After spending a couple of days at Arenal (I had planned to spend longer, but was late in making the reservations) and we moved on to a treehouse site in north-central Costa Rica called BioThermales with a tree house and hot springs. More on the hot springs next post. It was an interesting spot, with a decent sized tract of 2nd growth forest.
White-collared Manakins were audibly snapping from the forest edge.
Pale-billed Woodpeckers worked the grounds, I was surprised to see several together.
The lady who ran the place with her husband was convinced that they had Ivory-billeds because a capital-O
Ornithologist (spoken in reverential tones) had seen one there and told her about it. I tried to point out that the habitat was completely wrong and it would be a very easy bird to photograph if you actually had one, but she remained unpersuadable from the delusion.
Both mornings we were there I explored their trails, one was short and flat, and the other quite steep.
I tracked down this Black-throated Trogon that was calling (and probably should have been able to recognize by voice)
I recognized Rufous Motmot vocalizations though
I was really hoping to find some antbirds, but I think this little patch of habitat was too small, or too isolated, to have some of the sexier forest interior species. I got my hopes up when I found a family group of
Barred Woodcreepers.
They formed the core of a little feeding flock that I would encounter on a couple of the walks. White-breasted Wood-wren was the other Central American species.
A Golden-winged and couple Kentucky Warblers would work the periphery, and were joined at least once by a/the Black-throated Trogon, but my hopes for an antpitta would have to wait another couple days...
No comments:
Post a Comment