Our time in Caño Negro went better than we had any right to expect, but after that it was time to start making our way back toward San José and the airport.We had a few more stops, however: a night in the famous La Selva Research Station near the town of Sarapiquí, then a couple of sites in the central mountains along the road toward San José, finishing with an afternoon at Volcán Poas.
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| Anyone have a field guide they need illustrated? |
We departed from Caño Negro in the early afternoon of February 24 and arrived in Sarapiquí late that afternoon. The original plan had been to stay within the research station at La Selva, which would have been access to the station's trails going through an amazing stretch of primary lowland rainforest- one of the best and most accessible habitats of this type in Costa Rica (and probably all of Central America). Unfortunately, by the time we decided on the dates the station was completely full, meaning we would only have access to the entrance and the surrounding areas- still excellent birding, but not quite as good.
When we arrived at our lodge a couple kilometers away from La Selva we met up with Braden Collard, another birder who was spending the semester in Costa Rica and caught a bus to Sarapiquí so he could bird with us. Braden had already had an excellent morning of birding along the road near our lodge, so we decided to do that in our remaining hour or so of daylight. That proved to be a very good idea, as we had great looks at a Collared Aracari perched right next to the road, and shortly after a group of White-fronted Nunbirds, strange birds related to puffbirds and jacamars that were one of the main targets for the area. We also got more distant looks at a few Chestnut-headed Oropendolas and a Broad-billed Motmot in the last bits of daylight.
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| Collared Aracari |
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| White-fronted Nunbird |
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| Chestnut-headed Oropendola |
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| Broad-billed Motmot |
We had originally planned to go out and try some herping and owling that night, but after having dinner in town we were so exhausted from our morning in Caño Negro and the long drive that we just headed toward bed instead. The next morning we started bright and early, arriving at the entrance road to La Selva right at dawn. It was still practically dark when we started birding, but we saw a flock of White-crowned Parrots perched in a distant tree, a Keel-billed Toucan next to the car, and a barely-visible Great Tinamou walking along a forest path. Down by the edge of the river we had flyovers from many Red-lored Amazons and a few critically endangered Great Green Macaws, while a White-breasted Wood Wren was singing deep in the shadows. When we returned to our car the Keel-billed Toucan had been replaced with a Yellow-throated Toucan.
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| Keel-billed Toucan |
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| Great Tinamou |
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| White-breasted Wood Wren |
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| Red-lored Amazons |
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| Great Green Macaw |
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| Yellow-throated Toucan |
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| Mantled Howler Monkey |
We drove a bit further down the entrance road and then got out and started walking slowly toward the entrance to La Selva. The birding was surprisingly quiet; for the next half hour or so we barely saw any birds, aside from a male
White-collared Manakin skulking around in a bush. As we drew nearer to the gate, we heard the call of a
Blue Ground Dove, and after some searching it finally flew in and perched on a distant phone wire- certainly the best-looking of the ground doves in Costa Rica. A
Bronze-tailed Plumeleteer flew in and perched briefly for us, and we had flybys from some more
Great Green Macaws.
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| White-collared Manakin |
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| Blue Ground Dove |
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| Bronze-tailed Plumeleteer |
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| Great Green Macaws |
Things finally started to pick up near the end of the walkable road. A big mixed flock filtered through, with a good number of new birds including Plain-colored Tanagers, Black-faced Grosbeaks, a calling Rufous Mourner, a distant Cinnamon Becard, and a single Black-cowled Oriole. There was a female Great Curassow feeding on the ground, and a female White-collared Manakin flew in briefly. Overhead we had some Grey-rumped Swifts and White-collared Swifts circling around. The highlight, however, was a pair of brilliant Chestnut-colored Woodpeckers that flew in and fed for several minutes on the bird-of-paradise flowers right next to the road. They were utterly gorgeous, with their orangish-brown plumage and yellow crests that flopped around as they moved.
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| Cinnamon Becard |
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| Black-faced Grosbeak |
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| Female White-collared Manakin |
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| Great Curassow |
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| White-collared Swift |
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| Female Chestnut-colored Woodpecker |
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| Chestnut-colored Woodpecker |
Unfortunately we couldn't go any further into the forest than that, and while we craned our necks trying to see into La Selva to where the resident Snowy Cotinga usually hang out, we didn't see much. As we started back toward the car, some movement in the bushes near the road alerted us to a little flock of Dusky-faced Tanagers- a resident bird that's so uncommon that it was actually a lifer for Josh (his fourth of the trip). It was also a new family for all of us. They were great fun to watch as they hung out deep in the shade eating berries, although we had to move on as we realized that we were standing in the middle of an ant swarm, while a grumpy guard soon came over and told us non-guests couldn't bird anywhere off the road.
