Rufous-tailed Jacamar
Rufous-tailed Jacamar: La Selva Biological Station, Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica — We switched our visit to La Selva Biological Station from our fist day in the Sarapique rain forest to our last day…since it was predicted to pour rail all day that first day, and La Selva is not nearly as much fun in the rain. La Selva is a large preserve at the foot of the mountains, and it connects to a continuous swath or protected land that runs all the way to the summit. The reserve itself has one of highest levels of biodiversity on the planet…one of the highest number of bird species for the size of the area of anywhere you might go, and the scientists who visit there to study tropical biology have access to every tropical climate zone. La Selva is owned by the Organization for Tropical Studies, an international consortium of universities, and exists only to protect the land and habitat and provide accommodations and field sights for researchers from all over the world. The road into La Selva is one of the top birding destination in the world, as are the (mostly paved) paths within. (They are paved because the station covers such a vast area that the only practical way for researchers to reach their sites each day is by bicycle.) While I love the diversity and access La Selva provides, I have to say that I have yet to visit the station when we did not get rained on…and pretty wet. 🙂 The up side is the bird variety you can see in a few hours around the grounds and on the first mile or so of some of the trails. This Jacamar was perched under deep cover right at one end of the famous foot suspension bridge over the Puerto Viejo river. If you have ever tried to photograph from a suspension bridge when others are crossing, you can imagine the difficulty level of this shot 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with wildlife modifications and multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixomator Photo and Apple Photos. Equivalent ISO 6400 @ f4 @ 1/160th.
Honduran White Tent-making Bats with Cope
Honduran White Tent-making Bats: Gaupiles, Costa Rica — when we go looking for the owls with Cope, I always ask him to find us some bats. Honduran White Tent-making Bats roost in “tents” they make by chewing along the stem of large heliconia leaves until they droop down on both sides…making a shelter where the bats can spend the day. They use the same “tent” for a few days and then move on to another, so the understory in the second growth forest where the owls live, is full of abandoned bat tents…the trick is to find one they are still using. Cope is in the forest daily, so he generally knows where the bats have been roosting and has never failed to find us an active tent. Sometimes there will be half a dozen bats under the leaf, sometimes, as it happened this year, just a couple. As you can see from the photo, the bats were not asleep…just hunkered down…but I was not the first one to photograph them…a process that involves getting down on your knees under the leaf without touching the leaf, pointing your camera up at the them, and then getting back up, again without touching the leaf (not aways easy at my age)…so we may have woken them from their nap already. At any rate, I rate the bat experience right up there with finding the owls roosting, and it is one of the reasons I take my groups back to Donde Cope each year. Sony Rx10iv at 115mm equivalent. Program mode with wildlife modifications and multi-frame noise reduction. Light provided by Cope’s flashlight. Processed in Pixomator Photo and apple Photos. Equivalent ISO 800 @ f4 @ 1/250th.
Spectacled Owl with Cope
Spectacled Owl: Gaupiles, Costa Rica — Every year when we visit, Cope has known where at least one Owl is roosting during the day. In fact, it was owls that first took us to Cope’s. I asked my guide, on my very first trip to Costa Rica, if we could see an owl on one of our afternoons with no scheduled activity…and he said, “Well I know this guy…” We have been going to Cope’s every trip since. The Spectacled Owl has been faithful each year. Some years we get better views. Some years we see two owls together. Some years we see a chick. And twice we have also seen Great Crested Owl in the same area. But always owls! Cope is very careful not to disturb the owls and we always remain at a respectful distance and don’t sometimes, have the clearest line of sight in the dense second growth area where they roost. But we always see them. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with wildlife modifications and multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. Equivalent ISO 6400 @ f4 @ 1/80th (way dark in the forest!)
Howlers of the Sarapique
Howler Monkeys: Sarapique River at Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica — the Howler Monkey is by far the most abundant primate in the lowland rain forests of Costa Rica, at least on the Caribbean slope. The resident troop woke us up most mornings at 4am as the males greeted the day and proclaimed their dominance. We saw this troop from the safari boat on the Sarapique River, upstream from the docks at Puerto Viejo. The big male is pretty obvious. The female with the baby was good to see, and the young male was very active. There were several more in the troop, but they stayed deeper in and out of sight. Sony Rx10iv at 509mm equivalent (trying to get the tails in :). Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. Mostly ISO 800, one at ISO 1000 and one at 640. f4 @ 1/500th.
