Costa Rica - Day 8 Part 2

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

After lunch we drove to our next destination, San Gerardo's Birds.  This was a private garden that caters to birds and photographers. Johan is friends with the young man who owns it and had reserved the garden for us this afternoon. 

As soon as we arrived we started to see beautiful birds, including the first Emerald Toucanets of the trip. 

Northern Emerald Toucanet

The viewing porch at this location was quite small, so there wasn't a lot of moving around trying to figure out where to stand.  Everything was pretty much visible from one spot which made photography easy.

This was a good place to compare the male and female of a few species. In most cases the males are brighter, but it is always interesting to see how different the genders look. Euphonias are a group of small tanagers, and many of the males are some combination of yellow and dark blue. But the females are more variable and interesting to me. 

Spot-crowned Euphonia - female

Spot-crowned Euphonia - male

Thick-billed Euphonia - female

Thick-billed Euphonia - male

The Scarlet-rumped Tanagers don't look much like each other, but both of them have bluish bills with black tips. 

Scarlet-rumped Tanager - female

Scarlet-rumped Tanager - male

However, many species of birds don't display this "sexual dimorphism", which means that there is a distinct difference in appearance or size between the sexes. There are several species of Tanagers in which the sexes appear the same, to us anyway.  They seem to be able to tell the difference!

Palm Tanager

Blue-gray Tanager

Golden-hooded Tanager

We saw many other groups of birds other than Tanagers, including some Woodpeckers, Saltators, and Motmots. 

Acorn Woodpecker

Red-crowned Woodpecker

Golden-olive Woodpecker excavating a cavity

Buff-throated Saltator

Lesson's Motmot

San Gerardo Birds has another name, Jardín de Colibríes, which means Hummingbird Garden in Spanish. And sure enough, we saw some hummingbirds as well including the striking Snowy-bellied Hummingbird and the large Violet Sabrewing. 

Snowy-bellied Hummingbird

Violet Sabrewing

Brown Violetear

Violet-headed Hummingbird

A bit nondescript compared to some of the other hummingbirds was the White-tailed Emerald. But along with the White-crested Coquette this was one of our lifers for the day!

White-tailed Emerald

Our final bird before departing was the handsome White-naped Brush-Finch.

White-naped Brush-Finch

After about 90 minutes of birding and photography we headed on to our final lodge of the trip, the Dantica Lodge way up in the Savegre Valley.  We'd stayed in the Savegre Valley on two previous trips and decided to try a new lodge as our former location was becoming more of a spa/boutique destination.  

We'd told the folks at Costa Rica Focus that this trip was for our 40th wedding anniversary, and they apparently communicated that to the lodge. So we were shown to our room and found this:

It seems that Honeymoon and Anniversary may have gotten mixed, but it was a lovely room and we appreciated the thought. What you see above the masks on the wall in not an air conditioner, but rather a heater. At this elevation (8500') in Costa Rica it gets pretty chilly at night. 

Next - Hunt for the legendary Resplendent Quetzal

Costa Rica - Day 8

 Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Today we moved to our final lodge.  We got up early and headed out to find Black-chested Jays. We've seen these jays in Panama and Columbia, but they are very rare in Costa Rica, occurring only in a small area adjacent to the Panama border. 

Johan navigated us up to this area, and we found one within minutes. The Black-chested Jay doesn't have a crest like many of the jays that folks are familiar with, but sports a handsome blue, black and cream pattern. 

Black-chested Jay

We saw a Roadside Hawk in the area as well, and a Yellow-faced Grassquit along a fence line as we departed the area. 

Roadside Hawk

Yellow-faced Grassquit

We returned to the Las Cruces Biological Station for breakfast, and then packed up and headed out. Today's move would take us up into the mountains near San Gerardo, to some of the highest elevations in Costa Rica. The trip would take several hours, but Johan had a couple of special stops planned along the way. 

We passed through a lot of agricultural areas, with sugar cane being a major crop.  This, along with palm oil plantations are the main agricultural products coming from this area. 

Trucks at the factory loaded with Sugar Cane

At about 11:00 a.m. we arrived at Chirripo Oasis, which is a 100 acre family farm previously used for cattle production and timber. It has been converted over to ecotourism, along with organic coffee and bananas. It is a great example of the impact that ecotourism can have in rural areas. The farm had beautiful gardens and trails, along with a small hotel.  No one was staying there when we visited, so we had it to ourselves. 

