Puerto Rico Winter Tour Y2K16: Bosque Cambalache, Camuy, Trip Wrap Up

This is it...the last Puerto Rico post! I'll go over the last day of our trip (very good birding), mistakes that were made, and general comments and recommendations for those of you thinking about birding there in the future.

The main destination for our final morning was a spot I knew almost nothing about. While doing research before the trip, I was trolling through eBird, looking for good sites for quail-doves...clearly one of the most dependable spots for both species found on "mainland" Puerto Rico was Bosque Estatal de Cambalache, in the Arecibo area. This site was not mentioned in any trip report I could find, but clearly this was a Geotrygon stronghold, so why not bird it? A Mangrove Cuckoo greeted us in the predawn light.

After a spell of no quail-doves at all, we began hearing Key West Quail-Doves and flushing unidentified quail-doves from the road...without being able to identify them of course. This would happen over and over again, even though we were moving painstakingly slowly to avoid it. Mercifully, a Key West Quail-Dove cooperated for good looks, relieving Dan and Adam of their itchy and sore grip-off episode I dealt them the previous day at Bosque Susua. A tiny anole cooperated for even better looks.

A few minutes later, our bitternish pace on the trail rewarded us with distant looks at a Ruddy Quail-Dove, which was a sweet sweet lifer for yours truly. And under the watchful gaze of terrestrial snails, we got great looks at a second individual shortly afterward. Fuck yes.

Our eBird checklist from the site is here. Note that we did not include several unidentified quail-doves that flushed from the road before we could get bins on them. Though not a super birdy site, we did have a good mix of native birds and great success with KWQD and RUQD, so I would definitely recommend birding here if you get to this part of the island.

Hacienda Esperanza was another site in eBird that boasted a healthy site list, and many potential trip birds were on the menu. However, when we arrived a guard at the gate told us we needed reservations, which was railer. We tried another access point to the east though, and a guard waved us through. Some nice beaches here and a few much-appreciated trip birds, though we didn't see anything very exciting.

If you care about seeing exotics, I would definitely recommend birding the open areas of the access road to Hacienda Esperanza....there are flocks and flocks of exotics here, the most interesting of which were these Monk Parakeets.

Don't worry, you will see plenty of Gray Kingbirds along the road as well.

At this point we had only one last target bird of the trip to go for, so we headed west toward Camuy. A roadside pond halted our progress and yielded a flock of Glossy Ibis.

Pile of turtles, pile of ibis.

The most exciting bird here was, believe it or not, a Ring-billed Gull. I have never been so happy to see a Ring-billed Gull before. This was only the second individual gull we saw on the trip.

Alas, we left the Ring-billed Gull behind and finally arrived at our last birding destination of the entire trip, a medium-sized farm pond with a great number of birds. White-cheeked Pintails were one of the most abundant species.

RUDU-WCPI takeoff combo? I'll take it.

Ducks are cool and all, but we had come to this random pond for one reason...AMERICAN FLAMINGO. This Vague Runt has been on the island for years and only occasionally moves around; it is usually found at this pond. What a ridiculous, impressive, and unbelievable bird. I've never really taken one in before, if we are being honest here (but not literal), they really walk the line between being completely crippling and profoundly absurd.

This is not a bird to be taken lightly. It is too outlandish. Too good. Too pink. It's bill is incomprehensible. What a marvel.

This was the last group lifer of the trip. Note that our eBird checklist features Mallard! This is a good spot for waterfowl, in addition to the famous resident flamingo.

At this point we decided to do the unthinkable...go somewhere for reasons other than birds/food/beer. The Arecibo Observatory is a scientific behmoth that borders on being a monstrosity. Definitely a tourist trap, but it is too grand a thing to not see in person. If you are a space nerd, you would love this shit. If you are not a space nerd, it's still hard to not be impressed. It does, for good or ill, give you a moderate Death Star vibe. Yes, that is a lip of the giant dish carved into the earth that you can see at the bottom of the photo, but so far it has yet to be used against rebellious planets or Mon Calamari cruisers.

The trip was a great success. Not a shitload of birds, but many lifers. The lifer-to-bird ratio was very solid, in fact. Good people. Good vacay. Some pocket. Great pinchos. Not quite enough rum. Annabelle does not have microcephaly. Winning.

