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.

Birding Hotel Gavilan Rio Sarapiqui

Life. Bird. Gray-capped Flycatchers are widespread and common on both slopes of Costa Rica. Thankfully, they are not hard to tell apart from their Social Flycatcher cousins. All photos today from Hotel Gavilan.

Hotel Gavilan was our base for the first leg of our trip. From there we could strike out towards La Selva Biological Station (a grueling 5 minutes away), the Savegre lodge, the El Tigre fields, Sarapiqui Eco-Observatory and La Virgen Del Socorro. Gavilan both came recommended by Pat "The Dude" O'Donnell (who runs Costa Rica's dominant birding blog) and the extremely valuable "A Bird-finding Guide to Costa Rica" by Barrett Lawson. In fact, I planned practically the entire trip using these two resources, as well as taking advice by birding giant (literally) Dave Pereksta.

The hotel has a lot going for it. It's cheap, it feeds birds, it has food, it has beer, it has coffee, it's clean, and has high-quality birding on the property. What's not to like??? Nothing.

Our first morning there was grueling. The lifers were overwhelming. New woodcreepers, woodpeckers, tanagers, sparrows...it was disgusting. Dipper Dan (formerly TPAD Dan), famous in the birding community for his acute addiction to chewing tobacco (not American Dippers), was up way before dawn making feeble attempts at bird identification...the birder's Christmas Morning was in full effect. The lifers came at such a furious pace we were all giddy on nerd endorphins (the worse of all endorphins), and the long lost but familiar feeling of being a beginning birder had set in again. Our earbirding skills were practically useless, and some of the birds we were seeing we couldn't even remember hearing of...these were dubbed "brain birds", a lifer for the brain, if not in reality.

This was the only Bronzy Hermit of the trip that I'm aware of. It had a territory in Gavilan's courtyard. It's easily identified as the most basic-looking hermit, lacking any tail craziness or freakish bill length.

Strawberry Poison-dart Frog, aka the Blue Jeans Frog. It's pretty damn cool to see animals in the flesh that you've only seen on nature shows for your entire life.

Moncho, the hotel's awesomely-named security guard, pointed out this pair of Spectacled Owls to us our first morning there. They had found the perfect day roost with huge overhanging leaves to keep them out of the multiple torrential downpours that happened every day and night. We saw them there 3 out of 4 days of looking.

This Scaled Pigeon was found during a flurry of lifer activity on our first morning. It ended up being the only one of the trip...cool looking bird!

Part of the hotel grounds. A mix of gardens and mature second-growth, the birding was quality.

A basilisk lizard faces off with a gang of Palm and Passerini's Tanagers. I've never seen a lizard come to a bird feeder before...bananas and plantains are in high demand down there.

Another gratuitous feeder shot...you better get used to them. Left to right, the crippling Golden-hooded Tanager, the ghastly gray Palm Tanager, and a molting Red-legged Honeycreeper.

Scarlet-rumped Cacique has basically the same exact color scheme of Passerini's Tanager (at right), but don't share many similarities otherwise. This is the only Carribean Slope site where we had this blue-eyed wonder.

The Basilisk will meet you in many places in Costa Rica. You may know this duder as the Jesus Lizard; it has the ain't-nature-fucking-amazing? superpower of being able to run across water.