Carara Part III: The Pitta Incident

Turquoise-browed Motmot. Sweet dreams are made of these. Tarcoles, Costa Rica.

Finally! The last installment from Carara National Park and Tarcoles. It's been a long-time coming...we can now let go and move on to the next part of the trip...but that's for next time. For now, its a mixed bag of crushes, the obligatory crap pics of cool birds in a rainforest, and the first public detailing of THE PITTA INCIDENT.

The first few of these you see will really cripple you. They belong in that upper echelon of bird that make you doubt everything you know and hold dear when you see them. Tarcoles, Costa Rica.

One of my favorite Psittacid experiences of the trip (aside from the Scarlet Macaws) was with this roadside flock of Orange-fronted Parakeets, bucolically chewing on flower pedals. Amazingly, Pat had a male Yellow-billed Cotinga in these same trees the same day! Photographed near the Cerro Lodge, Tarcoles, Costa Rica.

Nom nom nom nom. Nom. I dig the head pattern of these birds.

Why hello Cocoa Woodcreeper, what a stout bill you have. Photographed in Carara National Park, Costa Rica.

For our second day of birding Carara, we met up with Pat O'Donnell, the great ex-pat birder and guide who has excellent content on his Costa Rica bird blog right here. I can't imagine going back to Costa Rica without spending a lot of time researching Pat's posts, as he is constantly reporting on new birding spots and updates on areas that draw a lot of birders. If you need a guide, he's your man.

Unlike us four idiots, Pat knows pretty much all the local birds by ear, so he was pointing out all sorts of things we would never have recognized. As we walked the trail system closer to the visitor center (highly recommended, don't just do the "river trail"), he heard a Streak-chested Antpitta calling. None of us had seen any sort of pitta before, so we were stoked. He whistled the bird in....and we were all able to lay eyes on this fantastic lifer. After a couple minutes it moved back into the underbrush. There was much joy and merriment...until I saw Stilt.

Stilt had not seen the bird, and it took me a few moments to realize that she was crying. I couldn't believe it! It was amazing! She was uncontrollably sobbing because she had missed a life bird. While feeling bad for her, I was also savoring the moment of just having gripped off someone so badly that they were in tears. She asked me to not blog about it, but seeing as it has been over a year...I am blogging about it. Has anyone else ever seen anything like this?

My one attempt at documenting The Pitta Incident. Don't worry, after Stilt pulled herself together she eventually got to see the pitta.

Here is a Black-throated Trogon, which took over a year to identify from this photo. In shitty light, they can look remarkably similar to Gartered (Violacious) Trogon; note the white eyering and slightly different tail pattern. Carara National Park.

I somehow managed to not crush this Great Tinamou that we ran into a couple times. Probably because I was too busy soaking it in with my eyes. Carara National Park.

Fiery-billed Aracari, forged in the fires of facemelt. Photographed at Cerro Lodge.

The Tarcoles area is one of the relatively few parts of country oft-visited by foreign birders where there is a nice diversity of waterbirds. This cooperative Wood Stork lurked next to the road just west of town.

What a face. What a bill. What a neck. What a....helmet.

Magnificent Frigatebirds are abundant in the area. I dislike living in a place where I don't see frigatebirds at any moment I decide to look up. Photographed at the Tarcoles River Mouth.

Double-striped Thick-knee!!!! How bizarre. Photographed on a road I don't remember near a town I don't remember near La Ensenada Wildlife Refuge.

After we left the wonders of Carara behind, we made our way northward to La Ensenada Wildlife Refuge to try to pick up some additional North Pacific Slope species. Well once we were almost there, it turned out a certain "Frank" had left his binoculars over two hours away back at El Cerro Lodge. We were all devastated...but brave Frank had the courage to keep on birding, even without binoculars. This turned out to be an excellent decision, as we managed to get a lot of good birds and a number of lifers all around...birds like Long-tailed Mannikin, Plain-capped Starthroat, Crested Bobwhite, White-fronted Parrot, White-throated Magpie-Jay, and Three-wattled Bellbirds (heard only, but there seemed to be many). Unfortunately, my camera battery died and I was too giddy on birds to realize I had a fucking car charger for the battery with me in the car...and so I missed countless crushes of Hook-billed Kites, Streak-backed Orioles, etc. One of the biggest birding fails of my life. I definitely want to return to La Ensenada again and give it the thorough bush-flogging it deserves.

