Quetzals in a cow pasture

One of the reasons I wanted to go back to Costa Rica was to get a better Quetzal pic, last year's was distant and in the shade.  When we got to Paraiso Quetzal we were told that a National Geo film crew had seen 30 of them that morning.  I'm not sure I believe that, but, we had pretty good hopes that we'd find one.  We were led down a winding two-track with a fair amount of up-and-down elevation change ending not in a scenic mountain grove, not in a picturesque grove with a mountain stream, but to a cow pasture.  A cow pasture with fruiting avocado trees.

One of the guides fairly quickly spotted a tucked in female across the field and waved us another 200 yards or so.  There was a male present as well.

A "tail"less mail (the long feathers are actually uppertail coverts) flew past and this bird flew out pretty quickly as well.

The group honestly would have been satisfied, but our guides were pretty confident they could find more (and after shushing us, ok, a couple times) we headed a few trees farther, and found a perched female and then her male as well.

We had a walk-away view.

One last view of the avocado fruits that were drawing them.