Monday, March 11, 2013

The lowland rain falls mainly on the DFF

Day 5 was somewhat a day of audibles.  Threatening skies turned into mists which turned into frank rain at times.  Steven and Vernon decided the best thing to do was to start at another lodge where Dusky-faced Tanager comes into their fruit feeders and Spectacled Owls can be found on their day roost.  It didn't take Steven long to find the owl nestled deep in the gloom trying to be shaded from the rain and light (such as it was).
We'd heard them call most evenings and early mornings at the La Quinta (one of our group nearly split their head open trying to get a look at one in the dark), so it was nice to see it in the day.

Dusky-faced tanager (the DFFT) didn't take long to appear.  They're kind of ugly.
Or maybe a lot ugly.  Whichever lodge this was, according to Steven, is the only place that Dusky-faced comes in to feeders regularly.

We spent some time in the rain watching their fruit feeders from the shelter of a balcony.  Kiskadees were one of the most common birds of the trip.  This may be the only pic I took of one though.
You can find youtube videos of tanagers just coming in by the horde to fruit feeders.  We were never really in the right place at the right time for this, this was probably the biggest species diversity on one platform that we saw, Blue-gray tanagers in the back, Green Honeycreeper in the foreground turned away, and Golden-hooded Tanager on the right.

I actually kind of like the effect of the raindrops about this Passarini Tan.

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