the end

We spent the last morning birding the grounds of our hotel minutes away from the airport.  Most of our flights didn't leave until noon so we had about 3 hours.  Not surprisingly, I spent most of it working and re-working the limited grounds.

 Not long after dawn I heard a Plain Wren and played its song once on the ipod.  It came in fairly close, the first time I managed a good look at the species over the 2 trips.

Mostly though, it was the common birds that were about, a Red-billed Pigeon in nice light,

Rufous-naped wrens preening each other.

Rufous-tailed Hummingbird...

 

Gray Saltator...

Clay-colored Thrush...

Lesser Vulture-flycatcher (ok Boat-billed)

A couple of Cinnamon Hummingbirds surprised me.  The only reason I took a picture of the first one (which I expected to be Rufous-tailed) was that I had had trouble separating Rufous-tailed from Snowy-bellied and Steely-vented at various points and figured I'd build up my reference photos.

We were about 20-30 miles west of Hotel Bougainvillea though, clearly enough for at least some changes in the birds.

The total from the trip was a little over 300 birds in all.  That included about 20 birds of prey, an additional 7 owls (all seen), 26 hummingbirds, 6 trogons (with a 7th heard), 36 flycatchers, 4 manakins, and 15 tanagers.  About 60 birds were lifers including 10 hummingbirds.  I had been to the highlands before (where only a couple birds were lifers).  The majority of the rest of the trip was in the Pacific lowlands.  My next (year's???) trip will focus on the mid-elevations.