Costa Rica Part III: Catarata Del Toro and Braulio Carrillo National Park

Ok! Well, like usual, I'm doing an awful job at blogging this bird trip...but we all knew that's what would happen. You would think that being sequestered at home all the time now that I would be churning out posts at a rapid clip, but no! It turns having a pandemic unfold around me, while being trapped with a toddler who badly wants breaks from her parents and has practically ceased napping (which, for you nonbreeders out there, is a very bad thing) is not at all conducive to bird blogging. What have I been doing in my free moments while not parenting super hard, or, alternatively, in a catatonic state of despair? Well, among some of the more typical nonbirder things (catching up on stuff like Picard and Tiger King) I've been birding the shit out of my yard, which has been a good respite from world collapse. More on that another time.

To pick up back where we left off in the last post, in the afternoon we took a trip to Catarata Del Toro to see...well, what there was to see. I used the maps.me app to navigate for the entire trip, and while it was usually solid, it took us a very weird way up to the waterfall from Hotel Gavilan. Fortunately, this route took us to our only Red-breasted Meadowlarks of the trip and allowed for a Groove-billed Ani crush.

This private reserve offers some GERI BIRDING, and also a very large garden loaded with porterweed that you have to walk a ways to get to (porterweed is manna for a multitude of hummingbird species). The feeders here had Green-crowned Brilliants, a geri standard. This one, with the extensive white on the throat and underparts, is a female.

Facemelting Violet Sabrewings were present in good numbers.

Green Hermit is the other enormous hummingbird you can expect to find frequenting feeders at certain places.

The main target bird here was Sooty-faced Finch, a Costa Rica-Panama endemic. They are not reliable at many places in Costa Rica, but they are a known commodity here. I was STOKED to find one on a path after a relatively short time looking, and then confused to watch it fly up to a cluster of nanners/platanos and just go to town on fruit. The bird wasn't exactly confiding but we got some nice long looks at the sooty-faced fiend all the same. Another target bird people come here for is Black-bellied Hummingbird, which we saw as well, though we got better looks previously at the one at La Cinchona.

Bananaquit is another common geri bird, or Geri Bird if you prefer.

An Olive-striped Flycatcher dropped down for some nice eye-level looks for a moment. What can I tell you about Olive-striped Flycatchers? Pretty much nothing, though their name is helpfully descriptive at least.

We did not do the main waterfall trail, as it is steep and loud and presumably the most peopled, but there are some really good views of it elsewhere. It's a really good waterfall, highly recommended, it's not why we were there but it did not disappoint. The birding here was not fantastic for us but I'm sure it could have been if we were there in the morning instead of the afternoon, or if the weather hadn't been so dreary.

The next morning it was off to the Braulio Carrillo National Park area. The El Tapir garden, famous for its Snowcaps (but less so for potentially good birding trails also present), has had only intermittent access since last year and now has a huge metal gate in front of it and highway construction going on directly in front of that while we were there, so no joy on getting in that day and it was yet another Snowcapless trip to Costa Rica. Ouch though. Next time...I will not fail, and go look for them at Rancho Naturalista where they are notoriously easy.

But no worries, we went just another minute down the highway to the Braulio Carrillo trails. The Quebrada Gonzales ranger station was still closed but we had no problem getting onto the El Ceibo Trail, (on the west side of the highway) before paying our entrance fees and doing the other loop by the ranger station.

We had some flocks but none of the insane megaflocks or crazy tanager diversity that we experienced in 2012. As is common here, there were some slow stretches and a number of intriguing but extremely uncooperative birds. There were multiple Buff-throated Foliage-Gleaners though, even a couple cooperative ones like this one.

These swifts blew by at one point and I fired off a clip of docu-crushes...they were gone in just a few seconds and I pretty much forgot about these photos until recently. Now I know they were either White-chinned or Spot-fronted (hat tip to Pat for ID consultation)...both of which would be LIFE BIRDS. My money is heavily on White-chinned but I will let them remain a "slash"...life is truly pain. We did really poorly with swift viewing on this trip in general because we are bad at stuff apparently.

The coolest thing we found (Jen found), if you ask me, was this thing labelled an "oriole snake" on Jen's hilarious (but surprisingly useful) laminated Costa Rica wildlife foldout pamphlet thing that she always had on her. It was long as fuck! We were trying to get a look at some distant, aggravating antwren thing and Jen noticed this snake dripping down a tree trunk in the foreground.

Very good snake. Much length. Quite friendly. Photos don't do it justice. 

You can count on cheerful Buff-rumped Warblers to provide company on trails at many places in Costa Rica. If you are creeping along a trail hoping and praying to see an antpitta or tinamou or quail dove on the trail ahead of you, you will instead see tons of these.

Spider monkey was a lifer mammal. I have no idea how that is possible, because we saw them seemingly everywhere and didn't see a single one on the previous trip. They are good at climbing and stuff. They really do use their tails like another appendage, pretty cool to see in action.

I am not as enamored with monkeys as some people but their facial expressions are undeniably humanish and regularly hilarious.

It was so good to be in the warm embrace of manakins again. This is a male White-ruffed, looking snazzy.

I think that's it for this post. I did get Slaty Antwren and Plain Antvireos as lifers, though with disappointing looks at each. The birding was not as raging as it could be and being locked out of potential Snowcap was a kick in the nuts, but you can't win 'em every time can you? Fortunately we would get a huge birding win later that day, I'll get to that next time.