Comments:

We took a leisurely 8 days to bird the island; most birders are usually only hunting endemics, and take less time to bird Puerto Rico...though I'm not sure where else they are planning on seeing something like Antillean Crested Hummingbird anytime soon. Anyways, we were going for all the Caribbean specialties in addition to all the endemics, and we did really well with our target birds, so I think ours was a quality timeline. I got 46 lifers...phenomenal. Around 40 were native birds, not a bad ratio considering the number of bizarre introduced species in Puerto Rico. We got to see a lot of the island this way as well, instead of just being relegated to the southwest corner where most endemics are easiest.

We planned our route and chose our hotspots using trip reports (very helpful), tips from a couple of former Bird Police (very helpful, thanks Tom and John), eBird (quite helpful), and A Birdwatchers' Guide to Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the Caymans (somewhat helpful). We found the book to be, well, not very well-written, especially when it comes to giving directions. That said, it was still useful, but you don't need to have this book when birding Puerto Rico.

We had a 4x4 Jeep. We did actually use four wheel drive several times, it came in handy! If you go during the rainy season and want to access places like Laguna Cartagena and other spots in the Lajas Valley, I would recommend you do the same. If you are prone to getting lost, it can help you out.

As I mentioned before, Google Maps led us astray repeatedly. It can help you get places here, and it can help you get lost. Don't put all your birding eggs in the Google Maps basket.

We stayed at Ceiba Country Inn and two different Airbnbs, one just outside of Guanica and one near Arecibo. Ceiba had decent rooms, decent birding on site (we got visuals of Puerto Rican Screech-Owl nowhere else), but poor breakfast for the price. Not a bad place for a birder to stay though, if you get to the east side of the island. Nice dogs.

Misses:

White-tailed Tropicbird is an easy bird in spring along the northwestern coast, but considerably more difficult to find in early winter. However, I think we could have gotten one if we devoted some time to seawatching, which we did not attempt.

Masked Duck is not only my Nemesis Bird, I think it is fair to say that it is also Dipper Dan's Nemesis Bird, so of course we weren't going to see one despite lots of effort in lots of good places. However, we can completely blame Officer Searcy for our failure to find this bird, as he claimed we would see one...this is a grave mistake, do not do this if you are hoping to see a Masked Duck. Looking at eBird, it looks like they started showing up at Laguna Cartagena after our trip. Typical.

We were bummed to miss the local Sharp-shinned and Broad-winged Hawk subspecies. The local Sharpie is critically endangered and not at all easy to see though.

Few visiting birders make the effort, but if you take the ferry to Vieques, you stand a strong chance of getting Bridled Quail-Dove if you can make it to the right part of the island. We did not undertake this journey.

It turns out Black-whiskered Vireo is quite rare in December; we missed this species entirely despite looking for them constantly. They are much easier later in the winter (February) when migrants arrive.

We were aware that Antillean Nighthawk and Caribbean Martin are spring birds, not to be expected in early winter. We saw neither.


We left Puerto Rico with 137 species in the bag, a good avian haul I reckon. Thanks again to MAX REBO BIRDING TOURS for making this all possible!

Puerto Rico Winter Tour Y2K16: Humacao and Ceiba Country Inn

December 3: Again we woke up fighting the blear (do you blear what I blear?) that always comes with getting up hella early in tropical places with jetlag and without coffee. We birded briefly around Ceiba Country Inn before breakfast. We have realized by now that Zenaida Doves are abundant and widespread (though I did not come back with good enough photos), and a couple were poking around the driveway early in the morning.

Red-legged Thrushes are also easy to find in areas with second-growth forest. Unfortunately, most of the birds we saw were on the shy side. The one bird that sat 10 feet away in the sun glowing like a bastard chose to appear while my camera was out of reach (typical), though Dan and Adam got to crush it (also typical). If you go to PR, don't expect these birds to be hella approachable unless you blunder into a tame mall bird like we did.

Loggerhead and Gray Kingbird combo! A pair of Loggerhead Kingbirds briefly hung out near the inn, which we had not seen the day before. They remind me of a cross between an Eastern Kingbird and a large Eastern Phoebe.

After breakfast (toast AND cereal this time...luxurious!) we rolled down to bird Humacao ("Reserva Natural de Humacao" in eBird) on the east coast, a site that can be good for waterbirds and the two "eastern" hummingbirds of the island, Antillean Crested Hummingbird and Green-throated Carib. According to the birder's guide, this area was good for West Indian Whistling-Duck and Masked Duck, but eBird suggests that this has not been true in recent years - as both species are prone to wandering, Humacao may eventually become a good spot for both species again. Unsurprisingly, we did not see either species here.

