Costa Rica, 1-23 March 2013 Julian and Sandra Hughes, Llandudno, UK. morfavilla (at) googlemail.com This was our first trip to mainland Central America, although JH has been to the Caribbean several times. We saw 382 bird species, mostly self-found, as we rarely employed a guide. Flights: we flew with KLM from Manchester to Panama City via Amsterdam, then on to San Jose with COPA, a KLM-partner, which meant our bags could be checked all the way through. This was cheaper than flying with BA/Iberia via Spain and didn’t involve the faff with US immigration of travelling via the States. However, while we were in CR, we discovered that flights from Canada are frequent and this might have been worth investigating as an alternative option, as the outward travel time was 24 hours. Flight cost was £600 each. Driving: we rented a Daihatsu Terios/Bego from Budget, which cost $2049 for three weeks, including all insurances (I decided to go for the premium insurance) and the hire of a Satnav, something we’d never done on a previous trip but in light of several friends’ comments that road signage is minimal (I’d prefer ‘random’). Although this was $10 a day, it was worth it to avoid map-reading domestics and led to more relaxing driving. It was especially useful for getting in and out of San José, and especially on the Saturday we travelled across the city and found most of the routes we wanted closed by the police for a cycle roadrace. We picked up the car from the airport branch the morning after we arrived so that we didn’t have to start our journey in the dark having to find the hotel, though this did require $25 taxi rides in each direction. I did get into a tussle with Budget on our return because the outside of the car was dirty, a result of three weeks on dusty roads, and they wanted to charge $250 to wash it. The road conditions were much better than I had expected, with many roads being resurfaced while we were there. A few places are rough, notably the drive up to Monteverde, but apparently this is a deliberate local policy to prevent too much tourism and the over-development that would follow. Fair enough. In the dry conditions, the 4WD was rarely deployed, though some tracks in wet conditions would make this a necessity. It does take a long time to go any distance; the speed limit is 80kph (50 mph) but you rarely travel at that speed for any time before you find a slow bus or truck and the winding nature of the roads make it difficult to overtake. The traffic around the edge of San Jose is pretty busy during the day. For example, it took three hours to travel the 100 km from Rancho Naturalista to the airport, so you have to allow plenty of time to get around. Books/apps and kit: we pretty much planned our route by joining the dots in Barrett Lawson’s Where to Watch Birds in Costa Rica. This proved excellent, with accurate maps and descriptions and we found relatively few changes since the book was written in 2008. Where there are, I have noted these in

the site reports below. We supplemented these with more recent trip reports from the web. Our field guide was Birds of Costa Rica by Richard Garrigues and Robert Dean, which was pretty good, although the colour reproduction on some plates was a little misleading. Nonetheless, I’d give it 9 out of 10. We supplemented this with the Sibley Birds of North America app, which I already had on my phone and was a useful check against Garrigues & Dean as it contains more detail for the migratory birds. The bird names used in this report are those used by Garrigues & Dean. We also downloaded an iPhone app, BirdSounds Costa Rica (£13.99), which proved valuable when we were searching for a target species (to know what we ought to be listening for) and on a number of occasions to confirm a sighting. Each species has two or more tracks, both songs and calls, and I recall only two species which we wanted but were not included. I prevaricated on whether to take a telescope, knowing that its use would be limited in a forest-dominated trip, and the tripod takes so much luggage space. On the day before we left, I caved in and took the ‘scope but with a monopod. This proved a decent compromise, as the ‘scope is essential at the coastal sites we visited, and we also used it for some of the roadside birding. Accommodation and food: in three weeks, you can cover a lot of ground, but still only a proportion of Costa Rica. We took the early, wise, decision that we wouldn’t go farther south than Cerro del Muertes and nor would we go to the Caribbean coast. To do CR properly needs a much longer holiday or several visits. We will be going back! We pre-booked some of the accommodation, mainly where the options would be limited, and this was sensible as several of the popular birding lodges were fully occupied with groups. However, near sites with plenty of tourist accommodation, we just turned up and found a hotel, and most were almost empty; March is a shoulder month providing Easter doesn’t fall early. We also found that we could get better deals than the website ratecard, especially for cash payment. We typically paid $40-$70/night for a double room and breakfast, but more at the big lodges: Arenal Observatory, Rancho Naturalista, Guayabo. Meals were only a little cheaper than a pub meal in Britain ($8-10 for a main course at a roadside café, $15-$17 at the hotels and lodges) and a bottle of Imperial beer typically $2. The big surprise for us was the abundant availability of wifi, meaning we could use the internet on smartphones/iPad in almost every place we stayed and even many roadside cafes. The only two hotels that did not have wifi were Paraiso de Quetzales and El Manantial in San Gerardo de Dota. Most hotels do breakfast at 6.30 am, so if you’re staying close to a National Park you can eat and still be at the Park gates for the 7 am opening. Also, check-out time for most is 12 noon, so you can go birding, come back and have a shower before moving on, meaning you don’t have to leave your

