Costa Rica Update – 310 Species at Halfway

We're at the halfway point of my Costa Rica tour, and things are going great. Some participants have had over 200 lifers out of over 300 species that we've tallied, and except for our first morning at Tapantí National Park we haven't even touched the Caribbean Slope yet.

One participant in my group passed her 1000th lifer today. It came a whirlwind of species mobbing a Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl, and it was either Scaly-breasted, Cinnamon, or Mangrove Hummingbird (the latter a Costa Rican endemic), or Spot-breasted Oriole, that achieved the honor as her millennial lifer.

A couple photo highlights from the past days:

A White-crested Coquette at Bosque del Rio Tigre was simply amazing.

And this Orange-collared Manakin at a ridiculously easy to observe lek at Carara National Park yesterday was a joy to watch.

Dota Cloudforest Metalmark and Costa Rican Pygmy-Owl

After the first day's whirlwind of lifers for the participants on my Costa Rica tour (some got more than 50), the next day at San Gerardo de Dota was a little less intense – fewer species but more specialties and regional endemics. Here I'll show a couple – a butterfly and a bird.

This butterfly, Corrachia leucoplaga was an exciting find, since I hadn't seen one since Jim Brock's and my WINGS tour in 2006. Even back then it was exciting – Jim recognized it as a metalmark, but like none he had ever seen before. Thank goodness for Philip J. DeVries' book on the Riodinidae of Costa Rica for the ID and for letting us know how special this bug is. He apparently never saw one himself before writing the book and talked to only one person who had seen it – otherwise known from a small handful of specimens. My poor digiscoped photo of the 2006 one is the only photo of a live one I could find on the internet. Now I'll add this better digiscoped image, which will also soon be on my Flickr page.

Not far from the metalmarks (the steep track to the Savegre Lodge trailheads) was this Costa Rican Pygmy-Owl. This cute bugger flew in while we were standing there, but we probably wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for the sudden alarm calls of the Sooty-capped Bush-Tanagers in the tree below. I had heard that there was a nest here and really hoped to see this bird, as after leading tours to Costa Rica for the past 14 years I still hadn't come across one. But, ironically, I found one the day before at a random roadside stop on our way to the hotel. It responded when I imitated the call to try to bring in some small birds. That bird was a rufous morph, this one below (near the nest) is a brown morph.

Costa Rica Pre-tour Butterflying

I met my group of eight participants for our first dinner yesterday evening at our hotel just outside of San José, Costa Rica. I had all day here, mostly spent working on my laptop, but I usually spend the morning in the lush and often birdy hotel gardens. Instead, I decided to check out a nearby coffee farm that might have some nice birds. I'm especially hoping to find a close spot that is reliable for Prevost's Ground-Sparrow, as it is rather sporadic on our hotel grounds lately.

Well, though I didn't find the ground-sparrow (there were several White-eared Ground-Sparrows though) I did see 30 species of birds at the farm, called Rancho Arizona. Better yet, I was pretty amazed how many butterflies I saw. I think I saw about 25 species in just a couple hours, but I was able to put names to only 13 and took photos of a few here they are:

Emerald Longtail, Urbanus esmeraldus

Frosted Flasher, Astraptes alardus

Yellow-stained Skipper, Poanes inimica

Alana Skipper, Heliopetes alana

Yellow-tipped Flasher, Astraptes anaphus

And a strange weevil relative in the family Brentidae

The Second Most Gorgeous Heron

I've reached a milestone today.

Amidst post tour reports, validation of thousands of (and invalidation of not a few) flagged eBird reports for Pima County, and working on my 2013 tour schedule, I've finally (guiltily) broached the last remaining folder of photos from my ten weeks at Cristalino Jungle Lodge last year.

And on this 30th of September, 2011, while motoring down the peaceful Cristalino River, we came across this Capped Heron. Called "Garça Real" in Portuguese – the Royal Heron – it indeed acted as though we might rather curtsey before it we passed by its most esteemed fishing spot in the river.

Pink, blue, black, white, and butter. What a delicious bird.

First Day in Oaxaca – Birds and Orchids of the Highlands

I'm back in Mexico, after a week in Baja (see my post to Birdingblogs), but this time in Oaxaca.

Today was a full day of birding in the mountains north of the city, with lots of highlights. We were mostly birding and not taking photos (and the fog in the first half of the day wasn't very good for photography anyway). But here are a couple highlights.

This Gray Silky-flycatcher was amazingly unwary.

The high humidity and rainfall up here results in a lush forest with lots of epiphytes. This is a succulent in the family Crassulaceae, possibly an Echeveria.

Finally, there were quite a few of this gorgeous orchid, Rhynchostele cervantesii. Other populations seem to have white flowers, but these were all pink. The species is endemic to Mexico.

Winter Butterflies in Arizona

It might surprise a lot of people that we have butterflies in the winter here in Southeastern Arizona. If it's sunny and warm enough there are several species that will come out of "hibernation" almost any month. But I was still surprised week before last to see this Pipevine Swallowtail at Peña Blanca Lake, the first one I've ever seen in the month of January. Early March is more typical for the first sighting of the year for me.

This West Coast Lady has a territory it defends on exactly the same clump of dirt in my north-central Tucson driveway every day, and it's been there since at least mid-January, 3 weeks now.

It was actually on January 24, 1997 in Sycamore Canyon near the Mexican border when I started looking at butterflies. I was about 4 miles north of the Mexican border when I spotted this gorgeous blue butterfly with white spots near the tips. I thought that such a thing would be really easy to look up. Little did I know that it was one of few records of Blackened Bluewing for the United States at the time! No wonder I had a hard time finding it in the books. Here's a link to a nice photo at Flickr:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3436/3391566758_5c28dc14f7.jpg

A Twelve-minute Africa Slideshow

In case you missed last night's slide show from our Africa trip, here is my contribution, an extended version posted to Youtube.

http://youtu.be/5zOrqXTPViA