I fell in love with my living arrangements in Manuel Antonio Costa Rica. I sat out on my balcony, in my hammock, watching all the birds, sloths and monkeys all day and night long. There were tons of birds from hummingbirds to toucans and parrots. The sloths were there in the same trees almost every single day. They moved slow but they sure moved around a lot and got in some crazy positions. There were white faced monkeys, howler monkeys and the little tiny endangered titi or spider monkeys to watch everyday.
The monkeys had organized wars. I watched for hours and sometimes days as these wars unfolded. The white faced usually started the wars but sometimes the howlers started them too. First they would decide to cooperate with each other and a large troop of them would gather. They would go around the area where they were going to fight and mark the area with their scent and they would also make a big deal out of breaking branches. They always made very loud screeching noises when they broke the branches off. They would get all excited doing this. Then they would break up into several smaller groups and hide quietly in the trees while one group went out and drove spider monkeys into the trap they had set up. The group would harass the spider monkeys and then chase them toward where the other monkeys were hiding in the trees. When the spider monkeys finally were driven into the area where the trap was then all the white faced monkeys would attack from different directions and try to make the troop of spider monkeys split up into smaller groups. They seemed to be particularly interested in separating out a single mother spider monkey with a young baby. Then they would all chase that singled out mother. The spider monkeys were smaller and faster than the big white faced ones but because the white faced attacked from all directions they would sometimes be able to corner a spider money or just her baby. If they could they would grab the victim and kill it then make a big deal of screaming and jumping around loudly in the trees before they would tear the smaller monkey up and eat it. The spider monkeys would jump out of the trees to escape. I saw them jump down from really high in the trees and land with a tumble uninjured and just run over to a different tree and continue to escape. Sometimes the jump down to the ground injured them and that would be the end as the white faced would close in on the injured monkey and kill it. The howlers did this too to both the white faced and the titi monkeys. The white faced did it to the titis and also to other troops of white faced monkeys that they were at constant war with. It was fascinating to watch all of this activity from my hammock. The monkeys would also attack sloths with babies to try to eat the babies but the sloths were stinky dirty parasite covered animals that the monkeys usually stayed away from unless there was a very young baby sloth involved.
The monkeys also ate birds and their eggs. If they found a bird's nest with either eggs or baby birds in it that was the end of them as the monkeys ate both the eggs and the babies. I watched a troop of spider monkeys find a hummingbird's nest and when the mother hummer came back to find her nest empty she came down in my face screaming at me from about two inches in front of my eyes. I was terrified that she was going to peck my eyes out. She could have easily done that because hummingbirds are so much faster than I am. But she just screamed at me for a few minutes and then flew back to her nest and started to repair it for another brood.
I saw a huge boa constrictor moving through the trees one night. It was moving very fast for a snake around fifteen feet long. They look so slow but this one was fast. I don't know where it was going but it was in a hurry. One boa lived under the pool of our condos. It had been there for years and was growing quickly according to the other people living at the condos. We sometimes found snakes dead or dying in the swimming pool in the mornings. I liked early morning swims and I had to learn to check the pool for snakes before I jumped in. The pool chemicals usually killed the snakes pretty quickly. Most of the snakes we found in the pool were fer d'lances and sometimes smaller bushmasters. The larger bushmasters were able to get out of the pool but the smaller ones got trapped in the toxic to them water.
Lots of birds migrated to Costa Rica from North America. There were flycatchers, tanagers, warblers, hawks, vultures, hummingbirds, gulls, frigates, toucans, trogons and hundreds more different birds to watch. Costa Rica has almost nine hundred different birds to see in the country. Wiki has a good list with pictures if you want to see which birds there were. My favorites were the mot mots. They had their long tail feathers with little round balls on the end that they flicked around. There were not a lot of them but when I saw them I always loved them. I don't know what all the vultures lived on but there were hundreds of them flying around all day circling in the air currents or sometimes just sitting in the trees out in front of my hammock.
When I first got to Costa Rica I saw scarlet macaws but they disappeared from the area where I lived shortly after I arrived. They were the first birds to disappear. By the time I left Costa Rica several years later almost all the birds had been displaced by development. First it was the scarlet macaws to go then the toucans went, then the rest of the parrots. The song birds started to thin out next and the hummingbirds became less common also. I was watching the change and it really upset me to see so many species of birds being lost so quickly for a few hotels for tourists. Costa Rica went from a green tropical jungle to a concrete jungle so fast I was amazed at the transformation. The worst part is that the reason all the tourists wanted to come here was for all the birds and animals and the development to cater to the tourists was ruining what the tourists came for. It was ironic but sad. Not just the birds were disappearing, so were the monkeys and snakes and all the other animals like the sloths and tapirs and other small mammals and reptiles. Trees were being cut down so fast that the monkeys could no longer get to and from their feeding grounds so they were dying off also. The noise from all the construction was also driving away the birds and animals. Now all the hotels and condos are built up but the tourists are starting to go elsewhere where there are still animals and birds.
The same thing was happening in the oceans around Quepos and Manuel Antonio. Costa Rica allows long line fishing and that method of fishing kills everything in the water not just the target fish. Turtles and bill fish are killed in the long lines along with the target mahi mahis. Sharks have almost been totally killed off in the waters around Costa Rica by long liners finning them. The fishermen cut of the shark's fins and throw the rest of the carcass back in the water still alive to die. I saw the fishing decline so fast as more and more long liners started to fish that it was disgusting me and making me not want to eat any more fish. The government of Costa Rica tells the world that they care and are very green but the truth is that they are not at all green or doing anything to save the wildlife and fish in the area. They tell the world that there is no long lining going on when it is common place there. It is all just government propaganda to lure tourists into the country. In a few more years there won't be any tourists because there will be nothing left to see.
The animals weren't the only ones waging war. My condo association broke out in an all out war also. My ideal living situation turned into a war zone and I hated it.
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