A pale-billed woodpecker banging his head against a tree on the trocha up from San Luis. This was a good day for birds-- it was the same day that I caught the swallowtail kite in its rumpus with the kiskadee high above the dirt road into Monteverde. It is hard to re-learn an entire country's bird species; I had spent twenty one years learning the bird songs of the southeast United States, and coming into Costa Rica, all the calls were foreign and the plumage unfamiliar. But as I struggled to adjust my search image to the new terrain and to learn the voices of the native species, I was careful to retain perspective: it is easier than learning Spanish.