The access situation is a bit odd - there is the "official" access along Rte 3, which has limited hours and is closed on weekends, but immediately east of there is some kind of park (across from the tire store) with concession stands and an information kiosk that essentially allows access to the same areas. This is where we entered (18.150726°, -65.772021°), and it worked out quite well. We did not try birding the northern part of the reserve (north of 3), where it looks like there is a lot of good habitat as well.

The birding here was interesting; the habitat looked very good, but it wasn't a particularly birdy place. It seemed like Humacao would be dripping with North American warblers, but as we noticed the previous day at Ceiba and El Yunque, there were relatively few migrant warblers (Northern Waterthrushes, redstarts, a Prairie Warbler, and some dude playing an Ovenbird tape). This would become a theme for the entire trip; we only found two sites that had more than a handful of warblers, but that would come later. The one exception to this rule of warbler scarcity was Northern Waterthrush, which were abundant in mangroves everywhere.

The first birds of note were white-shielded American Coots, which until recently were Caribbean Coots. Soon afterward, we got on two White-cheeked Pintails in one of the lagoons...what a refreshing lifer. I haven't seen a new duck in a long time...a long time.

As with practically every vegetated place in Puerto Rico, there were Bananaquits galore, though this photo was taken in El Yunque. In Puerto Rico, they seem to have a foothold in a wide array of terrestrial niches.

Puerto Rican Flycatchers were widespread and common during our trip at lowland and mid-elevation sites. This is another very Eastern Phoebeish bird from certain angles.

It was here at Hamacao that we had a run-in with our second Reluctant Lifer of the trip, in the form of Tricolored Munia (the first was Bronze Munia/Mannikin back at Ceiba). None of us were interested in going out of our way for filthy, disgusting exotics, but it was inevitable that we would be dealing with them. Much more interesting than the munias were our first visuals of Mangrove Cuckoos of the trip.

Mangrove Cuckoos are surprisingly common in Puerto Rico, and can be found in many different habitats.

I'd only seen them once before (in Costa Rica), so this was a nice bird to get to see almost every day.

Most sites were teeming with lizard or frogs or both. In the lizard department, we saw a lot of whiptails.

This big one was rocking an indigo belly patch. I'm into it. It could be a different species than the yellow-striped duder above or just an adult. It's not like I'm #7 in whiptails, cut me some slack.

We plodded through the mud, slowly accumulating trip birds. Dan got looks at the first Green-throated Carib of the trip, while Adam and I were gripped off and forced to stew in our juices. Further on down the trail we ran into a patch of Antillean Crested Hummingbirds (lifer!), one of which Adam brought in by hanging an orange bag in a tree. Brilliant.

On the way back to the car, we noticed the tree behind Adam (above) had a lot of yellow blossoms, and waiting around the tree ended up producing both Green-throated Carib (lifer!) and another Antillean Crested Hummingbird. I was very fucking relieved to see these birds, as we had missed them the previous day and they are much harder to find on the west side of the island, where we would be spending most of our time. The night before, in a dream, I thought I found a Carib...but it turned out to be some sort of weird Anna's Hummingbird hybrid...talk about a fucking nightmare. I took it to mean that we would be doomed in finding this bird, but fortunately it was probably just the fruit of all the emotional baggage I have with Anna's Hummingbirds. Anyways, it is worth mentioning that there were hardly any flowering trees at Humacao when we were there, and we found hummingbirds at all of them.

Having succeeded with multiple target birds (our eBird checklist is here), we decided to try the Fajardo Inn to see if we could put the crush on any hummingbirds there (there didn't seem to be much blooming across from the police station at the time, another suggested spot). It seemed pretty barren for a while.

This large, plain anoley thing was one of the few noteworthy finds at the hotel.

Eventually, Adam got on an Antillean Crested Hummingbird in a bottlebrush tree next to the tennis courts, where we had some mild success in getting photos of this little facemelting bastard with flash.

What a good bird.

These things are tiny and blackish with short little bills, quite different from the island's other hummingbirds. The males have amazing crests that glow blue in natural light. I dig the subtle iridescent feather tips on the underparts you can see here too.

