So now, onto the birding! Our first morning in Costa Rica was Christmas Day. On looking from our hotel room balcony, the first bird that we positively identified was the Costa Rican National Bird the Clay-coloured Robin (or Clay-coloured Thrush as it is now known) it struck me as quite odd that a country that has some particularly spectacular birds would have such a plain, indeed drab bird as their national emblem. Apparently though, the bird represents the soil, agriculture and farming that Costa Rica is known for. In addition to the robin we saw birds that we would see throughout the trip Tropical Kingbird, Great Kiskadee, Blue-gray Tanager, Rufous-collared Sparrow and Great-tailed Grackle. Interestingly, Costa Rica doesnt have any corvids (they dont come any further south than Mexico) and the grackles occupy the ecological niche usually occupied by crows, ravens and jackdaws in other countries. One other bird of note in the gardens of the Hotel Bougainvillea was a Blue-crowned Motmot these birds are somewhat reminiscent of bee-eaters, and have long racquet-tipped tails. The gardens of Hotel Bougainvillea are noted for these birds so we were glad to see one (although we did catch up with these birds later on in the trip too). These gardens are also noted for Prevosts Ground-sparrow however we did not see any, and we did not see them at any other location in the trip.
Costa Rica Gateway had organised a visit for us to La Paz Waterfall Gardens. Since the visit included lunch, we drove there and arranged to be at the gardens around lunchtime. The weather was terrible we had torrential rain during the hours drive to the north of San Jose. La Paz Waterfall Gardens is quite high on the slope of the Poás Volcano so it attracts a number of the upper-elevation species. More importantly though, La Paz Waterfall Gardens is renowned for hummingbirds and has a hummingbird garden complete with feeders. We saw twelve species of hummingbird, including the more uncommon Magenta-throated Woodstar, Magnificent Hummingbird, Volcano Hummingbird (the Poás Volcano race, simoni) and Green Thorntail as well as the common, but spectacular, Violet Sabrewing and Green-crowned Brilliant. Many of these species of hummingbird we did not see again throughout our trip. Here we also met our first mammal of the trip, the racoon-like White-nosed Coati. This one was particularly cheeky it would sneak up on one of the hummingbird feeders and tilt it so that the sugar syrup leaked out, which it would then lap up! One of the rangers saw it and shooed it off, but the moment he was gone the coati would be back and up to its old tricks! We saw this species quite often throughout our trip and most times we noted that they were well adapted to humans, usually begging for or attempting to steal food!
On Boxing Day we set off for Drake Bay on the Osa Peninsula. Within a short time of leaving the hotel and getting onto the highway we encountered a tollbooth. Oops! We had no colónes and we were totally committed to the lane and the tollbooth. Fortunately they accepted US dollars, but gave us change in the local currency. Tollbooths seemed to occur quite randomly along the main east-west highway from San Jose just as we went through one, we seemed to arrive at another. The prices varied from 100 colónes (about 20c) to 700 colónes (about $1.40). Unfortunately at this time we encountered bumper-to-bumper traffic and slowed to a crawl. All up, it probably took us three hours to travel the 70km to the west coast. By the time we got to Jaco, another 40km south, it was 2pm and definitely time for lunch! Jaco is a very, very touristy town with the main street lined with bars, cafés, restaurants and tourist information outlets, all of them attempting to sell canopy zip-line tours to the backpackers and adventure tourists that found themselves there. We managed to find a popular café whose specialty was fish tacos but we definitely paid tourist prices for them!
We continued south along the coastal highway until Palmar, then headed south along the Pan-American Highway (the twisty road that goes through the central highlands). From here we headed far south to Chacarita which consists of not much more than a service station. This is also the turn-off for the Osa Peninsula as only another 50km further south gets you to the Panama border. The road into the Osa Peninsula soon becomes dirt and what small parts of it that are tarmacked are so badly potholed that you wonder why they bother. By now it was dark (being winter in Costa Rica, it was dark by about 5pm or just after). The dirt road continues west along the peninsula for about 50km then there is a turn-off to the north towards Drake Bay. The distance may not be far (about 40km to Drake Bay from the turn-off), but the road is worse and going becomes quite slow. To make matters worse, there are five river crossings that need to be made and by now it was very dark. Given my reputation for sinking 4WDs in rivers in remote locations, I was somewhat worried especially when the GPS started beeping to warn me of the first crossing. Fortunately by the light of the headlights I could see that the river wasnt much more than four inches deep, so I wasnt too worried. Im not sure that I would like to attempt this road during the wet season though! We finally arrived at the last river crossing and this was a doozy! Unlike all the previous crossings, this one must have been close to 50m wide, and there was no way I could see the depth clearly from the shore. I could see that there were fresh wheel tracks though, and figuratively (if not literally) holding my breath we headed out across the river and successfully made it to the other side.
We eventually made it to our accommodation, Pirates Cove, at 7:30pm only to be informed that we were very, very late! That being said, they rustled up some food for us, for which we were glad. Suzanne, the manager, asked us what activity we wanted to do the following day, to which we replied, Bird watching! in unison. She called the bird watching guide but no answer, so she left him a message and told us that wed need to meet at 5:30am the following morning, and hopefully he will have received the message and would be there. One good thing about the drive in after dark was that we saw our first two night birds both nightjars a Common Pauraque close to the start of the dirt road and many Lesser Nighthawks along the road, especially closer to Drake Bay.
