Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica: #7 Blue-diademed Motmot

Everybody likes a motmot. Brightly coloured, with distinctive racquet-shaped tails, motmots are easily recognisable birds. It helps that they are ambush hunters that can perch out in the open to get a better view of potential prey, which may be an unfortunate passing butterfly or small reptile. While motmots can sit in the same place for several hours, they can also be tempted out by an offer of free food and often visit fruit feeding stations set up by cafes and hotels - which in turn lure in birders and wildlife photographers. 

The Blue-diademed Motmot, known locally as Lesson's Motmot, is the most common and visible Costa Rican motmot, although it is absent from the Caribbean foothills and lowlands in the north and east of the country. Being widespread in the Central Valley, Costa Rica's main population centre as well as being the start and finish of almost all birding trips, it should have been no trouble to locate on our recent trip. But we arrived at San Jose airport in total darkness, and left the Central Valley before light the following morning, so it wasn't until we returned almost two weeks later that we were able to 'bag' the motmot.

And it wasn't difficult to find. Our hotel (Villa San Ignacio, Alajuela - website here) has extensive grounds that include a small remnant of the rainforest that originally covered this part of the Central Valley. A trail gives access to guests, and it was while walking along this that we spotted the motmot perched high in a tree. As I was about to press the camera shutter the bird flew: don't you just hate it when birds do that? It's almost as if they have a 'sixth sense' that knows when a lens is pointing their way. Fortunately, we were able to catch up with another at the hotel's feeding station nearby.

Blue-diademed (or Lesson's) Motmot - Villa San Ignacio, Alajuela

As well as their sensational colour scheme, the feature that really distinguish most motmots is the weird tail. Two central feathers grow longer than the rest; the bird then preens away the middle sections to leave the feather-heads in place. These swing back and forth while the bird is perching, the racquet-tips emphasising the movements. This display does not appear to have a courtship function - even though both sexes of motmots do it - but is more likely to act as a way of deterring predators, the idea being that the motmot is showing that it knows that a predator is there and suggesting to the predator that an attack would not be worth its while. Well, that's the theory anyway, according to Murphy (2006). (A link to the abstract is here but the main article sits behind a paywall.) 

Like a couple of the other birds in my Top Ten, the Blue-diademed Motmot has attracted the attention of the taxonomists. When I first travelled to the Neotropics in 1999, a species known as the Blue-crowned Motmot extended over much of Central and South America - including the islands of Trindad and Tobago which I was then visiting. This has now been split into a number of new species, each with a more restricted distribution. Our Blue-diademed Motmot is one of these, found in Central America between western Panama and eastern Mexico. Heading south, it is replaced by the Whooping Motmot (which sounds fun) in Colombia and western Ecuador (the Choco region). Going down into South America you find another two similar-looking species - the Highland Motmot along the Andes mountain chain and the Amazonian Motmot on the eastern side of the Andes. Trinidad and Tobago now has its own motmot - the Trinidad Motmot - which looks very much like its Blue-diademed cousin, but means that I get an extra motmot "tick".

The key point is that none of this taxonomic wrangling alters the fact that motmots are simply stunning birds. And there are more to consider. Costa Rica contains another five species, one of which was a serious contender for my Top Ten list - the Turquoise-browed Motmot (below).

Turquoise-browed Motmot - Punta Morales, Costa Rica

You might reasonably argue that there is little difference between a 'blue diadem' and a 'turquoise brow'. But if you see the bird in good light, the flash of colour above the eye of the Turquoise-browed Motmot is really something special. It seems to almost shine with its own illumation. Turquoise-browed Motmots have a lighter body colour - somewhere between buff and a dull orange - and longer bare tail shafts than Blue-diademed (compare the photos above). Within Costa Rica, they are only found in the drier forests of the north Pacific lowlands, although their global range extends north through Nicaragua to Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. We caught up with the one pictured above near the coastal salt pans of Punta Morales, a place teeming with waders, terns, skimmers and other waterbirds. Not many birders come this way - but they certainly should. Finding places like this was one of the many advantages of having a locally-based guide, in our case the excellent Patrick O'Donnell - link to his website here.

But in the end, I decided to stick with the Blue-diademed Motmot for my list. It's a stunning bird that is easily seen and will likely feature on the camera rolls of even non-birdy visitors to Costa Rica. If that can draw more people into the magic that is Neotropical birdwatching then it's surely a good thing.