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We are on vacation, so what do we do? We get up at 4:45!! We had our left-over fruit for breakfast and drove Puerta Viejo, about 30 minutes “further” along this road, to see birds by boat. Salamon our captain and Daniel, about 23, our guide, were wonderful, and we were the only ones on the tour that Wendy arranged (friends). First things first – there was a sloth slowly climbing along a wire!! On the water we saw a crocodile and NEW Mangrove Swallows, and NEW Buff-rumped warblers and THREE NEW Bare-throated Tiger Herons. Even some Long-nose bats hanging onto one of the many large logs in the river.
Evidently the country has had a dry spell so the river was low – Daniel said that the rain could make the river rise up to the town. The boats are not tethered onto any docks, but rather from lines hanging from the tall trees. Lots of familiar birds: anhingas, flycatchers, plenty of Kingfishers, etc. We learned all about the trees that serve to keep the banks from eroding, including the giant trees, the kapoks.
The find of the day was that 2 of the Bare-throated tiger herons were
a mother and her immature son, who was doing a crazy dance. Daniel thought it looked like a mating dance – he sounded rather appalled describing what was going on. AND a family of Howler monkeys that were in a tree barely 30 feet away. That white part of the big male – yep, his genitalia. What lessons we learned. Actually we learned that only the ALPHA male makes the howling. Sure sounds like dozens of them in the valley down from us.
Another marvelous find: an arboreal porcupine sleeping in a tree (photo is hard to see) and a pair of boat-billed herons hiding inside a very dark tree overhanging the river. All in all the river trip was lovely, and the weather perfect.
After this we drove perhaps another 15 mins to Victor’s Tico Rainforest Bed & Breakfast. Victor was recommended by Miguel, and has a lovely 2 story home surrounded by all sorts of trees and flowering bushes, and a wrap around second story terrace! He had quite a few long-nosed bats on the ceiling of the decks, and a few tanager nests. This made for excellent lighting for photography. NEW birds there were the
Collared-Aricari, the Black-Cowled Oriole, a new dove, and Olive-backed Euphonia. There were plenty of gorgeous scarlet-rumped tanagers, hummingbirds, and even the magnificent Montezuma’s Oropendolas, gorgeous honey creepers, etc. We also walked the grounds, down to a river, and lo and behold – another sloth. So that’s two under our belt, in the wild. One was clearly a 3-toed.
Victor tried really hard to call in a Cinnamon Woodpecker and a jacamar with his speaker system, to no avail. I finally dragged David out of there so we could eat some lunch! We considered going to some new sodas (cafes), but none had cars in front of them – a universal sign they aren’t that good? So we ended up back at Marielo’s – with about 6 cars. Enough left overs for supper.
When we got home our pets were missing – evidently the other ecolodge now has tenants, from Holland, and we have been abandoned!
I enjoyed a lovely nap in the hammock as poor David culled his photos – hope you are enjoying them.
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