto had related the difficulties of getting the lines in place, sharing enough detail – including hourly helicopter rates- to allow me to make quick calculation of the costs involved in bringing the power lines to the mesa top- roughly US$100,000.

Beto had one more stop planned for our tour. Back in the chocolate, we retraced the road to where it left the mesa top, and instead of descending, turned off onto a spur continuing South along the plateau. We parked and continued South on foot. The mesa top here was a series of open meadows separated by stands of oak: a sunny contrast to the shaded Michoacana forest surrounding the cabanas. We walked close to the East rim of the mesa, and as we did we we looked over the crowns of azules growing high on the slope immediately below us, and occasionally alongside a small azul growing on the mesa top, but never did an azul grow on the mesa top further than 10 feet from the rim, as if held back from the interior of the mesa by some invisible force.

As we walked, we chatted in a mix of English and Spanish, Beto describing to me how they harvested seeds by clipping cones, and then attempting to stop the cones from rolling hundreds of feet down the sloping side of the mesa after they hit the ground. After ½ a mile, we reached our destination, the Southern point and end of the mesa. The long view was magnificent: range after range, valley after valley (pic right.) But the near view was of greater interest: nearly the entire range of Pinus maximartiezii was laid out below us, map-like, on the flanks of the mesa. We spent a while there. Several times I pointed out a patch of piñon-looking green on the adjacent range to the West, questioning whether they might be azules as well. Beto assured me they were not. The entire range of the Pinon Azul was limited to the modest universe of our one mesa.

For a video panorama from the South point of Cerro Piñones, click here.

We retraced our path to the chocolate, and started the drive down. On the long, slow ride back to Juchipila, our conversation drifted away from trees and ranged from children to Juchipila gossip to Spanish grammar to beer. Beto mentioned that he’d be drinking some that night, since this day was his birthday. His 34^th.

Yet again, I was amazed. Beto had taken a whole day to guide a stranger who’d showed up the night before all over the mesa, and on his birthday no less. I shared my surprise at his graciousness and asked him to let me buy the beer for his party. He declined gently, saying, “No, my friends will buy it. Don’t worry about it. I know how it is, when you go on vacation, and you really want to see something, how tough it is if you don’t get to see it…”

And there it was. The real surprise of my adventure wasn’t the beauty of the azules or flavor of the nuts- though these had exceeded my greatest expectations. The real surprise was that a flaky American speaking lousy Spanish could show up in a remote Mexican town, a town in which people knew America, and had worked and experienced all sorts of challenges and discrimination and heartbreak there, and that a dozen people and two families would stop everything on a moment’s notice and assemble a plan and a vehicle and a guide and resources to help that gringo realize his vacation dream for no payment but the knowledge of a favor done, and that the guide would do so on his birthday no less.

We returned to Juchipila, had lunch, stopped by the copy shop to collect my new copy of Perry’s The Pines of Mexico and Central America (total copying cost: US$11.00) and finally returned to Moro’s house, where Beto generously augmented my collected seeds with a bagful of “float-tested” seeds, (Good seeds sink in water) before bidding me “Que le vaya bien”.

Back in the luxury of my rental car, once again racing the sun across the high plateau, I thought about how so much of Mexican history has been defined by foreigners coming on hunts for treasure. Cortez, Maximilian, Walker- all sought treasures of one sort or another, with results ranging from spectacular to disastrous. The treasure I came for- a bag of pine nuts- was on the passenger seat next to me. The treasure I didn’t expect- help, guidance and friendship extended to a stranger- I’m reminded of whenever I walk into my kitchen at home, and see the Martinez seedlings growing on the window sill, their soft bluish needles lit up in the afternoon sun. (pic left = Twin B with 3 year-old seedling.)

In Search Of The Blue Piñon – Part 5 of 6

Note: I’m away and offline this week. I’ve set up an auto-post series of this Mexican-Tree-Adventure story in my absence.

The next morning, after a breakfast of cookies and bottled water, I left the hotel to meet Beto. Checking out of a Mexican hotel is no big deal- they’re typically cash, pay-in-advance, but leaving before sunup usually means waking the proprietor to unlock the door.

