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| Rufous Motmot |
For these two days of our adventure we were based at Selva Verde lodge where the bird feeders delivered the avian smorgasbord of delights that we had rapidly become accustomed to. Our prebreakfast visit to the feeders produced perhaps the best views we had of Toucan on the whole trip with Yellow Throated and Keel-billed making multiple visits to the feeders. We were all amused by their comical habit of slowly rotating their heads from side to side when they landed. We speculated that their enormous bill, evolved for cracking hard fruit, meant that they could only do a visual safety check before feeding by rotating their head! Tanagers and Honeycreepers were ever present feeding on the soft fruit provided by the staff. Black-cheeked Woodpeckers also gave wonderful views as they came into feed on the bountiful goodies on offer.
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Keel-billed Tocan
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| Yellow-throated Toucan |
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| Black-cheeked Woodpecker |
Perhaps the star amongst all these wonderful early morning birds was a visually dazzling Rufous Motmot. Before this trip I had never seen a member of this flamboyant species and I could have easily stayed all day watching them. The species is characterised by their long tail racquets used in display. The Rufous Motmot has a stunning blue bare-shafted racket tip as per my photo. Costa Rica's birds often have flamboyant tails, believed to be due to sexual selection, where males with showy tails attract mates. I can’t think of anything vaguely equivalent in our Uk birds. Perhaps the dense rain forests requires dazzling foliage to attract attention? After a bit of reading I discovered something called “runaway selection” which it is believed causes males to evolve increasingly exaggerated features to outcompete their male competition.
A Collared Aracari also dropped in and posed momentary for the avian paparazzi. A, dare I say rather ugly, Chestnut-headed Oropendola tucked into the plantain. In truth this was a rather bizarre looking bird being almost like a blackbird who had a nasty trick played on it while asleep when its mates superglued an incongruously massive white bill onto its head! -
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| Collared Aracari |
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| Chestnut-headed Oropendola |
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| Blue-grey Tanger |
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| Female Green Honeycreeper |
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| Male Green Honeycreeper |
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| Breakfast fruit for humans! |
After breakfast we made our way by coach to the nearby La Selva Biological Station
where it is a requirement to be accompanied by a local guide. We spent lots of time sheltering from the heavy tropical rainstorms and trying to avoid literally zillions of mozzies. In between the downpours our local guide led us along a trail and pointed out a
Great Tinamou, a normally hard to see species secreted away in the dark understorey. This is a large almost tailless game bird that lives on the ground in humid tropical lowlands. Before the ban it was hunted for food and thus has been wiped out from many areas.
The dense forest was again typically hard going but we did see a Gartered Trogon which posed nicely for a few photos. Walking back to the coach we paused to watch and photograph a Strawberry Poisoned Dart Frog. I guess their bright colouration is to warn predators that they will get more than they bargained for if they try to eat it! Their name originates from their historic use of their toxic secretions to poison the tips of blow darts. Another interesting factoid that I have learned is that they get their poison by ingesting toxic arthropods from which they absorb and reuse the consumed toxins. It is hence perfectly safe to keep them in captivity if you control their diet!
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| Gartered Trogon |
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| Slaty-tailed Trogon |
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| Strawberry poisoned dart frog |
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| Green and Black Poisoned Dart Frog |
After another bountiful lunch we returned to the Biological station to see a rare North American vagrant, a Grey Catbird. This one was particularly poignant to me as I missed a well twitched individual in Cornwall a number of years back when I was on a family holiday in Canada. We also managed to see a colourful male Slaty-tailed Trojan. With the rainforest again not being particularly productive we moved a short distant and walked along a dirt track where we enjoyed good views of Thick-billed Seed-Finch and a pair of Red-lored Amazon Parrots.
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| Grey Catbird |
The next morning breakfast at the bird feeders again delivered abundant colourful birds – I could get use to this! After breakfast we had a non-birding excursion to a chocolate plantation where we learned all about the process of chocolate production. We tasted the raw seeds which I found to be most unpleasant with a slimy furry texture with no hint of chocolate. Rather oddly, the pods develop from small flowers that burst out directly from the trunk of the tree. We tasted the proto-chocolate at various stages in the production process and it was only after the seeds had been fermented, roasted and ground that the characteristic chocolate taste formed. It was an interactive demonstration and I was called on to grind some roasted beans using a rather Heath-Robinson looking device cobbled together from an old bicycle!
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| Shinny Honeycreeper |
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| Mature chocolate Pod |
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| Some old fool grinding Chocolate beans! |
After lunch we visited an artist friend of Paco’s called Cope. Cope gave us wellies and then led us into the depths of the muddy forest to look for Owls. He soon pointed out two Crested Owls resting in the trees. Cope told us to be very careful not to disturb the vegetation as they might flush and led us in pairs to some stunning close views of this striking central American Owl. It is a strictly nocturnal medium-sized owl, easily recognizable with its very long whitish ear tufts and otherwise darker appearance. We then moved a short distance to where a Spectacled Owl was roosting.
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| Crested Owl |
Back in Cope’s garden we enjoyed his bird feeders. Cope set up a Banana flower filled with sugar water which was lit by some photographic lights. While, as discussed here, my 100-500mm zoom lens was far from ideal for this purpose, I did manage to get some vaguely passable pics of hummingbirds in flight. We were also treated to some of Cope’s wonderful paintings and I brought a lovely print of a Snow-cap Hummingbird in flight. Cope had his young daughter with him who he carried everywhere, a seemingly wise precaution as he had found a meter long Fer-de Lance snake, the most venomous snake in central America, in his garden the previous week!
White-necked Jacobin
Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!
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