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