Bougainvillea butterflies

I think this will be the only post from this trip without birds, but the butterflies were pretty photogenic too.  I saw a few odes but I don't think I took any pics.  The leps were hard enough to figure out ID's on.

Zebra Longwings were common throughout our stay.

We saw a few Rusty-tipped Pages

I thought I'd be able to figure out this one but couldn't find it on my initial google searches.

I didn't even try these two

Even worse, here's straight up flower pics

I ought to try to photoshop in some hummingbirds.

Finally the sunset our first night

First Lifer of the trip

I worked a lot harder this year trying to learn some of the songs for this trip, concentrating on the wrens and some of the highland birds that I was more familiar with (there's also fewer birds in the highlands making it considerably less daunting).

On the first afternoon some snippets of wren song caught our ears, sure enough, a pair of Rufous-naped wrens were working a viny wall (wrens in CR seem to love to hang out in dense vine tangles).  They popped up after a bit.

This species turned out to be quite common in the Pacific lowlands as well, being conspicuous and social at first light.

Here's a view of the rufous nape...

There were a lot of birds in the gardens; Squirrel Cuckoo is always a fun bird given their enormous size, about 50% longer than ours.

Speaking of enormous size, here's a Variegated Squirrel; I think our local tree rats might be jealous.

It wasn't until dusk that we happened upon a little blind end in the labyrinthine gardens that had some seed spread on some raised concrete.  There was a White-eared Ground-sparrow, the 2nd I've ever seen.

I tried to find the seed again the next morning at the end of breakfast to watch for Prevost's but couldn't find my way back.  Apparently the Prevost's have been much less regular since a change in planting practices at an adjacent coffee plantation.

PURA VIDA II

After having thoroughly enjoyed a week in Costa Rica last winter I couldn't resist going back.  After being a part of a large Sarett tour last year I arranged an 8 person tour through Costa Rica Gateway.  We had a great time.

It was a bit of an adventure getting there; the night before we were to leave I-94 was closed to the east of me.  The entirely of South Bend, including the airport, was shut down to the South of me.  Luckily O'Hare lay to the west and I drove there not long after the kids went to bed in negative temperatures.  I ended up dozing in the airport for several hours.  The upshot was that the early flights allowed arrival in the very early afternoon, which meant one thing.  Birds.

As with last year we started in the Hotel Bougainvillea, a beautifully landscaped motel that provides an introduction to some of the common birds, starting with the National bird of Costa Rica (wait for it ... yes brought to you by the same creative minds that came up with Michigan's state bird when a unique revenue-producing alternative was so so easy), the Clay-colored Robin (or Thrush as is apparently more politically correct)

Not Quetzal or Scarlet Macaw, or even a Motmot?  A dingy relatively uniformly brown bird.  It made no sense other than that our guide Vernon mentioned that they typically become very vocal when it's time to plant crops so they're apparently recognized by the workers.  And why wouldn't you choose your official bird to be one that heralds work?

Two very common flycatchers were present, Tropical Kingbird, which didn't have much in the way of relatives,

as well as Great Kiskadee (whose cousins the Boat-billed and Social Flycatchers both were present in the garden, along with 3 or 4 more over the course of the trip)

Almost all of the hummingbirds present (with the exception of a young Ruby-throated) were Rufous-tailed.  It was too easy to just look at the tail or body shape and snap-call them Rufous-taileds here; from the front Scaly-breasted, Steely-vented, to some extent Charming, and to a lesser extent Goldentail, look quite similar.  More study early in the trip of this common species would have made ID of the less common species later much easier.

White-winged Dove was common about the city, though they petered out at least in the areas we went to

Hoffman's Woodpecker is the representative zebra-backed woodpecker.  We found a pair attending a cavity.  The female has just the yellow nape but lacks the color to the cap or lore.

