Saturday, January 20, 2024
We met Johan on the raised deck at 5:45 to check out the feeders. The feeders are filled with fruit pieces early in the morning, mostly watermelon and papaya. The biggest birds dominate the feeders first thing, so Great Curassow, Montezuma Oropendola, and Crested Guans fly in early and eat much of the fruit.
It is wild to see the turkey-sized Curassows fly up from the ground and land on the rather slender feeding perches, but they do so fearlessly. About ten Coati gathered below the feeder to feast on the fruit being dropped by the birds. One Coati climbed the adjacent tree and was trying to figure out how to jump onto the feeder, but finally gave up. We were glad, as the fall would have likely seriously injured or killed it.
After watching the feeders for about 15 minutes we headed across a suspension footbridge to check out some large garden areas, hoping for Black-crested Coquette. We did see a female perched in some flowers but not a mature male. We had good looks at Pale-billed Woodpecker as well a Golden-olive Woodpecker.
It was foggy/drizzly much of the time, which made it a little difficult for photography and even seeing birds well.
We did see a few hard-to-find forest birds, like Ocellated , Dull-mantled, Zelodon’s and Spotted Antbirds. The pictures aren't great because of the mist and darkness, but you can see what they look like!
We came in for breakfast at 8:30, and went back out at 9:00, setting out on the “Los Monos” trail. By now we were seeing a little more rain, so had to break out our umbrellas now and then, and worry about keeping binoculars and cameras dry.
We saw a nice variety of birds as the morning went on, including both a male and female White-ruffed Manakin, a Wedge-billed Woodcreeper and the National Bird of Costa Rica, the rather plain Clay-colored Thrush.
At about 11:00 it started to rain more heavily, so Johan took us to a sheltered spot overlooking a beautiful section of garden. He’d been told that the male Black-crested Coquette had been seen feeding here the past couple of days, so we sat down in some dry chairs and waited. The garden was full of Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds, which can be particularly aggressive towards smaller species like the coquettes. But finally a beautiful mature male showed up and fed on verbena blooms that were directly in front of where we were sitting. These are tiny little hummingbirds that move constantly, but I was able to get some great pictures, and we headed back to the lodge.
We decided to drive to the nearby town of La Fortuna for lunch as it would put us close to our afternoon birding area. We stopped at La Rana Roja (The Red Frog) and had a good lunch. We're not really sure why the restaurant was named "The Red Frog" but it was catchy and the food was good.
Next - Sendero Bogarin
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