Monday 9/20/21 (Teri)
After a breakfast of pancakes
we were in the van by 6:00 am. We drove about 1 ½ hours to Rancho Suamox, a
private reserve. $12 each.
There was a comfortable sitting area where we spent some time watching a bird feeding station.
This reserve also grows bamboo for bamboo flooring.
The owner told us a Spectacled Owl was “a little way” down a trail. It turned out to be quite a ways down a trail with 3 bamboo bridges. We had a young man with us to guide us to the owl. We were told to only go one by one on the bamboo bridges because they might break.
We saw several pretty flowers along the way.
What we weren’t told until we walked for quite a while to get to the owl area was that the owl hadn’t been seen in a couple of weeks. So, as you can guess, we didn’t see the owl.
On the way back down the trail José picked a few tangerines for us. They were good.
We left Rancho Suamox at 11:00. After driving about an hour Tracy (the other woman on the trip) wanted to stop for lunch. Edison stopped on the side of the road and we got out our box lunches.
We piled back into the van and José and Edison thought they knew a shortcut back to Tandayapa Lodge. I think they might have got a little lost because they stopped a couple of times to ask people on the road for directions. The “shortcut” ended up being about 4 hours. We got back to the lodge at 4:30, went over the bird list at 6:00, dinner at 6:30 and we were ready to relax for the rest of the evening.
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Monday, 9/20/2021 (Mark)
Up at 5:00, breakfast at 5:30, in the van by 6:00. Had a 1.5 hour drive to Rancho Suamox, which is a private reserve owned by a gentleman from Colombia. José said that their trips don’t usually go there unless it is a photo trip, as the feeder setup is good for photography. It was foggy and misty when we arrived, and the feeders were pretty slow. We did see several Orange-crowned Euphonia which was new for the trip, and Purple-chested Hummingbird.
After watching the feeders for a while we headed down to a blind overlooking a compost pile, where we saw a Brown Wood-Rail, which was a life bird for us.
Things continued slow at the feeders, so José suggested that we go down a trail to where the owner said a Spectacled Owl was roosting. Long story short, after a hot, slippery, sweaty walk, no owl. But we did get to see a Three-toed Sloth directly overhead in a tree.
We spent a bit of time watching the gardens and feeders and picked up a few more birds.
We also saw a Shiny Cowbird chick being fed by a Flame-rumped Tanager male. Cowbirds are nest parasites, meaning that they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, leaving those birds to raise their young. Pretty crafty!
We did get into a couple of nice groups of birds, and picked up Purple Throated Fruitcrow and Guayaquil Woodpecker.
We returned to Tandayapa at 4:30 and got caught up on our E-bird list, journal, etc. It seems like we’re running out of new places to go that are within a reasonable drive of Tandayapa. I guess that is the downside of staying at one location the entire time.
Next time: They are the only nocturnal flying fruit-eating birds in the world. They forage at night, with specially adapted eyesight. However, they navigate by echolocation in the same way as bats and are one of the few kinds of birds known to do so.
This seems like a bit of a two steps forward, one step back kind of a day! Glad you had some good sightings though the rest of it seemed a bit frustrating. Parasite birds - that was interesting!
ReplyDeleteWe have the Brown-headed Cowbird here in North America that does exactly the same thing. Sneaky...
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