luggage in the car on transit days, where it can be vulnerable to theft at a few hotspots, notably Carara and Cerro del Muertes. Weather and bugs: we saw rain on only a few days, and only heavily on the afternoon at La Selva, but the dominating factor in the first week were strong westerly winds. This made forest birding very challenging, especially at altitude: at Rincon de la Vieja NP, the wind rolled through the canopy like thunder, making it hard to hear or see birds. We later learned from friends staying at Tortuguero that the same weather system brought 36 hours of rain to the Caribbean coast, so we were lucky. The breeze did at least take the edge off the heat at Palo Verde, which otherwise would have been exceedingly hot – some other friends were there two weeks later and reported it was 39 Centigrade. Monteverde and Arenal were very pleasant, reaching the mid- or high-20s in the afternoon. This was also true of Cerro del Muertes and San Gerardo de Dota, but the first two hours of each day were bitterly cold, and hat-and-gloves would have been useful. That said, the birdlife at these latter sites early in the morning didn’t seem very active and so daybreak starts seem less important here. Rancho Naturalista was hot and humid (mid-30s until late afternoon), but staff there reported that prior to our visit it had been temperate. Because of snakes and scorpions, boots are essential on forest trails, and in some places I had to forego shorts in favour of thin Nosilife trousers, but t-shirts were fine except on the cold mornings. We didn’t encounter many mosquitoes, but we did find that a tiny little fly (about the size of thunder fly) could pack a punch, and Sandra was well munched at Rincon de la Vieja NP. The trails at Savegre and Rancho Naturalista also had plenty of irritating flies. Itinerary 3-5 March: Tarcoles/Carara NP 5 March: Chomes 6-8 March: Colorado/Rincon de la Vieja NP 8-10 March: Palo Verde OTS 10-13 March: Santa Elena/Monteverde 13-14 March: Arenal 14 March: Virgen del Socorro 15 March: La Selva 16-17 March: El Tigre/Paraiso de Quetzales 17-19 March: Cerro de la Muerte/San Gerardo de Dota 20 March: Volcan Irazu/Guayabo 21/22 March: Rancho Naturalista

Bougainvillea Hotel Gardens, San José A solid night’s sleep followed 24 hours’ travelling, but we were up at 6 am to explore the gardens before breakfast. It was cool and breezy, but we were soon seeing birds that would be daily fare: rufous-tailed hummingbird, great kiskadee, clay-coloured robin, blue-gray tanager. Highlights were our only plain wren of the trip, two white-eared ground sparrows (on the little-used raised path around the edge of the tennis courts) and easy photo opportunities of a pair of rufous-naped wrens nest-building. Bed and breakfast was £99 for the two of us, pre-booked.

Orotina After picking up the rental car, seeing white-tailed kite by the traffic junction at the end of the runway, we drove to Orotina, where we saw black-and-white owl roosting in one of the trees in the town square, thanks to the drinks-seller who pointed it out. NB. the centre of town isn’t easy to find when you leave the main road; turn left by the Mega-Super, turn left at the next t-

junction and the square is a few hundred metres along on your right, but you have to follow the one-way system to get to it.

Tarcoles village The ‘crocodile bridge’ was busy, so we drove a few kilometres beyond it and turned west towards the villages of Tarcoles. Almost immediately, we saw two scarlet macaws, a bird that we would see regularly in the area over the coming days. We birded over dry pasture from the side of the unpaved road: a mangrove black hawk circled on the thermals with vultures, orchard and Baltimore orioles fed in the trees on the roadside. We drove to the shore in the village where wood storks fed on the beach at the mouth of the small river, a little blue heron fed among the rocks and on a sand bar were royal and sandwich terns, laughing and Franklin’s gulls. The Tarcoles estuary is hard to access and we were unable to find the birding boat trip, despite following several signs from the village centre. At the end of the road south of the river, a couple of short walks through the mangroves and to the beach via the football pitch gave us white ibis, prothontary warbler, tricoloured heron and our only neotropic cormorant of the trip. The other place we stopped was by the river bridge at the crossroads to Tarcoles village and the Waterfall Road. We had 20 minutes to kill and saw green kingfisher, blue grosbeak and had good views of orange-fronted parakeet. We stayed at the Hotel Carara for three nights ($74/night for an ocean view room with air conditioning); room was small, but adequate, the swimming pool and AC were welcome, and we could watch scarlet macaws feeding in the almond trees from the balcony, and we also saw black-bellied whistling

duck from here. The restaurant choice was limited and quality okay but not outstanding. It was a 10 minute drive to Carara NP.

