Last morning in Costa Rica

Today was mostly a travel day ( we needed to be to the airport in San Jose by 11:00) but of course we walked before breakfast and Jimmy had a great place for us to stop to take a break, complete with waterfall and a lot of unusual birds and hummingbirds.  Despite the short time spent birding, several of the birds were new to us. Along the road we saw two very beautiful and hard-to-see falcons as well. As so often happens, the weather today may be the best of the whole trip— sunny and dry and not too hot. It makes it even harder to leave this beautiful country and our wonderful companions, Jimmy and Jose.

Pictured: Prong-billed Barbet, Red-headed Barbet, Laughing Falcon, Fasciated Antshrike

Sarapiqui

 This morning we didn’t meet the group for birding until 6:30, which gave us a chance to watch and listen to the awakening of the forest from our treehouse. A chorus of Howlers serenaded us about 4am, and other things began to stir and chirp about 5:30. The Tinamou, who had been silent since Monday night, started calling about 6:15, and then very cooperatively crossed our path as we headed down the hill. Jimmy was so surprised that we had seen and photographed another elusive Tinamou on this trip. 

We spent the morning en route to Sarapiqui, an area with a number of private reserves adjacent to the big Braulio Carrillo National Park.  Our lodge for the night has its own reserve and research center, where we walked before lunch. We walked across a bridge suspended high above the Sarapiqui River, and then walked some forest trails. Signs along the trails warned us to be careful of falling branches — apparently there is a particular kind of tree that drops limbs spontaneously as it grows taller! 

Then the balance of the day was spent at La Selva, one of three reserves in Costa Rica that are part of the Association for Tropical Studies. La Selva covers 3900 acres of tropical rain forest, although this year has been very dry and the conditions are more similar to a normal October. We saw a number of new and unexpected birds. As we walked across a bridge at mid-canopy level, we saw an adorable juvenile two-toed sloth. It was certainly novel to be looking down on a sloth from above. We ended the day watching three green macaws munching away in an almond tree. At dinner, we shared in the excitement of the local crowd watching the Costa Rica- Jamaica qualifying match for World Cup.  You could follow along just by watching the reactions of the crowd (when CR missed on a penalty kick or scored a goal), but we didn’t stay to see the end of the match. 

Pictured: Hoffman’s Two-toed Sloth, Snowy Cotinga, Bronzy Hermit, Praying Mantis, a view of our treehouse, and the Papaya tree we forgot to post last night 

Big and little birds

This morning we went for the customary early morning bird walk prior to breakfast. While we saw few new species, we did see a lot of birds, including a few that are common in New York but not here in Costa Rica. Our morning activity was to visit a King Vulture center. These enormous birds (a black vulture comes to their shoulder if they sit side by side) are normally very hard to see well. The family that runs the center puts out food on a hilltop with a sheltered “blind” nearby so you can see the Kings (as well as a much larger number of Blacks) at eye level as they feed. We saw at least six different individuals at four stages of development… the youngest are quite dark, and the white feathers and characteristic neck and face colors come in gradually. It was a very unusual opportunity — and then one of the guides saw an Ornate Hawk-Eagle fly into the nearby woods! You’ll have to look at the picture because it is almost beyond describing how beautiful these large birds are. The Ornate Hawk-Eagle is one of Jimmy’s favorite birds— taking the picture required our crashing through the woods, but it was worth it! 

The rest of the day was a series of walks where we saw mostly small colorful birds, many of them sipping in and out of the same large shrub, so it was hard to know where to look. At the end of the afternoon we walked through the lodge’s fruit and vegetable gardens (we’d never seen guava, black pepper, papaya, passion fruit or dragon fruit growing before). A huge flock of Red-lored Parrots swooped into the guava trees. Watching them eat reminded us of watermelon eating contests— faces immersed in the fruit and stained red from the juice.

We hope to have enough time tomorrow morning to experience our treehouse in daylight. Today we left it before dawn and returned after sunset. We were a bit surprised that the night and early morning weren’t all that noisy ( well except for the Tinamou who seems to live under the house). 

Pictured: King Vulture, Ornate Hawk-Eagle, Papaya tree, Purple Gallinule, Long-tailed Hermit, guava-eating Red-lored Parrot