Blue-crowned Motmot, Lodge at Pico Bonito, Honduras

The Motmots of Central America are among the most colorful of birds in a region renowned for colorful birds. There are several species to add interest. They are, according to WiKi, relatives of the Kingfishers, Bee-eaters, and Rollers, all colorful birds in their own right, and like their kin, nest in holes and tunnels in steep banks. They perch low in the canopy, and except for the Turquoise-browed, which apparently favors more open country, are difficult to photograph in the perpetual half-light under the dense foliage. This shot was digiscoped…taken through the 30x wide-field eyepiece on a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope, with a small Canon s120 advanced Point and Shoot camera. The combination gave me the equivalent of about an 850mm lens on a full-frame digital camera. The low light levels pushed the camera to its limits, but I am happy to have a record of this amazing bird.

While the ZEISS VICTORY SF Experience hiked through the rainforest looking for birds like the Motmot, the subject of how such spectacuarly strange birds “evolved” came up. Looking at Motmot’s for instance, there are many features of structure and plumage that are difficult to explain from a “survival of the fittest” stand point. If you assume that every feature of the creature has to have provided evolutionary advantage, then you soon get lost in rambling speculation, since there is often no obvious advantage to such intricate design. At one point I simply laughed and said, ” I am not looking for evolutionary advantage. I take each feature as evidence of design.” You can believe that caused a dead silence in the group. In truth they might have felt pity for me…since I was obviously one of those backward fork who what to see intelligent design in nature…a creative intelligence responsible for the creatures we see. Imagine if I had gotten as far as saying a “loving intelligence” who “loves” the Motmot and all creatures into existence. Because of course that is what I believe. It makes me the odd-man-out in the birding circles that I frequent, but that is okay. Every bird I see is another reason to give thanks to the Creator…to celebrate both creation and love. It makes birding, like every aspect of a life lived in the spirit, an act of worship…both the joyful, song-filled, revitalizing kind of Sunday worship, and the deep meditative worship of reflection. I only wish I could share more of that worship with my fellow birders. And of course, I am secretly attributing the joy they feel in the presence of birds to the movement of the spirit in them. It costs them nothing and it increases my pleasure in what we are doing together. Happy Sunday. And may something as wonderful as a Motmot in the rainforest enrich your day.