Carara NP We visited four areas in and around the Park: Tarcoles bridge, the Waterfall Road, the River Trail and the Loop Trail. Be aware that the big National Park visitor centre shown as the HQ on the map in Lawson (p.164) is closed, even though the opening times are still on display at the side of the road. To buy park tickets ($10), you have to go to the ‘old’ HQ, a couple of km farther south, which is much less obvious – look for the metal gate covered in wildlife images. From here you can access the Loop Trail, but walk it in reverse. Tarcoles Bridge The American crocodiles from the highway bridge over the Tarcoles are a big tourist draw, so we visited late in the afternoon when there were fewer people

and the road was (a bit) less busy. We saw our only American purple gallinule of the trip (in flight, don’t remember seeing that before!), lots of northern jacana and a few muscovy ducks, and as the light faded, lesser nighthawk and a single short-tailed nighthawk. As we left, several dozen lesser nighthawks were feeding like hirundines, skimming low over the water. An early morning

visit added little to the list, but we did have the place to ourselves. River Trail We walked this twice, once by ourselves and once with a guide, Victor Chaves ($40 p.p.). We booked him, spur-of-the-moment because we had struggled to see much on our first visit, but we didn’t see much more with the guide, and we concluded that the strong winds were the main factor in our limited list and we’d just thrown away $80. Highlights were white-shouldered tanager, green honeycreeper, dot-winged antwren, rufous-tailed jacamar, black-hooded antshrike, boat-billed heron, chestnut-backed antbird and orange-collared manakin.

Loop Trail We much preferred this walk to the river trail and did it twice, though wished we could have stayed longer and done it again. Our late morning walk of the first loop was quiet but productive nonetheless: bay-headed tanager, streak-chested ant-pitta, blue grosbeak and dot-winged ant-wren. An early morning walk of the second loop gave us riverside wren, black-hooded

antshrike, wedge-billed woodcreeper, lineated woodpecker, great tinamou, black-throated trogon, chestnut-backed antbird, black-faced

ant-thrush, chestnut-mandibled toucan, ruddy-tailed flycatcher, wood thrush, double-toothed kite, plain xenops, lesser greenlet, the weird-shaped royal flycatcher and two well-grown scarlet macaws in a nest-hole. Waterfall Road We drove this road late morning and it was mostly unproductive, though the views were superb: a distant white hawk was the only highlight. However, one 250-metre stretch of road kept us birding for two hours. It’s the only section that passes through forest, dropping into a valley between Pura Vida gardens and waterfall and the village of Bijagual. Birding from the road gave us least flycatcher, masked tityra, squirrel cuckoo, violaceous (gartered) trogon and our only blue dacnis, rufous-breasted wren and cherrie’s tanager of the trip. Driving higher into the hills we saw yellow-headed caracara, laughing falcon, white-collared swift and roadside hawk.

Chomes After a morning walking the loop trail again at Carara, early afternoon (and low tide) wasn’t the ideal time to visit this site, but this was determined by our route. The road from the InterAmericana to Chomes is rough and we saw few birds in the desiccated pasture, though two double-striped thick-knees were in a stubble field east of the road into the village. There appear to be a couple more ponds than shown in the map in Lawson, but the first two are dry. Drive along the track, past the house/shack to get to the better birding,

the Mangrove Trail shown on the map (p.283). Highlights were a male lesser scaup (and an American crocodile) in one of the full ponds, and a wealth of waders in one of the almost-drained ponds, including lots of willets, whimbrels and least sandpipers, and smaller numbers of greater yellowlegs, grey plovers, stilt sandpiper, white ibis and roseate spoonbill. A brown-crested flycatcher was a new bird for the list, and so was a semi-palmated plover when we drove down to the shore. I can only imagine what this place is like at high tide, but we didn’t get to find out.

Colorado We arrived in the village late in the afternoon and quickly realised that accommodation options were limited: some scruffy cabinas were it. We drove first east, then west, and found nothing more so drove back to the InterAmericana at Limonal where we had seen several motels. We picked one (Los Genizaros) and for $40 got a clean first-floor room with a balcony from which, despite the heavy traffic on the road, we saw plenty of birds in the last

hour of daylight. Most were common village birds, but several hundred dickcissels pre-roosted noisily in a tree in the garden, a smart rose-breasted grosbeak was with orioles in a nearby fruit tree, at least 20 scissor-tailed flycatchers passed in front of us, heading to roost across the road, and even two scarlet macaws roosted right by the highway, in an area they are fairly scarce. The following morning we drove back to the east salina, and it was already hot by the time we got there. There were lots of Baird’s, least and western sandpipers, a few willets and semi-palmated plovers, and a couple of Wilson’s plovers. The west salina held a mixed flock of black skimmers, gull-billed and royal terns and lots of blue-winged teals, but overall the site was rather disappointing, and with hindsight wished we’d focused on Chomes for our coastal birding.

