AN ORNITHOLOGIST IN GUANACASTE, COSTA RICA 



By ALEXANDER WETMORE 



Assistant Secretary, Smithsonian Institution 



With the first rays of the sun on the morning of Columbus Day, 

 1940, I was awakened by a soft flow of Spanish to see from my 

 stateroom window the bay and shore of Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. 

 One of the most interesting countries of Central America was now 

 before me. Officials charged with landing formalities received me 

 courteously as the guest of their government and presently, in com- 

 pany with Dr. Juvenal Valerio Rodriguez, Director of the Museo 

 Nacional, who had come to meet me, I was on the train traveling up 

 the beautiful valley of the Rio Reventazon. San Jose, the capital 

 city, located near the western edge of the central plateau, holds many 

 attractions so that a week here passed rapidly and pleasantly, occupied 

 fully with meeting scientist-colleagues, with visits to officials of the 

 government, and with examination of the important collections in the 

 Museo Nacional. There was time also for an excursion to an interest- 

 ing fossil deposit at San Ramon. 



Early on the morning of October 19, in company with Dr. Valerio 

 and Carlos Aguilar (the latter in charge of the zoological collections 

 in the museum), I was on the Taca plane en route for the region in 

 northwestern Costa Rica where my work with birds in the field was 

 to begin. From the airplane I saw most of the Nicoya Peninsula in 

 passing as we landed at several towns — Nicoya, Santa Cruz, and Paso 

 Tempisque — before coming down finally at Liberia, capital town of 

 the Province of Guanacaste, where my headquarters were to be. 



Guanacaste is a land completely apart from the elevated, thickly 

 populated tableland of central Costa Rica. Roads are primitive so that 

 travel for a good part of the year is by oxcart and horse. Only during 

 the dry season are the rough trails passable for trucks, and then only 

 through skillful driving. The land is divided in great haciendas with 

 cattle raising as the principal industry, and settlement is restricted to 

 scattered, small towns. Along the valley of the Rio Tempisque and in 

 limited sections elsewhere there are small farms of corn, beans, and 

 rice, but over vast sections there is only scrub forest and pasture 

 land traversed by cattle trails where houses have been built only at 

 wide intervals. 



To this region the airplane service from San Jose is truly a god- 

 send. As our trimotored plane dropped down into the little landing 



