Alexander Skutch Remembered
The legendary ornithologist Dr. Alexander Skutch died last week just short of his 100th birthday. Skutch was a pioneer of birding in Costa Rica. Producing more than 40 books, many the best guides on birds of Costa Rica, Skutch had been writing scholarly papers and books as well as more popular works for more than 60 years.
Dr. Skutch watched, with concern, the impact of the changing landscape on wildlife in Costa Rica and especially its birdlife. He made his home in a small 76 hectare bird sanctuary he created - Los Cusingos - near
San Isidro de El general, south of San Jose, Costa Rica's capital. He had identified more than 300 bird species at Los Cusingos. Now it is an isolated piece of forest in a deforestated area of sugar cane and coffee production.
Due to concerns about the future fate of his forest after his death, Skutch had handed his land over to the Tropical Science Center in the early 90s with the agreement he could continue to live on the property. Up until his 90's, Skutch lived there, without electricity nor a telephone.
In 1997 Richard Garrigues visited Alexander Skutch and the following excerpts are from an informal interview. To read the full interview click here. Also for more information about birding in Costa Rica, visit Richard's website.
R.G.: Dr. Skutch, you have a degree in botany and you originally came to the neotropics to study bananas, how is it then that you became so interested in birds?
A.S.: Because that time I came to a small research station that the United Fruit Company had in the northwestern corner of Panama, and while I was sitting at my work table inside a very simple laboratory, a hummingbird built her nest in a shrub right in front of my window and I became interested in watching that.
That was in December. By the time March and April came along, birds were nesting all around in the garden of the house I occupied and I became so interested in those birds--they were so different from any birds I had ever seen in Maryland where I grew up. When I got back to the States I looked up what was known about those tropical American birds. Practically all had been identified and the ranges had been worked out, but scarcely anything was known about how they lived, about the nests they built, and their whole behavior was practically unknown. So I became increasingly interested in the birds and when I finished my commitments in botany, then I turned to the birds.
R.G.: I don't suppose you have any favorite birds after all these years?
A.S.: I've written a little article about that. It was published in Bird Watcher's Digest. I have many favorite birds, but I don't like all birds equally. I like the birds that get along well with other birds--which excludes the hawks. To have raptors on a small reserve like this is disastrous, so we try to keep the hawks out.
Shirley Shaw: How do you do that?
A.S.: With a gun.
But I must say we haven't been too successful, though.
Except there's one hawk that we love, the Laughing Falcon. Because the Laughing Falcon subsists almost wholly upon snakes. For four years we had them nesting in these African Oil Palms, one there on that side of the house and one on this side. We could never reach the nests to look into them, they were so high. As far as I could tell they didn't raise any young, but we counted the snakes the parents brought to them. We counted some 60 because every time the male would come with a snake he would call his mate, call her out of the nest if she was inside, and she would perch near him in some exposed position high up in the tree and then they would sing a duet. He would call, "Wah-co, wah-co, wah-co," and she would answer, "Yeow, yeow." And that would go on for as much as ten minutes! Then she would take the snake and examine the head end of the snake to see if her mate had properly bitten off the head. And then she'd either eat it or take it back to the nest and share it with her nestling.
R.G.: What was it about Costa Rica back in 1935 that made you decide to come here?
A.S.: Well, I was kicked out of Guatemala. [laughter]
No, I scarcely knew Costa Rica at that time. I had friends in Guatemala and I'd spent over two years in Guatemala studying birds and collecting plants, and I had the idea I wanted to stay there. I put in an application for residence status in the government office in Guatemala City. They took my petition and I gave them some data and they said come back after a while and we'd see what the decision was.
So, I spent a couple of months on the farm of a friend in a coffee plantation. When I went back to the government office, I said, "What have you done about my application for residence?" Nobody seemed to know anything about it. I think they were waiting for a handout and I wasn't prepared to give them one. So I came to Costa Rica--the best thing I ever did in my life!
To read the full interview click here. Also for more information about birding in Costa Rica, visit Richard's website.
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