Saturday, July 19, 2014

Day 5 and 6: Travel Day and Rancho Naturalista - Day 1

Day 5: Travel Day

Hola! It's Ethan. Early morning on day 5, we woke up at the CEDCAS Clinic super excited for the birding half of the trip. By 9:30, we had arrived at Rob's Hotel. From there we drove towards Rancho Naturalista, making two stops. The first was to a lookout area from which we saw a river, which held 4 Neotropic Cormorants and about 40 Wood Storks! We also viewed around 30 Black Vultures, plus a Short Tailed Hawk and a Swallow Tailed Kite. Afterwards, we drove to a park visible from the overlook. The park was very active, with many nesting birds and tons of life birds. Close views of Crimson Fronted Parakeets, as well as Montezuma Oropendola, Blue Crowned Motmot, breeding Palm Tanagers, and Common Tody-Flycatchers. Our best birds were probably two Prevost's Ground Sparrows, which we have good pictures of because they are uncommon. A few hours later, we arrived at our last stop, which gave us very hard to find birds including Red-breasted Blackbird, Yellow-faced Grassquit, Southern Lapwing,   Keel-billed Toucan, and 3 Green Ibis! We also had good looks at Groove-billed Ani and Cattle Egrets. Finally, as we were driving into Rancho, we saw 3 Keel-billed Toucans. The hummingbird feeders were alive with Jacobins, which we've learned is constant. On to the next section!

Blue-crowned Motmot (Tyler)






Day 6: Rancho Naturalista Day 1

Hey Tyler here! Today was our first day at Rancho Naturalista. Last night, as we were going through pictures, we heard a Common Paraque calling in the distance. Today we began early at 5:30 am to get in a full day of birding. When we woke up, it was pouring rain which was the perfect reason to sit on the deck and watch the feeders for a while. This quickly proved to be a great idea where we got some of the amazing feeder birds here such as Bay-headed Tanager, Montezuma Oropendola, Grey-headed Chachalaca, and Passerini's tanager. After breakfast, the rain let up and we went with a guide from Rancho Naturalista, Harry. We no more than left the parking lot and Harry had pointed out a Black-crested Coquette, a very small and amazing looking hummingbird. As we continued on our walk, we added many tanager species, wren species, flycatcher species, and more. We did happen to come across 3 Collared Aracari along with several Keel-billed Toucan. One of the best birds was we were able to find the very elusive Long-billed Gnatwren. From there, we went up into the forest and immediately noticed a change in species. We were able to see more of the dense wooded birds such
as Buff-throated Folliage-gleaner, slaty spinetail, several species of woodcreepers, and deep forest flycatchers. We then headed back to go to lunch and after lunch, headed right back where we left off. This time, we climbed much higher and found even more great birds! We heard then saw 3 Crested Guan, a bird we didn't really expect to actually see. When we reached the highest point we were going to go to, we got excellent looks at a White-crowned Manakin, a bird that usually doesn't stay still for more than a second. We went back down to the lodge and went to the hummingbird ponds, a series of ponds from a stream where the hummingbirds all come to bathe for the night. Our target birds here were Snowcap and Dull-mantled Antbird. After watching the hummingbirds for a while, our target showed up. A male Snowcap showed up! We had watched females flying around hoping to get a glimpse of this amazing purple and white hummingbird, and we did. While watching him, Harry noticed a black bird walking on the found in the back of the ponds. It was the Dull-mantled Anitbird! We successfully got our target species for the day and then some, ending with an amazing 121 species for the day and about 150 for the trip.

Grey-headed Chachalaca

Long-billed Gnatwren

Bananaquit (Ethan)

Crowned Woodnymph