Rincon de la Vieja NP It was a slow drive north to Liberia, with some 50km of roadworks as the whole stretch of road is being upgraded in one go. It looks like it will be wide enough to be a motorway when it’s completed. The road from the InterAmericana to Curribande has now been paved, making the journey much quicker than expected. This may be because of the huge geothermal energy plant being built close to the National Park. Look on Google Earth – it’s huge! Roadside birding between Hotel Guachipelin and the Park entrance is supposed to be good (Lawson), but we saw little, perhaps because it was so very dry? The Park ‘closes’ at 3 pm with exit by 4 pm, though we managed to push this to 4.30 pm with the rangers at the ticket office ($10) on the first visit. This is the only National Park where you have to sign in and out on each visit. It was very windy, making birding difficult along some of the trails. The trail to the volcano was closed while we were there, preventing high-level birding, so we focused on the main trail and the Waterfall trail. Highlights along the first section of the main trail on the first afternoon were red-crowned ant-tanager, long-tailed manakin, a pair of great curassows, Kentucky warbler, rufous-capped warbler and white-throated magpie-jay. We walked the whole trail, and the first few kilometres of the SantaMaria trail the following day, highlights being white-throated robin, great and thicket tinamous (though only a fleeting glimpse of the latter), pale-billed woodpecker, red-legged honeycreeper, tropical gnatcatcher and long-billed gnatwren. On our final morning, we walked the first couple of kilometres of the Waterfall Trail, and really wished we’d done it

the previous day to give it the time it deserved. Highlights were golden-crowned warbler, tody motmot, long-tailed manakin, white-throated thrush and gray-headed tanager. We stayed two nights at Hotel Guachipelin, $99 per night bed & breakfast. Room was excellent, the restaurant food was okay but nothing special. The mojitos were top notch! It’s really the only option if you want to be close to the National Park for its 7 am opening.

Palo Verde We arrived at the National Park early afternoon, with great views of a double-banded thick-knee in the last paddock on the right before the Park entrance (there was a pair there on the way out). Park entry is $10 each. As we had plenty of time, we decided to drive the track to Catalina and it was well worth it. Highlights: Cooper’s hawk, collared forest falcon, bare-throated tiger-heron and great views of white-faced capuchin and coati. The following morning, a collared forest falcon was perched outside the accommodation block as we headed out before breakfast. We birded from the main track 1 km either side of the OTS station on both mornings. Highlights: streak-backed oriole, olive sparrow, banded wren, scrub euphonia, white-fronted parrot, warbling vireo, cinnamon hummingbird, southern lapwing, steely-vented hummingbird, scarlet macaw and yellow-throated vireo. The best two areas were two that still contained water: some old troughs from the NP’s days as a cattle ranch, and a roadside pool in the main marsh just west of the OTS, where a flock of black-bellied whistling ducks numbered several hundred. We drove west to the river, but there was little different, and we heard that the morning boat trip didn’t see anything we hadn’t already. In the late afternoon, we drove the Catalina track again, aiming to get to the end without being distracted by coati photo opportunities. It was quiet in the heat, but we did see white-lored gnatcatcher, scissor-tailed flycatcher, peregrine and four crested guan plus peccary, white-tailed deer and a family of raccoons. We didn’t find the flock of Jabiru seen by students the previous day “at the end of the track”. However, we drove many kilometres beyond the end of the track marked on the map, so I’m not sure where they had been. Back at the OTS, a ferruginous pygmy owl was in the trees in front of the classroom, the same place that the following morning we had the only turquoise-browed motmot of the trip (it sounds like a frog and I might so easily have not looked up!). As we left

the park, we also saw the only limpkin of the trip, on the roadside rice-paddies. We’d been a little nervous before going to the OTS station because a French Canadian couple we’d met at Carara NP told us of their bad experience, with noisy students and shared dorms, leading them to leave earlier than planned. We had no such issues. We’d pre-booked a double room ($180 per night full board for two people, including a guided walk) and although the room fan wasn’t brilliantly effective, we were happy with the set-up. It is, after all, a biological station, not a lodge. The food was wholesome and plentiful and the staff very helpful.

Monteverde/Santa Elena This was one of the highlights of the trip, visiting the famous cloudforests. After finding a hotel, we stopped at Stella’s Bakery for lunch, where the food is excellent, and the bird table visitors included red-legged honeycreeper, buff-throated saltator, and yellow-throated euphonia. We walked from here part-way up the track to Cerros Amigos; the roadside birding was good: yellow-faced grassquit, Philadelphia vireo, social flycatcher and several wood warblers, but the track itself bore little reward on a hot afternoon, so we turned back and finished the day in the hotel gardens. Hotel El Bosque Around the cabins were Townsend’s warbler, canivet’s emerald, melodious blackbird, and dusky-capped flycatcher. We stumbled across the trail used for the widely-advertised El Bosque Night Walks, and saw Swainson’s thrush, red-breasted grosbeak, long-tailed manakin and orange-billed nightingale thrush as well as a Virginia opossum. It would have been worth a more thorough walk but we were fast running out of daylight. We birded the garden again before breakfast, highlights being common tody flycatcher, white-naped bush finch and squirrel cuckoo.