I parked in front of Moro’s house, having paid careful attention to landmarks the night before, and as instructed, rapped on Beto’s window, calling out, “¿Oye Beto, ya estas despertado?”

“Si, momentito…” came the answer.

Minutes later we were in the pickup, driving through the darkened streets of Juchipila. At the South end of town we stopped at the Pemex station to fill the tank, which was almost the only thing anyone in Juchipila let me pay for during my entire time there. Back in the truck we headed back toward the center, then headed West off the main street onto an unmarked dirt road. This was apparently the road to Pueblo Viejo; I never would have located it without asking. Almost immediately the road made a very rough double crossing of the almost-dry Juchipila River, then turned to the Southwest and began gently climbing up the West side of the valley. By this time it was light enough to see, and the road was a mess. Supposedly being prepared for its inaugural paving in the coming year, the road was an obstacle course of holes, sand-traps, and piles of gravel. Passage would have been challenging in my rental car.

After about three kilometers, we turned onto a much smoother dirt road which was absent from my topographical map and headed due West toward the Sierra Modrones. The fields around us were open range, interspersed with patches of low, scrubby trees, mainly oaks. After another kilometer or so we passed a home on the left, and the grade of the road’s incline increased. We turned through a tight switchback to the left, approached a second switchback when Beto stopped the pickup, got out and locked the front hubs. Back in the cab, Beto shifted into the four-wheel-drive-low gears, rounded the switchback, and the real drive began.

The Sierra Modrones are not conducive to road-building. Their flanks are steep, rugged, rocky and without significant foothills. When the Pintero brothers decided to build a road to the top, they used a bulldozer to cut the easiest path up they could come up with, but the road is, in a word, tortuous. I live in Utah, own a high-clearance four-wheel-drive vehicle, and have driven it on many difficult jeep trails. The road up Cerro Piñones is about as rough as the Flint Trail in the Maze section of Canyonlands National Park, only much longer- about 18 kilometers.

Our pickup truck was a chocolate, the Mexican slang for a motor vehicle brought down from the U.S. Beto had no idea why such vehicles were called chocolates. Our chocolate, a Ford from the early ‘90s, had seen a lot of use, apparently much of it on roads such as this. The passenger seatback was broken, tilting back at a forty-five degree angle, forcing me either to crouch forward, elbows on knees, or lie back as if in a dentist’s chair. The tires were worn down to the point where I wouldn’t have driven them on my own vehicle for a weekend away in Sun Valley, but Beto had a relaxed confidence in both his road and his chocolate. Like most Mexican drivers, Beto didn’t use a seatbelt, and not wanting to look like a pollo, neither did I.

As we slowly climbed in the dawn light, the vegetation gradually changed from low scrub to man-high bushes and soon the first real trees appeared- some type of live scrub oak (pic right) that grew up to 15 or 20 feet in height. Twenty minutes or so later, by which time we’d climbed maybe 1,200 – 1,500 feet above the valley floor, and emerged into the morning sunlight, we encountered the first pine trees, Pinus lumholzi, a relatively rare pine endemic to Mexico easily identified by its “pendant” needles. (pic left) Pines have three basic types of needles: pendant, which simply hang pretty much straight down with gravity, erect, where the needles and fascicles jut out directly from the branch in all directions, and drooping, where the needles start out in all directions like erect needles, but due to their length, end up sort of well, drooping, back down toward the ground. In the US, nearly all naturally occurring pines have erect needles, but in Mexico, all three types occur, and are often a useful identification guide. (I went into the likely evolutionary drivers behind drooping and pendant needles in this post.) Shortly after breaking into the pines we stopped at a spring gushing out of the wall of the road-cut, where Beto filled a large jug (pic below right.)

As we continued the slow bumpy climb, the views below and behind us unfolded and expanded into a spectacular vista: the long Juchipila river valley below us, extended all the down past Moyahua, and endless rows of dry, rugged mountains and plateaus beyond.

