Avian Ecologist

Farm Roads

We spent our last morning in Arenal on the farm roads. We started the morning by walking down to white hawk villa, but backtracked after not finding much activity. On the trail just past Phil’s villa, we were pretty excited to be able to confidently separate 2 rufous mourners from the pihas we’d seen the […]

Arenal Observatory Lodge

Today was our only full day in Arenal, so we made it count! We were awakened by a common pauraque singing in the “nautical twilight” hours, which would bookend our day. We got to the observatory lodge at 6 AM and made our way on the “orange trails” to the garden. There, we saw our […]

Arenal

Today was our journey to Arenal! Once we got to Nuevo Arenal, we got our lifer palm tanagers. Downtown, we finally got good looks at gray-breasted martins. Once we arrived at our accommodations, Paul spotted our lifer Passerini’s tanagers and long-tailed tyrant. I spotted our lifer piratic flycatcher. Then, we went into El Castillo for […]

Santa Rosa National Park

Today we decided it was worth it to get to Santa Rosa early, and we weren’t disappointed! I finally got good looks at the banded wrens we briefly glimpsed the day before. I was also delighted by the time we were able to spend with yellow-olive flycatchers. Not only did we have great looks at […]

Pacífico

This morning, we heeded our bird alarm clocks and were treated to views of streak-backed orioles and black-headed trogon again right within the confines of the condo complex! We continued up the road and found stripe-headed sparrow in an area that, sadly, may be marked for development. As we walked back down the road, I saw my lifer squirrel cuckoo and rose-throated becards in the […]

Coco

In our condo complex, there were several cinnamon hummingbirds along the driveway. In the evening, there was a small flock of lesser nighthawks!

Birds of Costa Rica!

These are the species that would be lifers for me, whose ranges overlap Playas del Coco (where we’ll arrive tomorrow)! thicket tinamou least grebe crested bobwhite plain-breasted ground-dove blue ground-dove ruddy quail dove mangrove cuckoo pheasant cuckoo striped cuckoo white-tailed nightjar northern potoo black swift (transient) lesser swallow-tailed swift green-breasted mango plain-capped starthroat Canivet’s emerald […]

UW Arb

We made one last (failed) attempt looking for the goshawk by entering at J1 from the Martin St. lot. We passed through J2 to L8, and cut through to L6. We essentially reversed course back.

Arb

This time, I walked out through the native plant garden to find my partner. We parked at Wingra springs lot to look for the goshawk and made our way down to N5, but unfortunately no luck!

Arboretum

Today took me back to my old stomping grounds! We walked to the maintenance area in order to get to F7-F6. We then went the F4-F1 route to get to A7. We continued on through A4 back to the visitor center. Before we left, though, we passed through the Troia arch into Longenecker gardens for […]