Monteverde reserve We spent a whole day here, from 7.15 am to 4.30 pm, making the most of the $17 tickets, emerging for an hour at lunchtime for a sandwich at the Hummingbird Gallery. In the morning we walked the Sendero Camino to the watchpoint at La Ventana and back along the Sendero Bosque Nebo. In the afternoon, we walked the start of the Senderos Tosi and Chomogo, then the Wilford

Guindon to its junction with the Sendero Camino, then back to the entrance. Although this was only a few kilometres, the trick was to walk slowly and although birds weren’t numerous, they were there. You’d need a second day and a quicker pace to walk the El Rio and Pantanoso trails.

At times the low cloud limited visibility but there were plenty of birds that we’d become familiar with on every high-altitude forest walk: yellowish flycatcher, black-faced solitaire, common bush tanager, Wilson’s warbler, purple-throated mountain gem and slate-throated and collared redstarts. Among feeding flocks we found plain antvireo, three-striped warblers, black-headed nightingale thrush, lesser greenlet, golden-crowned warbler, orange-bellied trogon, golden-browed chlorophonia, pale-vented thrush, spangle-cheeked tanager and, as we neared the exit, grey-breasted wood-wren and black guan. We found two coveys of black-breasted wood-quail, one on the morning walk, the other in the afternoon; you have to be very aware of the almost inaudible ‘clucking’ deep in the undergrowth, but we did get superb views. At the Gallery lunchstop, green-crowned brilliant, coppery-headed emerald, violet sabrewing and purple-throated mountain gems were on the feeders, and an olingo attempted to raid the feeder too. Santa Elena NP We spent the morning and early afternoon here, walking the Youth Challenge-Del Bajos-Encantado trail before brunch and then the whole Encantado Trail. Being higher than Monteverde, it was also wetter and we found the birding much slower. As well as some of the birds we’d seen at Monteverde, we added ruddy-capped and slaty-backed nightingale thrush, lineated and

scaly-throated foliage-gleaners, ochraceous wren and yellow-thighed finch. There was also a huge pink-kneed tarantula on the trail steps! We had a late lunch at Stella’s Bakery, where we bumped into an emerald toucanet and then a retired work colleague, Keith Noble, who showed us the stunning photos he’d just taken of resplendent quetzal in the nearby Curi-Cancha reserve.

We stayed three nights at Hotel El Bosque, $65 a night bed and breakfast, and ate at Tramonti’s pizza restaurant (great food but not cheap) and the Tree House in Santa Elena (brilliant food, atmosphere and not expensive).

Arenal It rained for much of the journey from Santa Elena and was still doing so when we stopped for lunch at the Toad Hall restaurant along the north shore of the lake. Grey-headed chacalacas fed from a ‘bird table’ (atop a mesh cage containing several parrots) and we saw our first Montezuma’s oropendolas, black-cowled oriole, keel-billed toucan and black-striped sparrow as we had crossed the Continental divide to the Caribbean slope for the first time.

We decided to splash out and have a night at the Arenal Observatory Lodge, as this would give us early morning access to their grounds (non-residents cannot visit until 8.30 am). The ‘standard room’ ($122 bed and breakfast) was stunning, the best accommodation we stayed in, a semi-detached cabin looking across the lake. From the balcony we saw band-backed wren and Passerini’s and hepatic tanagers, heard three-wattled bellbird but there was no sign of the volcano summit, which was shrouded in cloud for the duration of our stay. The trail through the gardens to the waterfall was excellent, with Canada warbler, black-cheeked woodpecker, violet-headed hummingbird, crested guan, tawny-faced antwren, gray-breasted woodwren, orange-billed sparrow and black-headed nightingale thrush. A paraque called as I showered before dinner, and when I opened the cabin door, it was sitting on the grass! The following morning, we birded the El Saino and La Hormiga trails before breakfast. Heavy rain made this quieter, but we nonetheless saw crimson-collared tanager, green thorntail, pale-billed woodpecker, bronze-tailed plumleteer, gray hawk, black-hooded antshrike and after much effort looking into the dark tangled vegetation, black-throated wren. As we walked to breakfast we saw a white-tipped sicklebill, but sadly it had been injured flying into a window of the Smithsonian Room. After breakfast, we walked the Waterfall Trail again and although busier with walkers than the previous evening, we did see collared forest falcon, stripe-breasted wren, song wren (eventually), thrush-like schiffornis, spotted antbird and stripe-throated hermit. There is a free Guided Nature Walk at 8.30 am, which we didn’t join, but the group was over 30 people and I doubt they saw as much. On the road from Arenal Observatory Lodge back to the main road (probably the worst surfaced road we encountered in lowland CR), we saw our first swallow-tailed kite, black phoebe and summer tanager, and two black-winged stilts standing in a fast flowing stream.

Virgen del Socorro This site (p.91 of Lawson) proved to be one of my favourite afternoons of the trip, but it took us a while to find the site. The valley was hit severely by an earthquake in 2009 and the whole of Rte 126 has been rebuilt, making it difficult to spot the dirt road. As you drive south, cross the bridge over the river and, as the road starts to climb, the turning is off the outside of the first right-hand bend (but from the opposite side of the road, it’s hard to see as the track immediately drops away). The road remains rough and it requires a vehicle with good ground clearance, and 4WD if the ground is wet.