The following morning we were up around 5am (which pretty well became the pattern throughout our trip). We met our guide, Gustavo Gutiérrez Calvo (burroskua@gmail.com), before 5:30am with time for a heart-starting cup of coffee. Our bird watching was in the vicinity of the cabins and some tracks in the area probably just as well that it wasnt too far as the humidity was incredible and I dont think Ive sweated so much since we were in Borneo! This was a good opportunity to see some of the Pacific lowland species and soon ended up with some good birds, including the vocal (but hard to see) Riverside Wren, a Bairds Trogon (our first trogon for the trip) and our first of many antbirds, the relatively common Black-hooded Antshrike. Gustavo, like most of our guides throughout our trip, didnt use playback, but rather imitated the birds by whistling. During this walk we encountered our first sloth of the trip, a Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth what an interesting creature! They are the neotropical equivalent of Australias Koala, almost entirely arboreal, only descending once a week to defecate. Their top speed is only 0.25km/h and thats when theyre in danger! Sloth fur harbours a number of types of symbiotic algae and cyanobacteria that provides them camouflage turning them almost green during the rainy season.
The bird we most wanted to see however, and one that we ended up seeing on this walk and on a few occasions subsequently in the Pacific south-west was Scarlet Macaw what a spectacular bird! And what a tragedy that both this and the Great Green Macaw almost became extinct in the wild because so many were taken for the pet trade. Fortunately both species have made a comeback, especially the Scarlet Macaw. To see such a large parrot with such a long tail flying over in pairs and squawking raucously was an amazing sight. Later we would see them roosting in trees, including just outside our cabin!
The following day we had booked a whale and dolphin watching trip with Divine Dolphin mostly to have some hope of seeing seabirds, but unfortunately the trip never got beyond Caño Island, so we never got deep enough for any really interesting birds, however we did see the ubiquitous Brown Booby, the less common Red-footed Booby, and both Laughing and Franklins Gulls. Whilst we saw no whales (actually we knew we wouldnt see whales as it was the wrong season and this annoyed us slightly with the tour operator as they wasted time pretending to look for whales when both they and we knew they werent there), we did see Pantropical Spotted Dolphins and Bottlenosed Dolphins.
On the next day we arranged a mangrove boat trip on the Sierpe River and specifically asked for Gustavo to be our guide. Now this trip was well worth it! Gustavo brought his son, Isaac, along for the ride a typical seven-year-old in that his attention span was not long, but he really did enjoy being in the boat and seeing the birds. This started a little mini-trend that we had of guides bringing family members on some of our expeditions! Something to do with it being the Christmas/New Year period, I imagine. On the mangrove trip we started to pick up some of the herons Little Blue Heron, Tricolored Heron, Green Heron and Boat-billed Heron, as well as Yellow-crowned Night-heron (the more common of the two Costa Rican night-herons). We also saw the delightful Northern Jaçana and the rare Southern Lapwing. The Sierpe River is one of the most reliable regions of Costa Rica to see this species, but it can be found in other lowland areas interestingly, this species had not been recorded in Costa Rica prior to 1997. We saw four of the six Costa Rican kingfishers (ultimately seeing five of the six) with American Pygmy Kingfisher being the least common. Additionally Gustavo knew of a roost for a Common Potoo, a bird that is reminiscent of Australias Tawny Frogmouth (in fact they belong to the same order, caprimulgiformes, but different families within that order) we found the bird at its roost, in a palm tree, on the bank of the river. Nearby we encountered Scarlet Macaws gorging themselves on almonds from a tree that had been planted specifically to attract them! The tour was supposed to end at lunchtime back at our accommodation, but Gustavo asked if wed like to keep going (to which we agreed immediately!) We lunched at a café in the village of Sierpe and continued the mangrove tour for another couple of hours afterwards, adding some great birds like Red-crowned and Golden-naped Woodpeckers, both south-western Costa Rican specialties. On this tour we also encountered our first monkeys a small group of the diminutive Central American Squirrel-monkey. We saw a pair of Crab-eating Raccoons (Mangrove Raccoons) in the mangroves and later on, under a bridge crossing the river, we found many, many Long-nosed Bats hanging on. The mangroves and river were great for reptiles too with the ubiquitous Green Iguanas basking in the sun, American Crocodiles on the river banks, Spectacled Cayman in the smaller creeks, a Northern Annulated Boa (Mangrove Boa) curled tightly around a branch of a mangrove, Black River Turtles and Common Basilisks (Jesus Christ Lizards) also on the bank.
The following day was our last day in Drake Bay, so in the morning we arranged for another bird watching walk with Gustavo this time slightly more into the forest where he had seen some good birds a couple of days earlier. Notable birds we saw were an additional three species of trogon Slaty-tailed, Gartered (Northern Violaceous) and Black-throated meaning that we had managed to see all four species of trogon possible on the Osa Peninsula. We also caught up with our fifth species of kingfisher, Ringed; all three honeycreepers Red-legged, Green and Shining; a range of hummingbirds including White-necked Jacobin, Bronzy Hermit, Long-billed Hermit, Stripe-throated Hermit, Violet-headed Hummingbird and Charming Hummingbird. We also managed to add to our antbirds with Chestnut-backed Antbird and Black-cheeked Ant-Tanager. This morning we saw a second Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth, we also had a treat and saw several of the endangered Geoffroys Spider Monkey deeper in the forest (in actual fact, by the time our trip ended, we had seen all four species of Costa Rican monkey). Gustavo picked up a couple of pebbles and clicked them together over and over again, funnily enough after a while we heard a response! This provided one of the real highlights of the walk, when Orange-collared Manakins are displaying they make a sound just like two pebbles clicking together and they responded to Gustavo and put on a great display for us!
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