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| Dusky-faced Tanager! |
The forest was still quiet as we walked back toward the car, although we did hear the calls of a pair of Rufous Motmots deep in the woods. Another surprise was a Semiplumbeous Hawk that flew in and perched right above the road, a beautiful raptor that was a lifer for most of us.
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| Semiplumbeous Hawk |
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| Morpho alathante |
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| Golden Silk Spider (Trichonephila clavipes) |
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| Oncidium lineoligerum |
We finished the morning with 70 species seen along the road, a respectable total but nowhere near the true potential of the site on a more active morning. I'll certainly need to return on a future visit as there were many species regularly seen that we didn't manage to connect with this time. After some discussion we decided to start heading uphill to be able to fit in all of our planned stops before it got dark. We bid farewell to Braden at the bus stop and started the long drive up the mountains.
Our next stop was La Virgen del Socorro, a little waterfall and trail on the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica's central mountain range. We arrived after an hour or so of driving up the increasingly winding highway toward San Jose, watching the terrain get more rugged and the weather get mistier. Getting to La Virgen meant some driving on a steep, bumpy dirt road that made us thankful we'd opted for a rental car with 4-wheel drive and high clearance. Before we even got to the waterfall, the car screeched to a halt along the narrow road as we saw some movement in front of us. Getting out of the car we realized it was a Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush and a pair of Zeledon's Antbirds, the latter a very difficult bird generally restricted to mid-elevation forest. It soon became clear we were seeing the beginning of an army ant swarm, and while it wasn't nearly as lively as the one we'd seen in Tárcoles it was still cool seeing the ants boiling across the road, blindly following scouts' pheromones on their way to the next nesting site.
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| Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush |
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| Zeledon's Antbird |
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| Swarming Burchell's Army Ants |
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| Begonia multinervia, mostly endemic to Costa Rica |
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| Ripipteryx limbata |
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| Guzmania donnell-smithi |
Eventually we got back in the car and headed a bit downhill toward the bridge. La Virgen is mostly a popular swimming hole for locals, and from the bridge we were able to look down at the picturesque rushing river as it ran through a forested valley. More importantly, from the bridge we were able to see the resident American Dipper- not a lifer for any of us, but a target for Tom who's made a (very understandable) point of seeing a dipper on every birthday. Birthday dipper aside, we also saw a tiny, adorable Torrent Tyrannulet flitting between the rocks in the rushing stream, and I spotted a beautiful White Hawk perched far above us on the mountain slopes.
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| American Dipper- the birds in Central America are much paler and frostier-looking than the ones in the western US. |
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| Torrent Tyrannulet |
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| White Hawk |
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| The river at La Virgen |
We walked a short distance up the road on the other side of the river and ran into a huge mixed flock of passerines- mostly Bay-headed Tanagers but good numbers of other birds including Silver-throated Tanagers, Golden-hooded Tanagers, Common Chlorospingus (Chlorospingi?), Black-and-yellow Tanagers, an Olivaceous Woodcreeper, an Eye-ringed Flatbill, and a surprise Blue-winged Warbler, an uncommon bird in Costa Rica. We also had nice looks at a male Collared Trogon. As we headed back uphill toward the main road we stopped at the ant swarm again and had more ridiculously good looks at the Zeledon's Antbirds and Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush.
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| Olivaceous Woodcreeper |
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| Eye-ringed Flatbill |
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| Collared Trogon |
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| Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush |
Back at the main road, we continued our drive uphill. The forest around us slowly transitioned from lowland forest to hill forest to proper mountain forest, with mossy trees draped with moss and epiphytes. It was mid-afternoon by the time we arrived at our next stop, the famous Mirador Cinchona. The Mirador started out as an overlook over a scenic valley and an impressive waterfall, but has since expanded into a very nice soda (Costa Rican lunch restaurant) with an even nicer bird feeding setup.
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| The view from Mirador Cinchona |
By the time we got to the mirador we were possibly more excited for the food than we were for the birds, but the birds as it turned out were excellent. As we got out of the car there was a Rufous-collared Sparrow feeding in the grass and a Great Kiskadee carrying some nesting materials, while inside the restaurant the bird feeder was absolutely hopping. The fruit the restaurant staff put out had brought in the usual feeder crowd of Montezuma Oropendolas, Clay-colored Thrushes, Palm Tanagers, Blue-grey Tanagers, Silver-throated Tanagers. and Bananaquits, but also a whole host of more interesting birds like Black Guans, Emerald Toucanets, Prong-billed Barbets, Crimson-collared Tanagers, and a gorgeous Red-headed Barbet. The rarest bird was a single Yellow-winged Tanager, a vagrant individual that had made its way up from their usual range further north in Central America to stay long term at the feeders at Cinchona.