Woodpeckers at Cope’s
Black-cheeked and Hoffmann’s Woodpeckers: Donde Cope, Gaupiles, Costa Rica — Black-cheeked Woodpeckers are everywhere in the Caribbean lowland rain forest where we spend the first several days of our yearly trip to Costa Rica, and we generally see both Black-cheeked and the more wide-spread, but less abundant (in my experience) Hoffmann’s at both Dave and Dave’s Costa Rican Nature Park, and at Cope’s tiny village sanctuary. These shots are from a few moments apart at Cope’s, but in very different light. 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 541mm equivalent. Program mode with wildlife modifications and multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. Black-cheeked, Equivalent ISO 2500 @ f4 @ 1/500th. Hoffmann’s, Equivalent ISO 800 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Crowned Woodnymph
Crowned Woodnymph: Donde Cope, Gaupiles, Costa Rica — I have been to Cope’s at least 7 times over the past years, and on each visit I have seen the Crowned Woodnymph male, but I have never gotten a photo of it. This is the female who sat nicely for me this year. Sony Rx10iv at 526mm equivalent. Program mode with wildlife modifications and multi-frame noise reduction for low light. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. Equivalent ISO 5000 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Green Kingfisher
Green Kingfisher: Donde Cope, Gaupiles, Costa Rica — This year Cope has two kingfishers coming to the old talapia pond in his back yard…both a Green and a Pygmy…but they are never there at the same time. When we visited, it was the Green’s turn. (What actually happens is the Green drives the Pygmy away. I would have preferred to see the Pygmy, myself, but I will make do with the Green. The Green Kingfisher is, actually, one of my favorite birds…but I can see it in Texas, so it is not as exciting as a Pygmy :). The light at Cope’s is never what I would want, but with multi-frame noise reduction and some post processing, the results are worth looking at. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixomator Photo and Apple Photos. Equivalent ISO 6400 @ f4 @ 1/320th.
Cope’s Lizards
Big-headed Anole, Giant Green Anole, Brown Basilisk: Donde Cope, Guapiles, Costa Rica — in addition to lots of birds (and sometimes sloths), Cope always has a number of lizard species in his little sanctuary. This year they were particularly active…on the hunt…and we saw two with prey. I am not a lizard expert, by a long shot, but my best guess on the ids here is, as above, Big-headed Anole, Big-headed with prey, Giant Green Anole, Giant Green with prey, and Brown Basilisk. Sony Rx10iv at various zoom settings to fill the frame. Program mode with multi-frame noise reduction. Added light from flashlights. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos.
Orange-chinned Parakeet
Orange-chinned Parakeet: Donde Cope, Guapiles, Costa Rica — Visitors come and go, year to year, at Cope’s home in Guapiles, and I do not mean just the human visitors. This year he has several new visitors, or new to me in the many years I have been spending an afternoon at Cope’s on one of my Costa Rica Rain and Cloud Forest trips. And the sloths that have spent them there in the past seem to be gone. These days he has both a Pygmy and a Green Kingfisher coming to the old tilapia pond, though never at the same time, and he also has a good sized flock of Orange-chinned Parakeets. If you look closely at two of those photos, you and actually see the orange chin. Not easy to see. Sony Rx10iv various zoom settings to frame the bird. Program mode with multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos.
Wood Rails at Cope’s
Russet-napped Wood-rail: Donde Cope, Gaupiles, Costa Rica — One of the highlights of a visit to Donde Cope, for several years now, has been the opportunity to see a Russet-napped Wood-rail up close. He had a pair coming to his tiny talapia pond. They stayed in the deep shadows on the far side in the back corner of the pond, but they were there. Perhaps because Covid kept visitors away for over a year, the Wood-rails have gotten much more bold. There were at least 3 visiting the pond the day we visited Cope…and they came right out into the open and on the near side of the pond. What a treat! Sony Rx10iv at 424mm equivalent. Program mode with multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixomator Photo and Apple Photos. Equivalent ISO 6400 @ f4 @ 1/320th.