Eventually we wound our way up to the crest of the range, at about 8,000 feet. Shortly before we crested, we encountered our second pine, Michoacana Pine, Pinus michoacana, one of the most common pines in central Mexico (pic left = Michoacana pines in Michoacan), and one with which I was already familiar. Michoacana is a tall, stately pine, growing in widely-spaced groves in high, dry forests. It’s very reminiscent of Ponderosa pine with one glaring exception: it’s bright green, 8-10” long drooping needles, which give it an almost alien appearance. Up on the crest, the road turned to the South, leveled out, improved, and as we rolled along at nearly 40 kph, the cool, shady forest of tall Michoacanas (pic right) reminded me of the Ponderosa forests hugging the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Having “summited”, I thought that our rough-riding had ended, but I was wrong. After a few short minutes, the ridge was broken by a deep notch, and we switchbacked down several hundred feet on again-rough road. Beto pointed out a small ravine at the bottom which he and his brothers hoped to construct a bridge across in the near future, shortening the route by a kilometer. South of the notch, we climbed back up toward the summit ridge. About half-way back up to the ridge, the road forked. We took the left and down fork, and Beto promised me we were almost there.

As we descended this last stretch, three things came into view. The first was a surprise: power lines, on high transmission towers, running straight up the mountainside from the valley floor. Beto explained that the Pinteros had had these brought up for the cabanas, which we’d visit later. The second was the tiny village of Pueblo Viejo, visible at last at the base of the range, seeming straight below. And the last of the three was a small tree, maybe 7 feet tall, on the passenger side of the road. A small pine in a familiar shape- the familiar shape of a piñon. It stood out on the hillside by the color of it’s needles- a soft, lighter green that the surrounding trees and shrubs, almost bluish. Beto rolled to a stop and I reached out through the open window and finally touched the Blue Piñon.

Several of the descriptions I’d read had mentioned the bluish color, but none had mentioned the feel of the needles. Light, soft and delicate, almost feathery, and completely unlike the stiff needles of the piñons I knew back home. The needles, bundled to their fascicles in sets of five, were two-and-a-half inches long, with a green surface and a lighter, almost blue, underside.

We drove on another five minutes, blue piñons appearing left and right, increasing in height, until the road ended on a flat open clearing about fifty feet across. Beto smiled, and said, almost apologetically, “Now we have to walk.” I nearly laughed at his tone- I was dying to get out of the truck and stretch my legs. The clearing we’d parked in sat on a flattish bench that continued to along the side of the mountain to the North, and Beto led the way along a faint trail into the woodland that followed this bench. Almost immediately we were among larger, full-grown azules. As the woodland grew more sense, the dry grasses underfoot gave way to a bed of dead needles. Fallen cones were everywhere, and on closer inspection they weren’t fallen, but rather cut, left over form past seed harvests. Many of the trees held immature green cones, which were even more remarkable: three or four pounds in weight and a rich dark green color, they appeared a cross between a green pineapple and a hand grenade. We inspected several, and Beto showed me how to identify those that would have harvest-ready seeds the following season. Such cones bore a diamond-lattice pattern of faint brown lines highlighting where the scales would emerge and break open the following year.

As we walked I picked up what appeared to be an extraordinarily large cone, thinking to keep it as a souvenir. I soon discarded it in favor of a larger one, which in turn I discarded for a yet larger cone moments later. Beto shook his head, “Leave it. I’ll find you a big one.”

The tactile beauty of the needles extended even into death. Usually when sitting down on the floor of a pine forest, one has to seat oneself a bit gingerly to avoid an errant needle or two poking upward through the seat of the pants and stabbing one in the butt. But in a Martinez woodland- or rather in the Martinez woodland- the needles are so soft and light that one can carelessly sit or lie down almost anywhere free of underbrush.

As I poked, picked, photographed and sniffed the bark on several large trees, Beto stepped off a few paces and fiddled with a bandage and a medicinal-looking bottle. When we rejoined a few minutes later I asked him if he was OK and learned the story of the armpit ailment- a spider bite. Type unidentified, but apparently nasty enough that Beto was taking the wound seriously and cleaning it regularly.

For the next two hours Beto led me on a guided tour of the azules on his family’s property. We followed the faint winding path as a it contoured along the side of the range, maintaining for the most part a comfortably level grade. As we hiked, occasional breezes would brush the trees, and as the long needles were rocked by the wind they would appear to shift back and forth from bluish-green to traditional pine-green and back again, as the breeze exposed the underside of the needles.

