Yigüirro

Day 4

May 28, 2013

The national bird of Costa Rica is the yigüirro. Amazingly, of the over 800 species of beautiful birds in Costa Rica, the national bird is one that is a dull brown.  As the story goes, God ran out of colors when he was making birds, thus the yigüirro is colorless. However, the yigüirro was given a wonderful gift—the gift of beautiful song. Legend has it that la yigüirro announces the winter season, i.e. rainy season, with song, as well as the rain that comes daily to many parts of the country.

While we were in La Fortuna, we saw many beautiful birds—hummingbirds, flycatchers, toucans, and others I am not able to name. A classmate and I saw these two brown birds. She commented that they looked like they belonged in Oklahoma, not here in the land of bright colors.

Once we heard the story about the yigüirro, we felt bad. That brings to mind the popular proverb we all know—don’t judge a book by its cover.

From an education standpoint, particularly special education, this also is analogous to the fact that all students (and all individuals) have gifts to share, even though they may not always be obvious. Please take the time to recognize what gift(s) each person you encounter has to offer; you never know what you may miss otherwise.