Not all the birds on the grass were Clay-colored Thrushes though, at least a couple times they were Blue-crowned Motmots that had flown down from their perch after some bug or another.  Last year this was the last bird of the trip for me, this year looping into the other half of the country we saw them basically every day we weren't in the highlands.

 

 I should be updating much more regularly now that I have a boatload of material...

 

 

 

 

 



 



 





10 years ago today ...

... give or take.

Prior to having kids Ginger and I used to go up to the UP once or twice a winter.  It didn't take too many times to see the gyrfalcons that used to hang out along the St Mary's river (though I never managed a decent pic), but we made a lot of trips before we finally found a Great Gray.  This one (the only one I've ever seen) was on the south end of either Sugar or Neebish Island.

This was in the digi-scoping days, and with a pretty early camera (the original file is about 1100 pixels high, my 7D is about 5000 at its widest dimension, so about 4% as many pixels as the current files).

Ginger named the bird Clyde.  You may or may not be able to guess what I suggested as its name if it was a girl (think the Seinfeld where Jerry forgot his GF's name).

Proof of patch

A lot of birders have an area they consider their patch.  There's probably as many criteria as to what constitutes a patch as there are birders.  The most important, however, is how often are you there?  If you're just chasing some bird or just checking during peak migration, it doesn't really count.  You can say you're there a lot.  Or you can be there a lot.  So often that you show up on the satellite photos.  Tim's car has been on the Google maps satellite and street view for a couple years now.  I was on Zillow.com earlier today and noticed the satellite pics were taken in late spring or early summer, as opposed to the early spring Google maps views.  I scrolled over to Tiscornia and what did I find?  A small gray car in the counter spot (Tim's), a buffer zone empty spot, and a red sedan in the spot next to it.  HA!  That would be my car.  Some of the fishermen's cars in the SE corner of the lot are probably ID-able too.

I'm not sure if I should be ashamed or proud, but I can tell you I'm proud.

Here's a few pics from earlier this week from (where else?) the pier.

I think this Glaucous Gull is 2nd winter, based on the still bi-colored bill and without strong evidence of the gray mantle or wing coverts that start coming in for 3rd winter.  It has a bit of the smudgy stuff you commonly see in the axilla area in 2nd winter birds (though I don't know if that increases or decreases as the winter progresses; I've certainly seen birds with a lot more than this one).

Deep snow Solitaire

Neither Rhoda nor I could resist attempting birding after the recent storm and cold snap.  We figured the Solitaire corner of Warren Dunes would be sheltered, getting out there couldn't be that bad could it? Well.  The snow was thigh deep in places, and the rest of the blow out was, well, pretty blown through with wind.  The bird's juniper was pretty covered with snow.  It looked pretty bleak and I was actually heading back when Rhoda, far more dauntless than me, texted she had the bird.

Sure enough, Townsend's Solitaire.

 It spent most of its time tucked down pretty low before working its way back over to its juniper.  It was giving a clear tee-tee-tee call that was fairly unique, somewhat the quality of a veery's call but much higher pitched (and obviously given in series).  I'm not sure that I've heard this bird vocalize before.

Most of the birds in the blowout were Tree Sparrows.  This pic isn't great, but it gives some sense of the blowing snow.

 The above 2 pics were on the way in, the bottom one on the way out (I forgot to change the settings on the camera from backlit shaded solitaire which weren't ideal for frontlit full sun with bonus reflected snow light).  It would have been a decent pic otherwise...

Snowy shoot I (?)

I haven't had a ton of luck with photographing the Snowy Owl incursion.  Rhoda let me know earlier in the week though that birds were visible in the Scottdale plains.

 Snowy Owls aren't the only raptors there.

I like the snow that the owl kicked off its tussock on this shot

It flew up to a cross beam where I could drive much closer, maybe should have taken a shot of a nice grassy knoll in similar light and photo-shopped in the owl...

Hopefully I'll get some more Snowy shots, they're a fun target no doubt.