Category: Costa Rica (Page 4 of 5)

Costa Rica (2018) #4: Birding Dominical, Medium-sized Birds

January 15, 2021 / KDL / 0 Comments

Scarlet-rumped Cacique Dominical Costa Rica

There’s a big red rump hidden on this Scarlet-rumped Cacique

Birding Dominical: The Medium-Sized Birds

I was on a roll for a bit with the Costa Rica posts. Then a new law school semester started. And Republicans managed to snatch defeat from the hands of victory and lose control of the Senate. This was immediately followed by a bunch of crazy white folks invading the house of Congress while it was in session, trying to stop the certification of a fair election, chanting that the Vice President be hanged and murdering a police officer in the process. Days later, despicable-human-in-chief Donald Trump was impeached a second time. More importantly, he lost the ability to tweet, and an obnoxious ringing in many of our ears suddenly quit. During those remarkable 9 days (yes, all of that happened in the last 9 days), over 27,000 Americans died of COVID. In a perfectly on-brand response, Trump officials announced they were releasing vaccine doses from a stockpile reserve that didn’t exist.

2021 was supposed to be better than 2020. Ugh. All the nonsense and tragedy is more reason to daydream about tropical birds. Because what everyone needs right now is some amazing tropical birds. I’ve already covered the small birds and the big birds I saw at our amazing villa near Dominical, Costa Rica. In this post, I’ve got pictures of the medium-sized birds that moved through the property.

Streaked Flycatcher

I could bird all day, in swampy heat and falling rain and slippery mud, if there was a chance to see trogons and motmots. Trogons are like sedentary robins. Despite their size and colors, they tend to stay still in the forest for long periods of time, making them surprisingly difficult to spot. I managed to find two kinds of trogons on the property: Gartered Trogon and the deliciously-gray Slaty-tailed Trogon pictured below.

Slaty-tailed Trogon

Lesson’s Motmot

Like trogons, motmots are really good at not being seen despite their size and coloring. But one motmot habit makes them easier to spot than trogons. They have a tendency to wag their long tail feathers back-and-forth. That’s how I spotted the Lesson’s Motmot pictured above. It was perched deep inside a tree, and I would have walked right past without noticing it if it’s tail wasn’t moving like a pendulum. Check out the link for a video of a motmot wagging its tail.

Black-hooded Antshrike Dominical Costa Rica

There are a whole collection of birds in Costa Rica that are named after the ants they love to eat. There are antwrens, antbirds, and antshrikes. They mainly move through the understory, making them tough birds for good clean looks. I was able to identify a Dusky Antbird, a Chestnut-backed Antbird, and the Black-hooded Antshrike pictured above. The Black-hooded Antshrike was kind of enough to perch just above eye-level in bushes right alongside the trail I was walking. And while I found several trails of leaf-cutter ants on the property, I never found a big swarm of ant-eating birds.

Another new kind of bird I found in Costa Rica were the woodcreepers. They’re like woodpeckers, moving vertically up trunks. But instead of pecking holes in the trunks of trees, they eat insects off the trunks. Most of them are brown, and it’s hard to get clear looks at the heads, bills, and breasts that are the keys to distinguishing them. I saw 5 kinds of woodcreepers on the property: Long-tailed Woodcreeper (small size helps ID), Wedge-billed Woodcreeper (small size and small bill), Cocoa Woodcreeper (long straight bill), Black-striped Woodcreeper (large, bold streaking on upper back), and Streak-heeded Woodcreeper (medium-size, light streaks on head). Many of the views were binocular-only, through 30 feet of dense trees.

Lineated Woodpecker

Cocoa Woodcreeper

Long-tailed Woodcreeper

Squirrel Cuckoo

Let us not ignore the big red crest of the Lineated Woodpecker, or the amazing tail of the Squirrel Cuckoo. The abundance of amazingness of the birds is, even now, years after I lived it, hard to believe.

Black-hooded Tityra

Masked Tityra

Plain Xenops

Golden-naped Woodpecker

This post could be never-ending, there were so many birds. I managed to photograph a Plain Xenops (above), which is like a woodcreeper but without the long, stiff tail feathers used to work its way along the trunk. Both Black-hooded and Masked Tityra were regular visitors to the trees just off the porch. Parrots and parakeets of many colors were regulars as well, sometimes in flocks of 200 hundred.

