Scythebill

Who wouldn't want to see a Scythebill?  There are 2 members of this woodcreeper sub-group in Central America.  I've briefly seen the more widespread Brown-billed at Rancho Naturalista but Domi efforted Red-billed all week, occasionally trolling with tapes in likely looking spots.  He had his work cut out for him to not make post-eagle day anti-climactic, but we were at his next location pre-dawn the next morning and Red-billed started calling right out of the bus.  He was able to pull it out of the gloom somewhat with a few more audio cuts.  This was easily among one of my top 10 most wanted for the trip.

Maybe an hour later we would have been able to see the red bill but we weren't going to complain.

Interesting birds continued to appear as we alternately walked and rode in the back of the flatbed halftruck with new becards and woodpeckers for the trip such as this One-colored Becard.

 There were several birds we heard on a daily basis, such as Bright-rumped Attila and Brown-capped Tyrannulet but this was the group's first visual on the ever-excitable Attila

As the sun rose so did activity.  Can you spot the bird in this next pic?

here it is a little more zoomed in, still not easy to see.

It's a Mustached Antwren, a canopy special that a couple of us glimpsed last year.  It's essentially the size of a winter wren but with a heavier bill and no tail.  Black-and-white striped upperparts combined with a lemon yellow belly made for a fairly unique bird.

We saw a number of raptors as we bumped down the road, including the first perched Swallow-tailed Kites that most of us had ever seen, as well as the ever-present Roadside Hawks and a couple Double-toothed Kites with their distinctive dark central throat stripe.

Fun birds continued all morning but I'm going to save the second half for later...