Costa Rica Trip Summary

This is a Clay-colored Thrush Turdus grayi, the Costa Rican national bird. It is a tribute to the peaceful nation, one without a military and with an astonishingly high percentage of their land dedicated to national parks and preserves, that they chose this demure garden bird with a nice song as their national bird over many colorful alternatives.

I am at the Hotel Bougainvillea in San Jose, Costa Rica staying overnight before my flight home tomorrow. I’ve had a wonderful visit to see my daughter Jean and her partner Alan at their project headquarters for Https://tropicalregeneration.org Check out the web site. I’m really proud of the work that they are doing to spread the word and stoke the fires of energy to regenerate our tropical and temperate habitats. They have a small, 600 M2 plot of land in Playa Chuquita in Puerto Viejo de Telemarca, Costa Rica. On this property they have a delightful Jamaican style home (available on Airbnb soon. Check for the link on their website above if you are interested) where they are rapidly developing a food forest type permaculture farm. It is already incredibly productive, and soon will provide the majority of the food they need on an ongoing basis.

This is a molting male Passerini’s Tanager Ramphocelus passerinii Check out the work flight feathers (wing and tail) and the mixture of fresh, growing and new body feathers.

I dedicated this visit to just that, visiting with Jean and Alan, but alas a birder is a birder, and so I birded in spare time. That said, I now am even more convinced that I, and likely most visiting non-tropical experienced birders, need a local expert to help with bird finding and especially identification in the tropics. Most birds are high in the canopy, give fleeting glimpses, are backlit and just plain hard to identify. In addition, the timing of my visit was for the convenience of a personal visit, and not timed for a peak birding experience. Enough excuses, but I found an embarrassingly few bird species.

Sloth’s were everywhere near where I stayed. I believe this is the Brown-throated Sloth Bradypus variegatus, the three-toed sloth of the region. These have three toes on both front and back feet, vs. 2 on the front feet of the two-toed sloths.

On the first day I travelled to Playa Chiquita on a red-eye from Seatac to Miami, then on to San Juan, CR getting though customs by about 10 AM. I had 4 hours to kill waiting for a shuttle to Playa Chiquita, and was too tired to travel so just looked up occasionally at the shuttle spot. I managed just Great-tailed Grackle and Bahaman Swallow.

Gray-cowled Wood-rail * Aramides cajaneus* are very noisy in the morning, and lived near Tropical Regeneration’s HQ.

The shuttle ride took 7 ½ hours so on arrival after 9:30 I crashed, and the next day we visited and relaxed. I did bird from the back porch of Jean’s home, a magical place with pretty good bird activity in their garden. *
Over the next 3 days I birded very locally in spare time, usually a morning walk from about 6-7:30 AM and intermittently throughout the day. I got a pretty good handle on the yard birds there. The most common were Passerini’s Tanager, Black-striped Sparrow Aramides cajaneus, Clay-colored Thrush, Great Kiskidee Pitangus sulphuratus and it’s smaller look-alike Social Flycatcher Pitangus sulphuratus, Rufous-tailed Hummingbird Amazilia tzacatl and Orange-chinned Parakeet Brotogeris jugularis. Occasional birds included Bay Wren Cantorchilus nigricapillus, Keel-billed Toucan Ramphastos sulfuratus, and Black-cheeked Woodpecker Ramphastos sulfuratus among others.

Euphonias look like seedeaters with their sparrow like bills, but they eat mostly fruit. I saw them eating the flowers of ginger plants often. This is an Olive-backed Euphonia. Euphonia gouldi

By Monday we were ready to start daily adventures. On the first day we headed to BriBri, a nearby town with some municipal offices where Jean needed to do some business, and where on the way home we stopped at a magical waterfall a short hike from the road. It provided a refreshingly cool microclimate formed by the force of the waterfall spraying cool water into the air and cooling everything my estimated 20 degrees or so from ambient temperatures in the mid 90’s.

Keel-billed Toucans were seen at least twice from the Tropical Regeneration HQ site.

The next day we took a boat ride to Punta Mona, spot with a large permaculture retreat center where Alan and to a lesser degree Jean have worked and volunteered. It is a great spot, with my favorite a second story open air library where I read in a hammock in a cooling ocean breeze all afternoon. Birding was somewhat slow, but the place was wonderful.

These are male Magnificent Frigatebirds Fregata magnificens and Royal Terns Thalasseus maximus on pilings off the place we landed the boat at Punta Mona.

Wednesday we tried to go to the Hawk Watch tower that records the highest number of raptors of any single spot in the western hemisphere in fall migration, an average of 2.1 million raptors. If is usually a moderately difficult 1-2 kilometer hike to a ridge. The recent torrential rains led to landslides necessitation a much longer hike and getting near the tower, where another slide kept us from quite getting there. The native BriBri tribe is pretty remarkable. I’m told that they originate as a blend of North and South American tribes that stayed together to form their own tribe in the jungle there. It is an almost impenetrable jungle, and they proudly remain unconquered by European invaders, despite centuries of attempts. Only a few members still live in the land left to them in a late 20th century agreement, but they subsist a long walk from any roads, and in a true jungle. One really kind resident used his machete to cut walking sticks for Jean and me, obviously taking pity on me as I slipped and fell all over the place in the muddy steep trails.

This is a shot of the jungle at the BriBri preserve.
Thursday Jean and Alan had work to do on their project, and I used one of their bikes to ride to Puerto Viejo only 5 kilometers north on a flat road in the midday after birding on foot in areas near their project early. I found few new species, but had a nice bike ride.

This is a Great Kiskidee. They are noisy and common there.
Today I took a shuttleback to San Jose and in the afternoon birded the 4 acre botanical gardens at Hotel Bougainvillea, where I had little success with finding birds. I added Red-billed Pigeon Patagioenas flavirostri and White-tipped Dove Leptotila verreauxi to my CR list, and am shutting it down for the night. I looked at the TV tonight, and a sad commentary on the status of pop-culture today is that the only English language show on the TV was “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”

This is a Social Flycatcher, the smaller look-alike of the Great Kiskidee. Note the smaller bill and that the white does not quite get all the way around the back of the nape.

I plan to post photos from the trip as I find time over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.

Passerini’s Tanager adult male.
Good birding. Steem on!