The story of the seven sons

It’s noon and we are sitting on our small porch at Savegre Hotel after a full morning of birding which began at 5 am. We are being serenaded by a Clay Colored Thrush, which reminded Chris to tell the story of our introduction to this bird.

 When we arrived at San Jose Airport, we were picked up by Alex to be taken to Bougainvillea Hotel. He was great and his English was very good but with a heavy accent, and he was enthusiastically telling us about the Clay Colored Thrush and its significance as the national bird of Costa Rica. 

It had obviously been a long day of travel for us, so mostly we smiled and nodded and didn’t engage too much in conversation. He repeated himself several times about this bird having “seven sons.” As we think back, maybe he was expecting more of a response from us? Or maybe he realized neither of us was grasping what he was saying due to the accent? As it turns out, this bird has seven SONGS, as opposed to seven sons.

The next day after we had some rest and started out on our morning birding alone, Chris casually mentions to Mike, “Did you think Alex was saying ‘sons’ until you realized it was ‘songs’?” Mike indeed was hearing sons at first as well, so at least it was not just Chris with her loss of hearing, and we had a good laugh about what went through both of our heads until we realized it was songs. Mike’s thought process went to The Seven Sisters, the constellation, and Chris’s thought process went to a religious significance of sons as opposed to daughters.

This bird sings A LOT! Now when we are out birding we shrug and say there he goes with one of his sons again. And Chris has a,so decided he’s like one of those people that talks so much you can’t get a word in edgewise- because sometimes that’s all we can hear drowning out the other bird calls.

Also, with all the beautiful, bright, colorful birds here, we question their selection of the Clay Colored Thrush as national bird, but that’s just us.