On the flip side, El Cerro had Frank's binos waiting for him when we returned that night.

This was one of my main target birds for the trip, which I thought we dipped on once we left the lush pastures of Tarcoles behind. I still struggle to make sense of the proportions of these birds. Great success!

Carara National Park (Part II)

I didn't make it back to Costa Rica this winter, but I still have plenty of material from last winter...which I'm really falling behind on. Sorry about that, some lifers and tequila got in the way. And so we carry on...Scarlet Macaws are abundant in the Carara area, and can be seen sharing the sky with Magnificent Frigatebirds as you drive through Tarcoles, although they don't exactly form mixed flocks. Such crippling birds. Photographed at Carara National Park.

They nest in huge tree cavities like this one. A grandiose bird requires a grandiose nest site. Carara National Park.

Pale-billed Woodpeckers are fairly common and widespread in Costa Rica, and it's a bird you should plan on meeting if you will be birding there for very long. Listen for the infamous "double-knock", which their Campephilus cousins the Ivory-billeds are/were famous for. Carara National Park.

We were lucky to see Spectacled Owls more than once on our trip. I still can't really reconcile their sense of fashion with what northern owls wear. Carara National Park.

Part of the luscious rainforest canopy at Carara National Park. I'm pretty sure there were a couple of Turquoise Contingas somewhere up there, which besides being very good birds are pretty unusual for the area. Brutal "warbler neck" though.

Just north of Carara is the "waterfall road", which yielded some decent birds for us. It's best to just park and walk up and down the road at intervals of good habitat. In the field where the road meets the main highway, there were several Gray-crowned Yellowthroats wallowing in their just-barely-subdued glory.

Really cool birds, I wish they ventured into the United States more often.

Blue-black Grassquits were also present in numbers. You show me open fields and I will show you grassquits.

Further up the road was this Collared Forest-Falcon, which had previously eluded me in eastern Mexico and other parts of Costa Rica. This life bird was one of the Carara-area highlights for me, despite not being particularly rare or range-restricted. It's really cool to meet raptors that are completely unlike anything you've seen before.

Higher up on the road there are some nice ridges that are conducive to seeing soaring raptors. Aside from this Zone-tailed Hawk, we also had White Hawk and King Vulture. It is weird to mention seeing the latter two birds in the same area (and not lifering), since before this trip those had been close to Grail Bird status in my mind for years.

Many mixed flocks in the country contain Philadelphia Vireos. They are hard to avoid. You may try to convince yourself that you are seeing Warbling Vireos, but you would (probably) be wrong. Photographed on the Waterfall Road.

Capuchins, A Ctenosaur, Baffling Architecture, and a Lifer Flycatcher at Carara National Park

In a drastic and unexpected change of pace, I'm going to post some nonavian beings from last January in Costa Rica. First and foremost, look at this White-faced Capuchin gnawing on a banana.

The river trail at Carara National Park had a big troupe of them that allowed for ample crushing opportunities.

We'd seen plenty of Howler Monkeys throughout the trip, but this was a lifer monkey for me.

Stereotypically, they were going bananas for bananas. Sorry I said that.

I'd never seen wild monkeys before this trip. Pretty sick. The consumption of bananas in such a humorous manner only added to the glory of the encounter, if you know what I'm saying.

I don't know what this crippling lizard is, although it structurally looked like a type of whiptail. Anyone know?

Ctenosaur! Hella big. Hella prehistoric (looking).

Ctenosaura similis are huge and fast, in fact the fastest lizards on earth according to the Guinesss Book. They are widely distributed throughout Central America and is something you should expect to see in Costa Rica. They go by several common names, but I like Black Ctenosaur the best.

Despite all the places I've been and things I've seen, I'm frequently reminded that nature is fucking amazing. I was completely stunned to come across this piece of work a couple feet off the forest floor. Check out this necklace of wasp nests! Anyone know anything about these?

Fine, a token bird for this post. This is a Streaked Flycatcher, close cousin of the Sulphur-bellied, and also a sweet and fulfilling life bird. All photos in today's post were taken in Carara National Park.