We birded from the new bridge at the bottom of the valley up the track on the east side, for about 1 km. An American dipper flew along the river and we saw our first Louisiana waterthrush. Four or five male immaculate antbirds displayed on a fallen log at the water’s edge and a black-and-yellow tanager flew across the river. Higher up the valley side, roadside highlights included white hawk,

scarlet-thighed dacnis, a pair of red-headed barbets, spotted woodcreeper, white-bellied mountain-gem and silver-throated tanager. We left later than intended, meaning it was dusk before we arrived at Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui, but we did see a bat falcon as we drove into the town.

La Selva This was the one site where we had no choice but to hire a guide, but this one was well worth it. We were not staying at La Selva, so to access the trails, you must hire a guide (with an excellent lunch included, this cost $132 for the two of us). Alternatively, you can join a three-hour nature walk with a guide at 8 am or 2 pm, which is cheaper but not necessarily bird-focused. In hindsight, we should have stayed at the OTS station and given it more than one day, but that’s something to know for next time. We should also have booked a guide in advance, which I hadn’t appreciated, but thankfully there was someone free to take us: Lenin, and he was brilliant. We added 33 new species to our trip total that day, walking around the drier forest and gardens in the morning, then the wet forest in the afternoon. It rained for much of the day, and was humid. Morning highlights: smoky-brown woodpecker, collared aracari, semi-plumbeous hawk, long-tailed tyrant, black-crowned tityra, crested guan, cinnamon becard, black-faced grosbeak, paltry tyrannulet, orange-billed sparrow, red-throated ant-tanager, worm-eating warbler, slaty-tailed trogon, violet-green woodnymph, rufous-tailed jacamar, band-tailed barbthroat, boat-billed flycatcher, yellow-margined flycatcher, plain-coloured tanager, white-collared manakin, hooded warbler, rufous motmot, violaceous/garter trogon, golden-hooded tanager, white-bellied woodwren, northern barred woodcreeper, ochre-bellied flycatcher, dusky antbird, olive-

throated parakeet, long-billed hermit, scarlet-rumped cacique, fasciated antshrike and rufous-winged woodcreeper. While waiting to meet Lenin again after lunch, a few Mississippi kites flew northeast, then a few more, and I counted a flypast of 198 in little more than 30 seconds!

In the afternoon, the rain was much heavier and probably suppressed what we saw, but the highlights included plain-brown woodcreeper, olive-backed euphonia, yellow-crowned euphonia, masked tityra, crested owl, great tinamou, vermiculated screech owl, double-toothed kite (following a troop of white-faced capuchins), chestnut-collared woodpecker, great curassow, gray-necked wood-rail, a pair of white-necked puffbirds, purple-crowned fairy, crimson-collared tanager, red-lored parrot, and to finish the afternoon in the most memorable way, a pair of great green macaws came flying towards us over a forest clearing like a pair of Vulcan bombers! Amazing. We also had some other goodies as we walked, my favourites being a couple of eyelash vipers (deadly, but they each just lay on a leaf and ignored us), a blue-jeans frog, a tiny red amphibian with denim-coloured legs, and some white tent-making bats sheltering from the rain under a banana leaf. After such a fantastic day, the only down side was having to return to our accommodation. We’d pre-booked two nights in a superior room at the Hotel Gavilan, around a mile from the entrance to La Selva, but when we arrived we were told that a Canadian birding tour group were using all the superior rooms and we’d been allocated a standard room ($55 per night bed and breakfast), which was essentially a shed with a fan and a bed, and not good value for money. The evening meals were okay but nothing special ($15 each), with no menu choice, so on the second night we ate at Ara Ambigua Lodge, just west of Puerto Viejo on Rte 4. The food was good and, although I can’t account for the accommodation, may be a better option than Gavilan if you don’t want to stay at the OTS. However, the Gavilan does have some nice habitat behind the cabins along the riverside, which we only explored briefly on the morning we left, but we did see bright-rumped attila, veery, smoky-brown woodpecker and black-throated blue warbler. Unfortunately, the spectacled owl that we’d heard from our room at night was not roosting in its usual tree when we looked that morning. As we headed south, we stopped at El Tigre Fields, at the end of the straight following the next village south of La Selva. Sandra managed to see a Nicaraguan seed-finch but I missed it, though we did also see red-breasted blackbirds, thick-billed seed-finch and we heard a white-throated crake from less than two metres away but couldn’t tempt it into the open.

