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Laugh, guaco, laugh June 4, 2017

June 3, 2017

Its name doesn’t have the right number of syllables to fit into the kookaburra song, but Costa Rica has its own laughing bird: the laughing falcon (Herpetotheres cachinnans). Even if you’re as bad at imitating bird calls as I am, the guaco is safe to mimic, because it produces everything from a quiet chuckle to evil-genius maniacal laughter, with the gwa-co call that gives it its Spanish name somewhere in the middle.

A husband and wife who were here earlier in the week said they were really hoping to find a guaco, because it was “her” bird: she’s Japanese and the first to syllables of her name are gwa-co, although I presume it’s spelled differently. Unfortunately, they were always in the wrong place at the wrong time to find one, even though we’d heard one several times in the mornings.

This morning, we actually saw one, and because it was so overcast, I was able to take some halfway decent photos, although I still needed to adjust the lighting quite a bit. Allow me to present… the guaco!