After our three night stay in the lush and tropical flora and fauna of La Fortuna, we packed up our rental car and drove the three plus hours to Papagayo with the Occidental Allegro Papagayo Resort as our destination. The drive was great with a gradual change from the large leafed, dense, jungle like foliage to arid and mostly leafless surroundings as we got closer to the coast. By the time we were half way through our trip, the contrast was already obvious. The resort is in an area of Costa Rica which is in dry season in January and most trees have shed their leaves with the lack of rain. The temperature we left in La Fortuna had never gotten above about 23 degrees and we were welcomed with 35 degrees and blue, sunny skies as we got to the all inclusive resort, cut into the steep bank of the volcanic slopes.
We saw a few sights along the way including Cattle Egrets in flight (no really worthwhile pictures), Black Vultures eating some roadkill, and a Coati.
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| Black Vultures |
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| Coati |
When we arrived, the first birds we saw were the very large, and starkly differently shaped Magnificent Frigatebirds. They are huge, and their angular shaped wings are nothing like our Southern Ontario birds. Later I got some good looks and chances for pictures as they circled endlessly over the Ocean bay we were on.
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| Magnificent Frigatebird |
During the next three days, I spent lots of time wandering the beach and enjoying constantly sighting a new bird, sometimes a few at a time as they clustered in the few trees which were flowering or had fruit of some sort. Here is another selection of the birds I saw during our stay here.
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| Black-headed Trojan |
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| Blue-gray Tanager (lots around, but never got any better a shot than this) |
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| Brown Booby (Not quite sure where this bird name came from!) |
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| female Hoffman's Woodpecker |
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| male Hoffman's Woodpecker |
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| Great-tailed Grackle |
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| female Nicaraguan Grackle |
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| Howler Monkeys |
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| Iguana species |
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| Inca Dove |
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| Ringed Kingfisher |
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| a mutant Royal Tern (note the strange protrusion from the bottom of its beak) |
The next bird deserves some introduction... the Rufous-naped Wren. I got up early most mornings to do some birding before meeting Holly for breakfast. This bird was nicely cooperating with the morning light when it turn around, looked down into the underbrush below, and clearly called out . In a flash, another wren flew up to its side, and immediately, obliged to search in the first bird's plumped up feathers and preen it. Both continued this for a few minutes before heading off, possibly for their own breakfast engagement. Did I just witness the morning routine for two birds after just getting out of bed? It was so comical as the first birds call seemed so deliberate, and the response of the second bird so immediate. I do not know of any other bird that does this.
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| Rufous-naped Wren |
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| Rufous-naped Wrens preening each other |
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| Rufous-naped Wrens preening |
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| Scissor-tailed Flycatcher |
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| Short-tailed Hawk |
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| Squirrel Cuckoo |
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| Steely-vented Hummingbird |
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| Stripe-headed Sparrow |
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| Snowy Egret and Tri-coloured Heron - fishing buddies. |
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| Snowy Egret |
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| Tri-coloured Heron |
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| Tri-coloured Heron portrait |
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| Tri-coloured Heron with catch |
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| Tri-coloured Heron |
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| Whimbrel |
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| White-faced Monkeys |
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| White-throated Magpie-Jay |
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| White-winged Doves making more doves. |
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| female Connecticut Warbler (this one took me forever to ID) |
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| Yellow-tailed Oriole |
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| Great Kiskadee (these were at the resort too, but my best shot was here) |
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| Brown Pelican (again, lots at the resort but got my closest shot here) |
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| Little Blue Heron |
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| Orange-fronted Parakeet making more parakeets. |
On the same outing, I happened to catch sight of something flitting about, which had a very weird flight pattern; very un-bird like....because it was not a bird, but a bat. I'm not sure if I flushed it from its roost as a pushed through some foilage along the water's edge, but it landed on a big tree up the bank and this is the best shot I could get of it. It seemed bigger than our little brown bats.
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| A Bat of some sort. |
And so ends my posts on the trip we enjoyed to Costa Rica. It was a great trip and we thorougly enjoyed it. Who knows where our 20th anniversary trip will bring us. :) Hopefully there's some new birds to see there.
Again, here is a short summary of the birds which I saw in Papagayo, totalling 35 birds to bring the total I saw in CR to 71 birds. If my numbers are correct I think all but about 3 were life birds! I hope to update my life list soon as it gets a massive bump into the 200's I think.
Magnificent Frigatebird
Brown Booby
Brown Pelican
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Little Blue Heron
Tricolored Heron
Cattle Egret
Osprey
Short-tailed Hawk
Spotted Sandpiper
Willet
Whimbrel
Royal Tern
Inca Dove
Squirrel Cuckoo
Steely-vented Hummingbird
Black-headed Trogon
Ringed Kingfisher
Hoffmann's Woodpecker
Olive-throated Parakeet
Orange-fronted Parakeet
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
White-throated Magpie-Jay
Rufous-naped Wren
White-lored Gnatcatcher
Connecticut Warbler
Blue-gray Tanager
Stripe-headed Sparrow
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Great-tailed Grackle
Nicaraguan Grackle
Yellow-tailed Oriole
Baltimore Oriole
Spring is coming, and I just found out about a third screech owl location.... I know of two other spots where everyone but me has seen the birds. It's not for lack of trying... I've stopped by both locations over the last two years many times, but never seem to see the little owls. I hope adding a third location will increase my chances, especially because this spot has a pair there. Hopefully I have a post to put up with pictures of them soon, but I'm not going to count on it! :)
Till next time...
Keep enjoying HIS handiwork!
Brian, Brilliant birding! I love the wrens that you highlighted. All of the birds are excellent but the scissor-tailed flycatcher might have been one of the most exciting finds. Thanks for sharing the sightings you had on this trip!
ReplyDeleteThanks Dwayne! It's hard to pick favourites really! But that was one of the exciting ones only because I recognized it instantly as a rare bird up north here. I watched it flying up from the tops of trees to pick bugs out of the sky. Because of my angle it was impossible to get any photos in flight which would have showed it's beautiful tail feathers better!
DeleteBeautiful! I love the brilliant tropicals for a bit of a change. We had a fun experience last year: there was a group of sparrows foraging in the backyard, then we noticed an off-coloured one. We put it down to a white or albino sparrow, but as they spooked and moved on, we noticed it was a budgie :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Ruth! Where was your budgie experience Ruth? At home or somewhere tropical?
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