At one point the trail lead into a deep broad ravine with a small spring. The azules were absent from the heart of the ravine which was instead dominated by oaks reaching up more than 50 feet. The feel of this lush, humid grove seemed more northern California than anything I’d have associated with Southern Zacatecas. Leaving the ravine and re-entering the azules woodland, Beto stopped and picked up a whopper of a cone. “This is a big cone,” he said, and it was. I popped it into my pack.

On our return hike back toward the chocolate, Beto asked me if I wanted to see the biggest azules on his family’s property. I eagerly agreed and we left the trail, scrambling up the steep hill. Beto’s footing was surer than mine, and while he easily hiked up the hillside, I slid a bit on the steep needle-covered slope, catching myself once or twice with my hands. Beto led up into a shallow ravine , in the center of which, growing out of the steep hillside, were half a dozen or so azules considerably bigger than any I’d seen previously. With trunks over 2 feet in diameter at the base, they jutted out of the hillside at an almost 45 degree angle for several feet before turning skyward. we sat down to rest on a giant bench-like root between 2 of them. At our feet were several cones, which we inspected, finding and shaking out a number of seeds. As I shook, picked and collected several dozen seeds, Beto cracked open seed after seed between 2 rocks, and together we sat in the shade of the giant azules, snacking on Martinez nuts. I realized happily at that moment that my quest was a success beyond my wildest hopes.

One of the things I didn’t find mentioned in any of the writings I’d found on martinezii, and something that didn’t occur to me until much later was the issue of a dispersal agent. Martinezii seeds are far and away the most difficult edible pine nut to open. Later, at home in the U.S., I experimented on a number of smuggled nuts with several opening tools. Needle-nosed pliers, a sure bet with monophyla or edulis nuts, require 2 hands to crack the shell, and when they do, invariably destroy the nut. Vice grips crack the shell much more readily, but similarly pulverize the seed. A nutcracker? Not even close. I didn’t try teeth. A hammer on a cement step was the most effective method, but required practice and care.

Most piñon seeds are spread by corvids, who as I mentioned earlier, value the nuts for food. But it seemed inconceivable to me that any scrub or piñon jay, or any other bird short of (possibly) a large raptor could generate the force to crack a Martinez shell. Maybe the simple reason why pinus maximartinezii grows on only one mountain is that no bird ever bothered to carry seeds to the next hill over? It’s possible that squirrels or some other ground-bound critter can crack the shell, and if so, such critters would be unlikely to shuttle seeds across the semi-desert valleys to the next range East or West, though one might reasonably expect the species to grow further northward along the range.

Ledig’s paper mentioned one other possible explanation for the strange genetic history of Pinus maximartinezii:

The possibility cannot be discounted that maxipiñon is a recent species. It is not difficult to imagine that agriculturists capable of breeding Maize from a weedy grass in a few thousand years could opportunistically select and propagate a large-seeded piñon. The Mayans apparently conserved and even introduced useful tree species into their walled selvas in the Yucatan, and elsewhere in Mexico, cherry, crabapple and leucaena were selectively promoted.

The idea wasn’t expanded upon, or even mentioned further in the paper. (pic right = cones in tree.)Just three brief sentences, barely a whiff of an idea. But when I read it, the idea was of course immediately appealing, a vision of sophisticated ancient cultivators leaving behind a fantastic botanical legacy. And here on the mountain the idea was still more appealing, suggesting an explanation for many of the tree’s mysteries: the huge cones, the giant, super-nutritious nuts and the apparent lack of an effective dispersal agent coupled with its strange genetic history. Later, after I’d returned home, I emailed Ledig, asking if he or anyone else he knew of had explored the idea further. He replied:

“With regard to my speculation on incipient domestication of maxipinyon, I know of no follow-ups. DNA evidence might help, but the best evidence would be archeological. Ruins north of Cerro Pinones have been excavated, and I asked one of those involved in the digs about the presence of pinyon seeds or shells. The answer was that no one had looked, but my inquiry was, perhaps, too informal and not directed to the appropriate source.”

When I read this my thoughts returned to Cerro Las Ventanas, site of the not-yet-thoroughly-excavated ruins Miguel pointed out from his roof at dusk that first night in Juchipila. The Blue Piñon might yet have a story to tell.