Last day in the highlands

Thursday January 8

We spent the morning wandering on a muddy trail through an old secondary growth forest up in the cloud forest. The clouds lowered, sometimes engulfing us in mist and other times downright rain. The trail was on the back side of the chicken farm. We learned that this is a farm for producing eggs (which explains why we heard so many roosters!).  The eggs are transported to a different farm at lower elevation where the eggs are incubated for commercial chicken production. 

We saw a number of insect-eating species… one interesting aspect to this kind of birding is that you may spend 15 minutes hearing and seeing nothing, and then a “mixed flock” of different insectivores that hunt cooperatively swoops in and you almost don’t know where to look as you are surrounded by birds for 5-10 minutes. 

Antpittas are a family of ground birds that live in dense forest undergrowth and are thus nearly impossible to see. The guides here have worked for several years to teach one particular bird that when they play a recording of their call, worms will appear on the trail. The bird responded to the call today and happily gobbled up worms very close to us. It even hung around afterwards, apparently hoping more worms might be forthcoming. 

Coquettes are a family of tiny hummingbirds with amazing crests. We have seen two species on previous trips to Costa Rica and were delighted to see a third species today.

In the afternoon we went to two locations in the town of El Valle. We didn’t see any new species but we saw some interesting individuals and behaviors. At a private pond there were many Boat-billed Herons, including two fledglings. The little ones were adorable and fuzzy. We learned that the mother stays awake while the babies sleep and then takes a nap once they wake up.  

Later in the afternoon we watched a female Lineated Woodpecker slip inside a groove carved into a dead tree. Shortly thereafter a male came along, landed on the edge of her cavity and poked his head in to say hello. To our eyes at least, every time he looked in she leaned further back as if she was hiding from him. Some ornithology expert will need to explain this one to us! 

Pictured: Black-crowned Antpitta, Rufous-crested Coquette, baby Boat-billed Herons talking, Lineated Woodpecker standoff, Barred Antshrike