M is for migration

In Nichols Arboretum yesterday.

 

In conclusion: My best bird photo of the trip

Not the most spectacular bird we saw on the trip, but a beauty nonetheless.  The branch she is perched on makes this look like a feeder-station photograph.  It's not.  The bird was found, with her fledgling, along a small trail we traversed on our second morning in the rainforest.   

 Female Shining honeycreeper (Cyanerpes lucidus)

From my challenge photo blog entry, this is how we could identify the fledgling Shining honeycreeper hidden under the leaf.

A few birds photos from Costa Rica

Birds not already appearing in my other posts are below.  None of these were taken at feeder-stations and each gave some challenges.  I had a couple of other nice photos from feeder-stations but did not include them here.  

On this blog, if I make the photo its largest size part of the photo will be cut off.  As always, for better viewing click on the photo to enlarge.

Sun grebe

Broad-billed motmot under a canopy on a overcast morning.

A side of Red-legged honeycreeper that reveals the beauty that I had not seen before.

Green ibis

Long-tailed silky flycatcher with berry

Emerald toucanet

Morning sky

Hummingbird on nest - I forget which.

Male Resplendent quetzal

Volcano hummingbird

Olive-backed euphonia

I think - Yellowish-green flycatcher on nest

Bright-rumped Attila reveals where it gets its name.

Tufted flycatcher

The Volcano junco is endemic to Costa Rica and western Panama.  The field guide, Birds of Costa Rica by Garrigues and Dean describes Volcano junco like this:  "The glaring yellow iris and pinkish bill are diagnostic."  Italics are mine.   

Crested Owl

Our guide, Leo, got word that an injured Crested owl (Lophostrix cristata) was found overnight by some of the Selva Verde Lodge groundskeepers.  At the end of our morning birding we went to see it in one of the lodge garages.

On this trip we did not do any specific owling, but on past trips the Crested owl was always the prized target during nighttime owling, yet I never saw one.   This owl sat so calmly in the bucket and its beauty  was startling.  

The groundskeepers, apparently, had the bird picked up, or had taken it, to a rehab center.  The next day I saw the bucket in the garage and walked over to see that the bird was gone.

Costa Rica trip rarity

If you check out the most recent Costa Rica bird guide you will find four little dots for this bird.

True enough - Lincoln's sparrow (Melospiza lincolnii).

A beauty and one of my favorite birds to see in Michigan.

We saw the Lincoln's sparrow on our final day during a lunch stop that I had been to on a prior trip.  The restaurant had been spiffed up but had maintained its wooden deck with hummingbird feeders set-up for photographers as well as casual sightseers.

  

I hope I don't get in trouble for copyright infringement.  I lifted the Lincoln's sparrow distribution map from The Cornell Lab All About Birds website.  Typically it does not winter as far south as Costa Rica. 

If you ever travel to Costa Rica for birding or for any reason, I recommend this place for a stopover.  As it happened our guide, Leonardo Otoyo, called out a flyover male Resplendent Quetzel from the restaurant's deck that many were able to see.   

 

Favorite bird of the trip

On May 17th, 2020 I wrote "my final blog post and final blog photos."  I didn't know it at the time, but I was still over a year from retirement. Work was so busy.  The pandemic was raging.  Google had changed some features of Google Blogger which I did not have the time or patience to figure out.  I never did download all of my photos from India and never completed my India trip blog.  I wrote my little essay, added three photos of Green-billed Malkoha and threw in the towel.  

Even before, and in the time since, other friends have called it quits on their blogs as well.  Perhaps not as officially as I did, but some very good blogs are no longer active.  The pandemic was hard on a lot of things.  After calling it quits, I considered other platforms for my photos.  I recalled one of the participants on my India trip saying to me, with derision, "I never read blogs."  Facebook, Instagram, eBird, Flickr - all of my ideas in those directions never met the light of day. 

Of course, I haven't really had many photos to post.  Hopefully, this will change.  Costa Rica was my first out-of-country trip since the onset of the pandemic. I was so out of practice.  Even packing was a challenge. On the trip I kept losing things.  I couldn't find or see the birds.  I fumbled with my camera.  And, after all this time, here I am again using Google Blogger.  This time my goal will be fun. 

So, with fun in mind, my favorite trip bird - just because they were so cooperative and cute and a little crazy looking too - Common Tody-flycatcher (Todirostrum cinereum).

There was a pair.

 

Preening.

Very cooperative.

And nest building.

Challenge answers

Answers to my find the creature challenge.  Where possible I have added an improved photograph. 

Chestnut-headed Oropendola (Psarocolius wagleri)

Common Pauraque (Nyctidromus albicollis)

Below:  Still cryptic, but orientation makes finding bird a little easier?

 

Common Basilisk (Basiliscus basiliscus) lizard

The Strawberry Poison-dart Frog is also called the Blue-jeans Frog.

A stunner.  So cute!  We saw many in one area of the rainforest.

Fledgling Shining Honeycreeper (Cyanerpes lucidus)

 

Great Tinamou (Tinamus major)

As above, there were two present but here is larger photo of one.  

Southern black howler monkey (genus Alouatta) is the most common in the Central American rainforest.

Male Green kingfisher (Chloroceryle americana)

Amazon (C. amazona) vs. Green kingfisher (C. americana) (female?) 

I don't have a better photo.

Male Green Kingfisher

Greater sac-winged bat (Saccopteryx bilineata).

The greater sac-winged bat is a bat of the family Emballonuridae native to Central and South America. They are the most common bats seen in the rainforest, and they often roost on the outside of large trees.

At one of the lodges, we attended an evening presentation, given just for us, about bats.  The presenters were studying bats and the researcher was mist-netting them.  We saw three different species up close.   

Male Green Kingfisher

A little more about kingfishers:  They are one of my favorite bird families.  Worldwide there are so many beautiful kingfishers.  We saw both Amazon and Green kingfishers on our riverboat trip.  Kingfishers are challenging to photograph and they can be hard to identify where there isn't a good size comparison.  I also think that the Amazon kingfisher has a larger bill, but this is hard to tell in poor photos.

Ringed kingfisher (Megaceryle torquata) is a permanent resident of Costa Rica and Belted kingfisher (M. alcyon) is a migrant in CR.  I saw a flyby of one or the other but, again, hard to identify

Long-tailed tyrant (Colonia colonus).  I feel I cheated a little on the photo above.

Charming little bird.

Spotted wood quail (Odontophorus guttatus)

Even though you might not know the bird, I think this photo was probably pretty easy.  There were six or seven foraging in the leaves together.  I was quite close, but I could not get an in focus photo of the birds while they were moving and scratching in the leaf litter.