Paraiso de Quetzales At 2,650 metres, this was our highest accommodation of the trip, sitting on the Continental Divide. We arrived mid afternoon, checked in to our lovely wooden cabin overlooking the forest and went to explore the Zeledonia Trail, which starts from next to the restaurant, as the cloud descended down the

mountain. The hummer feeders hosted fiery-throated hummingbird, volcano hummingbird, green-crowned brilliant, green violetear and magnificent hummingbird. We had a great couple of hours and saw our first couple of resplendent quetzals, but lots more besides. Highlights were large-footed finch, black-cheeked warbler, black-billed nightingale thrush (in abundance), sooty-capped bush tanager, black-and-yellow

silky flycatcher, ochraceous wren, hairy woodpecker, ruddy tree runner (ubiquitous), mountain thrush, long-tailed silky flycatcher, spot-crowned woodcreeper and one of my personal favourites, flame-throated warbler. We had good views of most of these, the benefit of being on a steep slope is that you can look down or at eye-level with many of the birds. We walked the same trail the following morning, but it seemed quieter, though we did finally see a mountain elaenia, a species that had eluded us until now. Other highlights were yellow-thighed finch, tufted flycatcher, buffy tuftedcheek, yellow-winged vireo and black guan. We opted out of the 6.10 am guided walk (included in the price) when we saw that we would be sharing it with a group of 20 photographers, and they were clearly set on quetzal watching. We met them as we headed back up the slope for breakfast. They hadn’t seen a quetzal (we’d only heard one), but didn’t seem to have moved far to see much else either. The first two hours of daylight were freezing (perhaps just a couple of degrees above zero), but it warmed up quickly once the sun rose. After breakfast we walked the Los Gigantes trail, a 4 km walk up the hillside behind the lodge. It was quiet in the heat, but we did see black-capped flycatcher and peg-billed finch on the forest edge. Within the forest we added just one bird to our list, but it was a good one, as a female silver-fronted tapaculo fed a juvenile just yards from our feet. We pre-booked one night at Paraiso de Quetzales which was probably about the right length stay given that we got an afternoon and whole morning’s use of the trails.

Cerro de la Muerte We stopped at a couple of other high-altitude sites in the area before dropping down into the Valle San Gerardo de Dota. At Villa Mills, drifting low cloud made viewing difficult and we saw again some of the forest-edge species seen at Paraiso, though as we drove back onto the InterAmericana, we finally saw a sooty thrush, and quickly a second. We saw several more from this high-level section of Rte 2, so presume that it really is at the edge of its altitudinal range in CR.

We then drove up to the communication towers at Cerro de la Muerte (3450 m), where visibility was very limited by low cloud. Our target here was volcano junco, which proved very obliging just below the summit buildings. Indeed, it was hard to get a photo of it without including the tyre of the car. Volcano hummingbirds were very common, having the paramo habitat to themselves and not being constantly being beaten up by the larger hummers around the hotel feeders. We also had great views of slaty-backed flowerpiercer and more sooty thrushes. We were told by a German couple that their travel guide warned against leaving vehicles

unattended around the summit as it’s a target for theft, and given that this was one of the few sites we’d visited with all our luggage, we didn’t stray too far.

Valle San Gerardo de Dota We explored two sites in the valley, but also discovered that the veranda of the Café Kawaha has plenty of birds too (and the fresh trout and chips were excellent!). Savegre trails As we were not staying at the hotel, there was a $5 charge to visit their trails, but it was well worth it. We drove up to the trail-head, about 2 km up a steep hill, 4WD near-essential. We walked the Sendoro Quebrada in the morning, then the first few km of the Sendoro Los Robles. The Quebrada was fantastic, we regularly hit feeding flocks of birds and it took us several hours to do the 2 km walk. Highlights here included white-throated mountain gem, resplendent quetzal, barred becard, ruddy tree-runner (very common), black-cheeked warbler, yellow-thighed finch, spangle-cheeked tanager, chestnut-capped bush-finch, yellow-winged vireo, timberline wren and flame-throated warbler. Los Robles was harder work with thicker undergrowth, steeper trails and it was early afternoon. The flies were also very annoying! We heard silver-fronted tapaculo, ruddy pigeon and what was probably azure-hooded jay, but a male collared trogon was the only addition to our list. Had we continued higher, we may perhaps have seen more, but we decided to turn back. In a brief stop around the hotel we saw peg-billed finch, paltry tyrannulet and long-tailed silky flycatcher, among others. Waterfall trail A trout farm has been built at the start of this trail, re-routing the footpath around its fence. We finally found three torrent tyrranulets around the fish ponds, having failed at every suitable river we’d crossed during the trip. There was also a pair of resplendent quetzals nesting in trees above the footpath

along the fenceline. Other highlights of the walk included black-faced solitaire, spangle-cheeked tanager, ruddy tree-runner, timberline wren, American dipper, sulphur-winged parakeet, three-striped warbler, both bush-tanager species (the only place we saw them together), collared trogon, golden-bellied flycatcher and black-throated green warbler. The condition of some of the walkways and steps is poor. Café Kawaha From the balcony, we had great views of acorn woodpecker, tufted flycatcher, ruddy-capped nightingale thrush, western wood pewee, black-throated green warbler, paltry tyrannulet and flame-coloured tanager. We spent two nights at El Manantial, a small family-run hotel about a mile before the big complex at La Savegre. It cost $70 per night bed & breakfast, plus $12 each for a three-course dinner. The room was huge (it had two en-suite bathrooms) and the food was among the best we had in Costa Rica. Our praise for it may be slightly coloured by the fact that we could watch a courting pair of resplendent quetzals, in the trees across the road, from our bed! The manager (owner?) is a keen birdwatcher and is involved with the conservation of the estimated 300 pairs of quetzals in the valley. We also saw spot-crowned woodcreeper, acorn woodpecker and long-tailed silky flycatcher from the room and lots of volcano hummingbirds on the feeders.

