Broad-billed Motmot: La Selva Biological Station (OTS), Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica — The normal way to bird La Selva is to walk the entrance road in the morning before breakfast at the headquarters buildings, but our day was not normal because we had to reschedule. We ended up going back to walk the road late one afternoon (which is when we saw the Cotinga posted yesterday). It was late…well after sunset…when we found this Broad-billed Motmot sitting on the wires. We slowly worked our way forward to fill the frame as much as possible, but the light was going fast. Bad light from a bad angle, but at least a record shot. The Broad-billed Motmot looks quite a bit like the Rufous Motmot…but is smaller, has less rufous, and has that little turquoise chin patch…which you can barely see in this photo. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with custom birds and wildlife modifications. ISO 1600 @ f4 @ 1/500th.

Snowy Cotinga: La Selva Biological Station (OTS), Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica — I offer this only as a “good bird”…it is certainly not a good photo…but then the bird was at least a third of a mile away, across the full width of the Sarapique River valley. It was totally invisible to the naked eye, and, I could not, in fact, see it in the camera viewfinder at 600mm equivalent either. I had to find the spot where it was sitting with my binoculars (after looking through Edwin’s, our guide) spotting scope where I could actually see the bird…and then take a photo of that spot…rather then the bird itself. I could then use full magnification on the camera’s LCD screen to see if I had the bird in the frame. I managed to do it twice out of a dozen tries, and this is the better of the two snots. It is a radical crop. What you see here is only about a 10th of the frame, which would make this the equivalent of photo taken with a 6000mm lens, or what we saw through the guide’s spotting scope. This bird sometimes hangs out where the road into La Selva leaves the main road, on our side of the valley, but the day we visited, this was the best we could do. I have no idea how Edwin spotted it way over there…wee and far…but he did. This is not one of the bigger cotingas…”thrush-sized” so it was indeed wee as well as far. Of course it is a bird of the high canopy so we might not have gotten much better views even if it had been on our side of the river. It just gives me something to look for on our next visit to La Selva. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent (cropped to 6000mm as above). Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 200 @ f4 @ 1/500th.

Common Tody-Flycatcher: La Selva Biological Station (OTS), Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica — This Common Tody-Flycatcher was with the mixed feeding flock that also included the Emerald Tanager and the Pied Puffbird from the past few day’s posts…which we encountered around the buildings on the far side of the suspension bridge over the Puerto Viejo river at La Selva Biological Station when we visited in December 2021. This member of the Tyrant flycatcher family is widely distributed through the lowlands of tropical America…from southern Mexico down through Central America, and in the top half of South America…though not in the deep Amazon. It prefers openings and bushy clearings. It shares half its name with the family of Todys, a Caribbean family of much more brightly colored flycatchers with a somewhat similar shape, and the Tody-Motmot, which also shares a somewhat similar shape. Apparently the word Tody derives from Latin through French and just means a “small bird”. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 640 @ f4 @ 1/500th.

Red-lored Parrot: La Selva Biological Station, OTS, Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica — Red-lored Parrots are becoming common in San Diego, California in US, and I always enjoy seeing them when I attend the San Diego Birding Festival (which I have not gotten to do in several years now)…but it is a whole other thing to see them in their native habitat. For some reason these last two trips to Costa Rica in December 2021 were the most productive parrot trips I have yet had. We had more species and more frequent sightings than ever before. A pair of Red-loreds came to the edge of the clearing around the buildings on the far side of the Puerto Viejo river suspension bridge at La Selva Biological Station at the same time as the Puffbirds posted yesterday (and a couple more birds which I will feature in the days to come). We were spoiled for choice. 🙂 The parrots remained high, just below the canopy, but perched out in the open for us. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. These are heavy crops, for the equivalent of at lest 3000mm, and then put through Pixelmator’s Machine Learning Maximum Resolution treatment…as well as being adjusted for highlights and shadows and sharpness. ISO 200 @ f4 @ 1/500th.

Pic for today: Pied Puffbird
Pied Puffbird: La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica — Maybe the best bird, or at least best bird sighting, of our visit to the Organization for Tropical Studies, La Selva Biological Station, was this Pied Puffbird, that came down and sat for us at about 15 feet and eye-level. They almost never perch that low, and this one gave us quite a show. Sony Rx10iv at 468mm equivalent. Program mode with Multi-frame Noise Reduction (not because I needed it for this shot, but because I was shooting mostly under the canopy where it was needed). Processed in Polarr, Pixomator Photo Pro, and Apple Photos. Equivalent ISO 640 @ f4 @ 1/500th