Tuesday, February 28, 2023

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

4 comments:

  1. That was so sweet of them to decorate the bed. Lots of pretty birds again!

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    1. It was a very nice thought. But we had to find a place to stack all those pillows so we could use the bed!

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  2. Beautiful pictures you two. Glad to hear you were able to see some lifers.

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  3. I love the comparison of the male/female. I always learn so much from you blog. Thanks.

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