Volcan Irazu We visited the summit, largely to do the touristy bit and see the top of a volcano. It wasn’t smoking, though the next summit east was. The volcano hummingbirds were different, with pink bibs not the purple of the Talamanca Cordillera, and a volcano junco waited for scraps outside the café. We drove up to the higher elevation watchpoint, where a white-tailed hawk circled up on the thermals and slaty-backed flowerpiercers fed on the flowering bushes. We drove back down the south face and took the turning to the Prusia Sector mentioned in Lawson (p.260). We spent a couple of hours driving slowly along the road, stopping occasionally, and then got to the end and discovered that the National Park entrance here is now open again. If we’d had more time, we’d have made better use of the $12 tickets that we’d used to visit the summit by exploring this area, but we hadn’t expected it to be open. The road to it is little used, and the road beyond it (the left fork mentioned in Lawson) definitely requires 4WD. We jammed on two buffy-crowned wood-partridges crossing the road as we drove up, and also saw tropical pewee, flame-throated warbler, black-

throated green warbler, green violetear, acorn and hairy woodpeckers, but suspect that more time and effort would have increased the list considerably.

Guayabo By the time we’d had a long lunch and driven back from Volcan Irazu, we only had an hour to explore the National Monument at Guaybo (an impressive bit of civilisation). Among the highlights were squirrel cuckoo, brown-hooded parrot, crimson-fronted parakeet, keel-billed toucan, white-crowned parrot and collared aracari. We also saw our only sloth of the trip, sitting high in a tree next to the toucan. We had pre-booked two nights at Guayabo Lodge in Santa Cruz de Turrialba, as accommodation seemed fairly limited in this area, though I hadn’t appreciated that it was an hour’s drive from here to Irazu, where more hotels can be found. We were upgraded to one of their excellent Mountain Suites, probably because they had two coach parties staying (cost us $90 per night bed and breakfast, but usually $135). The evening meals were also good, though a little expensive ($17 each). There’s no birding habitat around it, however.

Tuis Valley We decided to spend some time exploring the Tuis river valley before arriving at Rancho Naturalista. We parked at the junction mentioned on p.107 of Lawson, which is a reasonably busy dirt road. Thinking this couldn’t possibly be the trail, I spotted a hanging bridge across the river and we crossed this, then followed a path through a field of sugar cane. After about a kilometre, however, it ran out and we retraced our steps. We started walking up the dirt road, through some houses, but this also didn’t seem to be the tanager-heaven described in the book. I suspect that the ‘trail’ is now the road, and if we’d followed it farther, we’d have found some good habitat, as when we looked back from Rancho Naturalista, the valley looks superb. We did see a few new birds along here, the highlights being black-striped sparrow, Swainson’s hawk, white-shouldered tanager, bay wren and common tody-flycatcher.

Rancho Naturalista After our Tuis valley fail, we arrived at Rancho late morning. Although we were not supposed to arrive until the afternoon, the welcoming staff nonetheless prepared lunch for us and we enjoyed watching violet-crowned woodnymph, white-necked jacobins, green-breasted mango, brown violetear, green thorntail, green hermit and an immature male snowcap from the balcony. After

lunch, Lev, one of the guides, showed us a common potoo that was nesting near the main building. Unusually for the middle of the day, she was wide awake, big yellow eyes staring at us from the top of a broken snag. We knew when booking that there was no room at RN for us and that we would be eating and sleeping down the road at Rancho Bajos, the home of the founders of Rancho Naturalista, Cathy and John Erb. They couldn’t have made us more welcome, and it was a lovely way to spend our final evening in Costa Rica. The afternoon heat was sapping, so we employed some hammock-birding from the balcony, though this did get us giant cowbird, black-crested coquette and a superb male snowcap. We walked the quail-dove/hermit trails that afternoon and the quail-dove/manakin/bamboo trails the following morning, having arranged a late (9.30 am) breakfast with Cathy to give us time for a shower and then the three-hour drive to the airport. Trail highlights included rufous motmot, tropical parula, smoky-brown woodpecker, plain antvireo, orange-billed sparrow, red-throated ant-tanager, tawny-crowned euphonia, white-ruffed and white-crowned manakin, yellow-crowned tyrannulet, bay wren, ruddy-tailed flycatcher, scale-crested pygmy tyrant and dark-mantled antbird. When we got back to RN, Lev also showed us a mottled owl roosting in the forest just behind the cabins. A great bird to finish our Costa Rican triplist.