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| Rufous-collared Sparrow |
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| Great Kiskadee |
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| Montezuma Oropendola |
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| Clay-colored Thrush |
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| Blue-grey Tanager |
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| Silver-throated Tanager |
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| Summer Tanager |
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| Not sure what this Black Vulture was hoping for at a fruit feeder |
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| Black Guan |
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| Northern Emerald Toucanet |
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| Prong-billed Barbet is actually part of the toucan barbet family, meaning it's more closely related to the toucanet above than the Red-headed Barbet below |
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| Red-headed Barbet |
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| Crimson-collared Tanager |
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| Yellow-winged Tanager |
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| Bananaquite |
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| Red-tailed Squirrel |
Aside from the fruit feeders the restaurant had also set up a full suite of hummingbird feeders, which were also hopping. There were some old favorites like Violet Sabrewings, Green-crowned Brilliants, and Coppery-headed Emeralds, plus Rufous-tailed Hummingbird which is... not a favorite. A couple of rarer hummingbirds also made brief appearances: a single Black-bellied Hummingbird perched on a distant branch, and a slightly bolder White-bellied Mountaingem. These were both uncommon hummingbirds endemic to this stretch of mountains in Costa Rica and Panama, and Mirador Cinchona is one of the only reliable spots for them so it was good to be able to see them.
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| Violet Sabrewing |
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| Coppery-headed Emerald |
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| Rufous-tailed Hummingbird |
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| White-bellied Mountaingem |
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| Black-bellied Hummingbird |
The birds were amazing, but half of the fun was also watching all the other people at the restaurant enjoying the intimate encounters with the wildlife. There were a few other birders but it was mostly just Costa Ricans on weekend getaways. It's a great example of the virtuous cycle of investing in conservation; if you make natural areas and wildlife easily accessible to the public there's more awareness and appreciation of it, which means more public buy-in for keeping it protected. I saw the same thing in Thailand- lots of accessible city parks and national parks, and many, many birders and bird photographers along with a big chunk of the public with a healthy appreciation for visiting green spaces. Obviously Costa Rica and Thailand are not without their conservation woes, but it's nonetheless a model I wish more places would follow.
(The Philippines, of course, is caught in the vicious cycle: cities are almost completely devoid of any public green spaces while national parks are poorly preserved and difficult to access. That means most peoples' interactions with nature are limited to birds in cages and "trees I need to cut down to plant more rice", and there's very little when the government builds enormous roads through the middle of pristine forest and gives huge concessions to logging and mining companies. I'm (very cautiously) optimistic seeing how much birding has taken off there recently, but I hope there will be some initiatives to allow the general public to be able to have exposure to nature and wildlife in the way you can so many other places.)
We continued uphill, moving slowly in the Sunday traffic as we neared San José. At one point, a couple of dark-blue birds darted across the road, which we realized were Azure-hooded Jays, a very uncommon corvid restricted to mountain areas. We decided to pull the car over to try and re-find them, but unfortunately the shoulder of the road was much higher than expected, and the undercarriage of the car got whacked hard enough to separate the spare tire entirely from the bottom. There was no other damage beside the broken spare tire chain, but even though we'd deliberately purchased the maximum insurance possible (knowing that things like this are likely to happen on birding trips), the bloodsuckers at the rental car company decided that anything related to the undercarriage wasn't covered by the insurance so we ended up having to pay a bit more than expected. It was an unfortunate note to an otherwise completely successful trip, and to make matters worse we never even re-found the jays!
By late afternoon, we arrived in the town of Poasito, located at the top of the mountain pass above San José. We dropped our things quickly at our hotel then drove even further uphill on the road heading up Volcán Poas, an active volcano with a well-maintained national park. This was our last chance for some extra birds, as we were getting into very, very high-elevation forest that allowed us to try again for some birds we'd missed in Monteverde as well as some others that are only found here and in the high mountains further to the east. This close to San José most of the mountain slopes were taken up by houses and cow pastures, but by the time we got into forest areas what we did see was some nice stunted mountain forest- a very different habitat from what we'd been in that morning!
To our annoyance, the national park itself was closed by the time we got up to the entrance around 4:30 PM, but we were still able to bird along the road, getting a last hour or so of birding in before it got dark and we flew out the next day. We spotted a Fiery-throated Hummingbird, endemic to the high mountains of Costa Rica and western Panama, sleeping on a branch, while a female Volcano Hummingbird, another local endemic, made a brief appearance. A bit further down the road some scuffling in the bushes alerted us to a little mixed flock, which included some great last-minute lifers: a pair of Yellow-thighed Brushfinches, some Black-cheeked Warblers, a brief appearance from a Large-footed Finch and a Ruddy-capped Nightingale-Thrush, a few very shy Slaty Flowerpiercers, some Sooty-capped Chlorospingus, and of course many, many Mountain Thrush. Back toward the car we got great looks at a pair of Black-and-yellow Phainoptila, and Tom was rude enough to spot a Buff-fronted Quail-Dove that flew past and disappeared before anyone else got on it.
