La Selva afternoon

We returned to our motel (La Quinta, no relation to the chain here) for a seista and rehydration period.  (I realized before we started down the trails at La Selva in the morning that I was feeling light-headed in the 80 degree temps and 98% humidity and downed half my water).  Mike, Rhoda, and I couldn't stand it though and headed back out onto the hotel's grounds as soon as lunch was over.  Red-throated Ant-tanager and Orange-billed Sparrows put in appearances.  Common Tody-Flycatcher was fairly common though a bugger to get a shot of.

Wood thrush was fairly common in the Costa Rican low and mid-elevations.

We managed Tropical Pewee and Gnatcatcher as well as our first Scaly-breasted Hummingbird, a bird that I hadn't expected to get into the range of.  Mike and I glimpsed a Bronzy Hermit (one of 3 hummers we saw that escaped my shutter) and Rhoda a Long-tailed.  We spent about an hour holding vigil over the heliconias favored by the hermits before it was time to head back out to La Selva.

When we reached the reserve we found some Golden-hooded Tanagers feeding just outside the visitor center.

I'd seen this species in Belize back in the digi-scoping dark age; getting photos of it was definitely a goal for this trip.

We hadn't gone far down the trails before one of the guides spotted a Semi-plumbeous Hawk perched up over the trail.  It was remarkably tame as it sat looking for lizards and frogs.

With the day's heat dying off birds became more active and a series of lowland specialties made appearances, more Dusky Antbirds, a brief look at Fasciated Ant-shrike, a really dug in Rufous Motmot, and then a Slaty-breasted Tinamou that started calling (a low mourning dove like ooooh) and worked its way towards the trail to the guides' delight.

This is another pic that gathers more light than was actually present, it's manually focused at 1/60th of a second.

Blue-chested Hummingbird, Lesser Greenlet, Cinnamon Woodpecker, and a couple of Woodcreepers (Cocoa and Plain-brown) popped up as well.  The guides were particularly excited about the Plain-brown since it's generally only seen around ant swarms (which we weren't lucky enough to run into anywhere along the way.

We ended the night with Short-tailed Nighthawk over one of the bridges, somewhere between our 100th and 130th bird of the day depending on how many that a person managed to get onto.