That night would be our final night staying in Ceiba, so after we got back from farting around Fajardo we put on our rally caps and started looking for Puerto Rican Screech-Owls, our last remaining local target, which again seemed to be very quiet compared to our first night there. After doing many laps around the inn (these are very short laps) and walking all the way down the driveway and back up again, we got visuals of two Puerto Rican Screech-Owls next to the parking lot. Talk about grinding out a bird! Getting long looks at these birds turned out to be clutch, as not surprisingly we would not see any more during the trip. For those of you thinking about staying here, Ceiba Country Inn is a very good place to get the owls, and one of the guys running the place seemed surprised that we failed to see them our first night when they were constantly calling. Though it was hard to recover from this ruthless browbeating, we took advantage of our final chance and got quality looks.

Having secured all our local target birds in the nick of time, it would be time to move on in the morning. Up next, the nerds go west on a Plain Pigeon odyssey, and make the long sandwichy trash fire trek to Guanica.

To The Coast: Hwy 34 to Cerro Lodge

After birding Talari Mountain Lodge, we headed toward our next planned destination, El Cerro Lodge near Tarcoles, on the west coast. The drive took us from San Isidro west to Hwy 34, which we took north all the way to Tarcoles. The climate reached new levels of heat and humidity, even though it was the dry season on the Pacific Slope. This was virgin birding territory, and we all ran high fevers...we were sick with birdlust. Of course, it was very difficult to not bird on the way, and we couldn't help but pull over a few times. A random roadside stop to look at some Scissor-tailed Flycatchers south of Manuel San Antonio led to a whole glut of birds, including Mangrove Cuckoos!

Having missed them on previous Florida trips, I was more than happy to get these exceedingly cooperative birds as lifers. Oddly, we were neither next to mangroves or water, although we were probably pretty close to the coast.

While looking at Scissor-tailed Flycatchers and Mangrove Cuckoos, multiple flocks of Crimson-fronted Parakeets noisily cruised by.

While trying (and failing) to take in all the new birds popping up left and right, I saw something that looked vaguely like a blotchy white pigeon flying towards us....of course it wasn't a pigeon, it was a fucking PEARL KITE! It was tiny! And on top of that, it was carrying a Chestnut-sided Warbler that it had just slain!

The kite sat above us for a while, contentedly ripping chunks of feather's out of the warblers neck.

Eventually it took flight, warbler still in talons.

As you can see, the kite isn't much larger than a Tropical Kingbird, and really does look sort of like a pigeon.

After wracking up a bunch of unanticipated lifers, we attempted to do a quick stop at Manuel Antonio National Park...I cannot understate what a huge mistake this was. Talk about a clusterfuck! So many people! So many Europeans! None of us were quite prepared for it.  We did get a few trip birds...the sandy spit behind us in Quepos was covered with Franklin's Gulls, which unexpectedly greatly outnumbered the Laughing Gulls there. Anyways, here is Frank, Stilt, Dipper Dan and Seagull Steve looking rad/shitty.

Under cover of darkness, eventually we left the crowds behind and figured out how to get to Cerro Lodge, where we would be spending the next several nights. Along the entrance road were a number of Parauques.

Our muchacho "Mancho" let us through the security gate and set us up for the night. He was difficult to communicate with, and seemed to mumble a lot...but after a little while lurking in the darkness of the parking lot, he asked if we wanted to see a bujo...and holy shit, what a look! I guess the lodge is well-known for its pair of Black-and-white Owls that seem to have no fear of people whatsoever, thus the brutal crush you see above.

I think its safe to say that whenever you are staying at a birder-friendly lodge in CR, it's worth asking if they have any owls that live on the grounds that are easy to see...I believe Cerro has some confiding Pacific Screech-Owls as well, but we didn't luck out on them, although we later had Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl (from the pool!).

As you can guess, we were pretty stoked to wake up and bird the grounds the next morning. At daybreak I was already lifering new hummingbirds, and it felt great. The fruit feeders next to the veranda had a flock of Fiery-billed Aracaris ravaging shit.

What a crippler.

The birder's guide we were using claimed all of the Melanerpes woodpeckers in the area are hybrids, but I'm not sure if that is entirely substantiated or not...so here is a bird that looks like a Hoffman's Woodpecker but may or may not have some Red-crowned Woodpecker genes (it does look like there is some pink in that nape).

I think I'll leave off here...stay tuned for more from Cerro Lodge and Carara National Park, where the great birds never stop.