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| Fiery-throated Hummingbird |
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| Volcano Hummingbird |
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| Yellow-thighed Brushfinch |
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| Black-cheeked Warbler |
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| Sooty-capped Chlorospingus |
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| Female Black-and-yellow Phainoptila, a strange relative of waxwings |
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| Male Black-and-yellow Phainoptila |
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| Werauhia ororiensis, a cool bromeliad |
We went a bit downhill to look for some other birds, and with the last light of day had a beautiful Long-tailed Silky Flycatcher perched in a distant tree and up-close looks at a Mountain Elaenia. The road was full of Costa Ricans setting out picnics and enjoying the sunset, which we were more than happy to join for. It was the perfect way to end an excellent day, and an excellent trip.
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| Long-tailed Silky Flycatcher |
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| Mountain Elaenia |
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| Sunset from Poas |
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| One last sunset with the gang |
Sadly, all of us were flying out the next day (except Josh, who was remaining in Costa Rica to lead a tour). Tom and Hilary left early in the morning, and I got up to drive them to the airport. The birds were just starting to sing as we got in the car before dawn, and we added an unexpected new trip bird in the form of a Flame-colored Tanager heard from a nearby tree.
I said my goodbyes to Tom and Hillary then drove back up to Poasito. There was a nice Long-tailed Silky Flycatcher hanging out next to our hotel, and there were lots of Band-tailed Pigeons and Red-billed Pigeons flying around. At the hotel feeders there was a nice female Purple-throated Mountaingem and a brief appearance from a Scintillant Hummingbird, yet another last-minute lifer.
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| Long-tailed Silky Flycatcher |
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| Red-billed Pigeon |
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| Purple-throated Mountaingem |
I wasn't flying out until that afternoon, which meant that we still had the rest of the morning for some birding. Once Josh was up we headed up the road to Volcán Poas National Park, which was now open for access. Just past the entrance road we stopped for some bird activity, which turned out to be a pair of Black-and-yellow Phainoptilas and a gorgeous Flame-throated Warbler, a regional endemic I was very much not expecting to get on this trip. A cute little Ochraceous Wren also made an appearance.
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| Flame-throated Warbler |
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| Ochraceous Wren |
The headquarters of the park was another kilometer uphill, by which time the air was even colder and the forest even more stunted. Mountain Thrushes were replaced by Sooty Thrushes, and Sooty-capped Chlorospingus became the most common bird around. In a shady bit of the parking lot we came across a pair of cute little Black-billed Nightingale-Thrushes- the fifth species of nightingale-thrush for the trip.
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| Sooty-capped Chlorospingus |
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| Black-billed Nightingale-Thrush |
Josh and I spent an hour or so hiking one of the trails up the volcano. We weren't allowed to head to the main crater without wearing hard hats (the joys of being in an active volcano I guess), so instead we started the climb to one of the crater lakes. There were so many birds along the trail we didn't even make it up to the lake before we had to turn around- not that I'm complaining too much. I saw a pair of Large-billed Finches hanging out quietly next to the trail, and we heard a Black Guan doing a wing-rattling display in the branches above us. Fiery-throated Hummingbirds were all around, and we had an appearance from a single Talamanca Hummingbird. We had great looks at a pair of Black-and-yellow Phainoptilas building a nest, and there were many, many Slaty Flowerpiercers. The final new bird of the trip came as a surprise as we were walking down- a Silvery-fronted Tapaculo singing from deep within a thicket. I only had a brief view, but that's the average tapaculo experience from what I hear, and it was still a completely new family for me.
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| Large-footed Finches do indeed have very large feet |
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| Black Guan |
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| Female Fiery-throated Hummingbird |
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| Male Fiery-throated Hummingbird |
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| Male Black-and-yellow Phainoptila |
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| Female Slaty Flowerpiercer |
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| Male Slaty Flowerpiercer |
With that, it was time to head to the airport, and back to the US. Our Costa Rica trip had been far more successful than we had any right to expect- I managed to see 441 species of bird in 9 days of birding, which is an absolutely absurd total for a trip anywhere in the world. 310 of those were lifers for me- again, something that's very, very hard for me to do pretty much anywhere. Much of that of course had to do with being accompanied by 3 people who were much better at birding (and much more familiar with the Neotropics) than me, but it also speaks to how good of a birding destination Costa Rica really is. I admit to having been a bit skeptical before getting there but now I suppose I Get It. Now all that's next is figuring out where my next Neotropics birding trip will be...
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