Costa Rica July 2021 - Day 8

 July 13, 2012  (Click to enlarge any photo)

(Teri) We woke up at 5:15 am to the sounds of birds singing.  It was already full light by then, which made it much easier to get out of bed. 

When we arrived at the photography deck, they were changing the perch. 

Taking down the old perch. 

Putting up a new perch.

I don’t know how often they changed the perch but the new one had more green leaves.  The long branch made for some excellent photos.

A new bunch of bananas was also hoisted up.

The perch was close enough to the deck that even my little camera was able to get some good shots.

Keel-billed Toucan

Breakfast was served.  Most of our meals started with fruit.

 

This was a typical breakfast.

Around 7:30 we were told that a cows head had been put out at the King Vulture blind and as soon as the vultures started showing up someone would take us to the blind.

We started seeing lots of Black Vultures flying past the photo deck and about 8:30 we were led to the blind.

The cow head was, thankfully, laid behind a log. 

The vultures walked very close to the blind we were in! 

King Vulture

Black Vulture

We watched about 30 Black Vultures and several adult King Vultures with 2 immature King Vultures for about 45 minutes before heading back to the lodge.

We walked around the grounds for a little while. 

We decided to sit on the deck in front of our room until lunch.

After lunch we picked out our rubber boots for the evening adventure.

At 6 pm we headed out with two guides and another couple.  We headed down a muddy trail to a covered area where a hummingbird feeder is kept out over-night.  It gets dark very early here (around 6 pm).  The hummingbird feeder was taken down and a flower was clamped to a hanger and injected with sugar water.  We were quickly surrounded by bats.  We were there about 45 minutes.  I think Mark took a couple thousand pictures!

Dinner tonight was a small steak in a mushroom/wine sauce with mashed potatoes, cooked squash and carrots and a vegetable soup.  It was all excellent. 

We didn’t get any rain today and it was very hot and muggy with no wind.  We had a good fan in our room so sleeping wasn’t uncomfortable.

7/13/2021 (Mark)  We were up really early (5:30 ish) and out on the photo platform before 6:00.  We walked down to the King Vulture Blind around 8:30. They had put a cows head out earlier in the morning, and a worker had been checking for the King Vultures. Once he saw them he came back to tell us, and we headed down with another couple. There was a small blind that was placed maybe 50’ back from the bait (which was hidden) and the ground was covered with Black Vultures and several King Vultures.

King Vulture with Black Vultures

Among the King Vultures were several mature adults and a couple of younger birds.

King Vulture juvenile with adult and Black Vultures

It is hard to imagine ever getting better looks at King Vultures in our lives. 

After about 45 minutes we made the short walk back to the lodge.

The rest of the day was spent doing bird photography from the deck, and sitting in front of the room relaxing.

Honeycreepers: Red-legged (male), Green (female), Shining (female) 

Orange-chinned Parakeet

That evening at about 6:00 us and the other couple walked a short distance to a covered seating area for bat photography. This area had a couple of hummingbird feeders hanging and bats were already using them when we arrived. They set up a big banana blossom and juiced it up with sugar water, then removed the feeders. The bats would swoop to the blossom and feed. 

Bat feeding on banana blossom

They had a flashlight training on the blossom but lighting was tricky, not the mention the speed of the bats. It turns out that these nectar-feeding bats have pretty amazing tongues that showed up in several images. 

Bat using long tongue to feed

I had the ISO on my camera turned all of the way up to 51200 and was able to get some decent images. They changed to a different flower and we did it all again. 

Bat feeding on flower

I shot a couple of thousand frames and would be surprised if more that 25 of them were worth having, but that was the only way to do it. Certainly the most challenging photography session of my life!!

The other man had a 7DII and was limited to 12800 ISO. He was frustrated and asked for more light, but they were hesitant to light the bats up too much. I'm not sure if he got any "keepers" or not. 

Next time: What other country lies between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea?  Nicaragua.

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