Hummingbirds of Toro Amarillo

Rolling through the Central Highlands of Costa Rica in our Magic Bus, we saw some cool stuff. This adult fasciated tiger heron (had a bare-throated tiger heron in the last post) was waiting in a mountain stream for something hapless to float by. 

We were headed for a special mountain restaurant at a beautiful waterfall called El Toro Amarillo. 

The Brugmansias were spectacular, albeit, by virtue of their great size and long corollas, more attractive to nectivorous bats than hummingbirds. 

Spectacular. As was the restaurant seating area.

Proprietor Will speaks with John and Betty.

The very first bird I laid eyes on was strangely familiar. But it illustrated a tenet of birding--that if you see something familiar in an exotic place, it can look very unfamiliar. I was staring at this bird, struggling to identify it when Mario stepped over and said softly, "Look familiar?"

I turned to him in confusion. I'd never seen this molt stage of a ruby-throated hummingbird! You'd think, having raised four males from babies, I miiiight have some idea...

I moved on to the endemics and residents. They were easier than our ONE SPECIES of hummingbird east of the Mississippi. Yes, I am making fun of myself.

Here at the Yellow Bull, green-crowned brilliants joust and jabber

with the diminutive endemic coppery-headed emerald

and the impressive green hermit, a lunker with a fabulous decurved bill and bizarre pthalo green back. That's bounce light on his shiny bill, by the way; it's reddish but not that red in real life.

Oh you little mosasaur. I love you.

This montane squirrel (also an endemic) enjoyed some leftover pineapple.

And the hummingbirds just got better and better. I do love a good white-bellied mountain gem.

The violet sabrewings on this trip were elusive. Durned hard to catch.

If you want to know what they look like in good light, go to my post "I Sing the Sabrewing Electric."

where you will see more of THIS. I kept assuring folks we'd get great shots of this species...it never happened in 2015. I was rolling in them in 2014. Every year, every place is different.

 The bird I'd never seen that I was really after was the green thorntail. You can't really tell how cool it is from this shot...

and then you get a back view, and you're all...what is that stuff on your tail??

So you follow this minuscule creature around a magic flower garden until you finally luck into the shot of your lifetime. No bigger than your pinky, clothed in emerald mail, all fancy in the butt end.

 Green thorntail, seen at last. Fairies, they fly, still and forever.

I Love a Spectacled Owl in the Morning!

Just across the road from Selva Verde Lodge is their botanical garden. Many, many treasures abound, botanical and bird. 

Cane orchid, world's tallest. Looks like a Dendrobium, but it grows right in the soil. Way over my head!

Lobster claw heliconia. The diversity of forms and colors in this family is delightful. The true flower is that yellow bit peeking out of the third claw down from the left. A succession of these flowers pokes out of the colorful, long-lasting bract, attracting hermit hummingbirds, with their decurved bills. 

Here's a green hermit, so you can see how its bill would fit right in that flower. Hermits are big and very cool, fast and flitty and severe-looking, with unearthly viridian green plumage.

Parrots are morning people. They fly over shrieking their species-specific shrieks just after sunrise. It behooves a birder to learn these shrieks, and once you get a handle on it, you can use the shriek and the size, shape and flight style to reliably identify speeding bird bombs high overhead. Getting a good photo of parrots is another story. I take probably 50 parrot photos for each one that's worth a darn. This one's worth a darn. Allopreening white crowned parrots (Pionis senilis) --get it? White hair? Old man?

A pair of pale-billed woodpeckers was double-rapping on a large hollow tree. What a thrill to hear the trademark knock of Campephilus woodpeckers. We all stood in awe, wishing imagining ourselves in a bayou somewhere in the States.

Pale-billeds are very short-tailed, and not nearly as massive as the ivory-bill, but still. 

Nearby, a pair of masked tityras croaked in a bare treetop. These cotingas sound like frogs and travel in pairs.

I walk with my head down, listening, looking at the ground. It's good to pair me with a guide who walks looking up, as Mario Cordoba does. We make quite a team. I miss flyovers. He picks them up. He misses mystery stomachs. I...well, I don't pick them up, but I see them.

A bunny met an untimely end. I saw its stomach (bottom center) and when I showed it to Mario, he showed me the rest of it (top right). I remarked that owls do that: surgically remove the stomach, which they won't eat, and then start eating from the head back. 

As we were looking at the crime scene, rufous motmots were growling and a variety of birds was scolding in the forested hillside just above us. Mario (who was looking up) spotted a large owl flying through the trees. Lightning fast, he set up the scope, and said, "Julie, you're gonna like this."

I did. I really, really liked it. A spectacled owl!!

Which was quite perturbed about being mobbed by motmots.

And which looked, as one of my Facebook friends said, like a stuffed version of itself. Some kind of avian Muppet. An amazement. And a gift on this misty clear morning as we were leaving Selva Verde.

We would go on to see many other things, but that owl stuck with me. In Brasil, they called it Carpintiero for its rapid, hollow, knocking hoot. They said it was building coffins. Love it.

This woman was cooking palm fruit (pejibaye) which is hanging in clusters over her head.

At our next stop this beautiful Brahma let me fondle her spotty brisket. I needed an animal fix of some kind, and she was kind enough to oblige. A good day in the making.