Monteverde

 Yesterday was largely a travel day: bird walk before breakfast, boat / car ride to flight to San Jose and then into our travel van for the drive up to Monteverde. We stopped for lunch at a small family restaurant in San Ramon that serves traditional Costa Rican food. Our trip leader, Jimmy, found the place some years ago when he was looking for quetzals in the mountains above the town. The family was charming, the food was delicious. Their garden hosted many beautiful birds. When we arrived in Monteverde we visited a hummingbird garden. It was late in the afternoon, so there was a certain desperation to the 7 different species of hummingbirds vying for the last meal of the day.  Our last activity of the day was a presentation about conservation, reforestation and Three-wattled Bellbird studies in the Monteverde area.

Today was a packed day: a pre-dawn Covid test to enable us to fly home on Sunday, then a pre-breakfast bird walk around our hotel grounds. The two of us stayed here in early March 2020, and as was the case then, the grounds are so full of birds that it’s hard to know where to focus. After breakfast we went to the Curicancha Reserve, where we saw 6 different quetzals in a single wild avocado tree. We saw many other birds as well. We then visited a local organic coffee cooperative, where we had lunch and then toured the property and roasting shed, finishing with a coffee tasting to compare different preparation and roasting levels.  We spent the late afternoon walking on hanging bridges at or above the forest canopy. It was a new experience for most of our colleagues to “shoot down” to photograph treetop birds.