I don’t know about you, but I feel better because of this post. Thank you, Costa Rica.

Costa Rica (2018) #3 – Birding Dominical: Small Birds

December 28, 2020 / KDL / 0 Comments

Golden-hooded Tanager Dominical Costa Rica

Golden-hooded Tanagers add sparkle to mixed flocks

Birding Dominical: The Tiny Birds

In a previous post , I covered the big birds we saw from the property at Villa Chill near Dominical, Costa Rica. In this post, I’ll cover the small birds I identified (think tanager and smaller). The rate of identified birds per bird seen was much lower here than with the toucans and hawks and such. Many were moving quickly at the tops of trees or moving quickly through dense cover. Some were calling but never seen. Others were calling, and staying perfectly still. There are many ways to detect but not identify a bird. And I succeeded in them all.

The first full day we had on the property, I got up at the crack of dawn and wandered around. I thought at times I’d never make it back to the house. At nearly every turn, you could stand still for five minutes and a dozen birds would be moving all around you. Some were easy to ID. The easiest were the familiar birds, like Summer Tanager, Chestnut-sided Warbler, House Wren and Rose-breasted Grosbeak. I had also studied up, so I was ready to identify birds I’d never seen before. Great places for prep work on Costa Rica bird knowledge: Patrick O’Donnell’s blog about birding Costa Rica, and the best (and delightfully compact) field guide to the birds of Costa Rica.

But nothing can prepare you for your first big mixed flock in Costa Rica. It happened to me about 45 minutes into my walk. And it was like being a kid in a candy store. We don’t get fallouts on the West Coast. And this surely wasn’t anything close to a big fallout. But I’d never seen so much activity in a single tree. All told, I found in the same damn tree all of the following: Golden-hooded Tanager, Scarlet-rumped Tanager, Palm Tanager, Scarlet-thighed Dacnis, Blue Dacnis, Green Honeycreeper, Philadelphia Vireo, an apparently unusual Blue-headed Vireo, and countless other unidentified birds. A nearby row of brush held a Mourning Warbler, Blue-black Grassquit, and a Riverside Wren. This is the reason you come to Costa Rica.

A family scene from a birder’s dreams (they’re actually pointing at spider monkeys)

It really didn’t matter where I wandered. The bushes and trees around the property were buzzing with activity. Regular small visitors to the backyard included Variable Seedeaters, Scarlet-rumped Tanager, Bananaquit, Blue-gray Tanager, and Palm Tanager (so apparently boring I never even took a photo of one), (not to mention the hawks and whatnot soaring overhead, and the woodpeckers, cuckoos, tityra and flycatchers coming to and fro).

Scarlet-rumped Tanager

Variable Seedeater

Yellow-crowned Euphonia

Yellow-throated Euphonia

Spot-crowned Euphonia

Costa Rica has over 50 species of hummingbird. But they aren’t all called hummingbirds. There seem to be nearly as many names for hummingbirds as there are species of hummingbird. There are sicklebills, hermits, barbthroats, lancebills, sabrewings, jacobins, violetears, mangos, coquettes, emeralds, woodnymphs, goldentails, plumeleteers, snowcaps, thorntails, mountain-gems, brilliants, fairies, starthtroats, and woodstars. The property didn’t have any hummingbird feeders, so it was up to mother nature herself to bring in the hummers.

A few were easy to identify. The White-necked Jacobin‘s blue head and clean white lower body made it obvious. Same with the long tail of the Long-billed Hermit. The orange-red bill of the Blue-throated Goldentail helped seal the ID. But many hummingbirds zipped past and disappeared into the foliage, gone in an instant. All told, I managed to identify 8 species on the villa property. I only managed to photograph three.

Band-tailed Barbthroat

Charming Hummingbird

Rufous-tailed Hummingbird

There’s nothing like being in a foreign bird land to make plain the power of bird call knowledge. Mysterious sounds abounded, Was I hearing a single bird with a repertoire like a Northern Mockingbird? Or are there seven species of something in that row of bushes? Frequently, I’d track one curious call for minutes to no avail, only to begin tracking down the source of another strange sound. The small birds are a challenge, but I loved every minute of it.

Red-legged Honeycreeper Dominical Costa Rica

Red-legged Honeycreepers were welcome regulars on the property

Tropical Gnatcatcher Dominical Costa Rica

Tropical Gnatcatcher on a big tropical leaf