One of the special birds at this location, and our target was the three inch long White-crested Coquette. Coquettes are a type of hummingbird known for their small size and unusual crests and tufts adorning the heads of the male birds. We'd seen Rufous-crested and Black-crested Coquettes before, but never the White-crested. 

The gardens were spread out around the hotel building, so we couldn't see them all from one spot. The owner of the farm kept a look-out on one side, and we watched the other. After about 15 minutes the owner shouted to let us know that the White-crested Coquette was feeding on his side. I took a lot of pictures...

White-crested Coquette - male

While the Coquette was the star of the show, we saw plenty of other birds as well. We saw both male and female Garden Emerald, another hummingbird species. The female's green and white color pattern blends in very well with the plants. 

Garden Emerald - female

Garden Emerald - male

The Speckled Tanager was becoming a favorite bird of mine, and we were finding plenty of them to enjoy. 

Speckled Tanager

The Black-striped Sparrow is different than the brown streaky sparrows that we commonly see in Texas. They are significantly larger with a bolder pattern. 

Black-striped Sparrow

Baltimore Oriole and Tennessee Warbler are birds that we'll be seeing back in North America in just a few weeks. 

Baltimore Oriole

Tennessee Warbler

After about an hour at Chirripo Oasis we headed to a nearby restaurant for lunch. The restaurant was called El Pelícano, and though we didn't see any pelicans we did enjoy a delicious lunch!

Next - One more stop before we reach our final lodge. 

Costa Rica Day 7 - Part 2

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Following lunch we headed out to a few nearby birding spots. 

The first was the local airport, but it's not what you think. The airport is simply a strip of pavement surrounded by a chain link fence. The fence separated many homes from the main road and had been (illegally) cut in several places so that locals could cross the runway and reach the road without talking the long way around. If you look closely at the Google Earth satellite shot you can see some of the paths from homes on the north side to the main road and businesses on the south.  

We have flown out of a couple of little airports like this in single-engine prop planes, and it can be a little disconcerting to see children and dogs running across the runway as you take off or land!

The airstrip was surrounded by tall grass which is good habitat for Yellow-bellied Seedeaters. We also found a Tropical Mockingbird, which is very similar in appearance to our Northern Mockingbird. 

Tropical Mockingbird

Yellow-bellied Seedeater

From the airport we explored a couple of nearby lagoons where we found an Amazon Kingfisher and a Green Heron. 

Amazon Kingfisher

Green Heron

We then headed over to Finca Cántaros, a small property that was a coffee plantation but is now being run as a nature preserve. The property is interesting because it contains a large petroglyph discovered in 2009 that is thought to be 1600 years old. The meaning of the symbols is not known.  There were also a couple of interesting stone carvings, one of a reclining person and another of a jaguar. We didn't learn the origin or age of these items. 

Petroglyph

Jaguar

Reclining Person

From a birding standpoint the main attraction is a 2 acre lagoon in the middle of the property. It supports a variety of ducks, including an interesting hybrid Green-winged Teal x Blue-winged Teal. One characteristic used to separate different species of birds is that they don't reproduce outside of their species. However this isn't absolute, and various Teal hybrids do exist. Below is a picture of the Hybrid as well as a Blue-winged Teal from this location. I've included a picture of a "pure" Green-winged Teal from a different location, as there we none here. Can you see how the hybrid has characteristics of both?

Green-winged Teal x Blue-winged Teal (Hybrid)

Blue-winged Teal

Green-winged Teal (different location!!)

After viewing the lagoon we walked some forest trails and turned up a few birds. One was a Green Hermit. Hermits are a type of hummingbird generally found in forests. They usually don't come to feeders and seem to prefer to stay in the shadows. 

Green Hermit

Streak-headed Woodcreeper

We returned to the lodge for dinner, and then went out on a night walk. Johan played an owl call and immediately a Mottled Owl came rushing in. It passed within just a couple of feet of us and then perched in a nearby tree. Territorial!

Mottled Owl

The gardens have several small water features, and we'd been hearing frogs calling.  Earlier in the day Johan had pointed out batches of frog eggs lain in a Heliconia. 

Frog eggs in Heliconia bloom

We saw several Marine Toads, largest amphibian in Costa Rica and one of the largest toads in the world. We also saw several Masked Tree Frogs, which are much smaller. 

Marine Toad

Masked Tree Frog

Masked Tree Frog

Our last animal of the night was an Opossum rustling its way through a treetop. 

Oppossum

Next - Moving day