Posts in Category: Osa Peninsula
Northern Barred-Woodcreeper
Northern Barred-Woodcreeper: Danta Cocorvodo Lodge, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2022 — On our way for a morning excursion to the observation tower at Danta Corcovado, we happened on a swarm of small army ants crossing one of the trails…two swarm lines actually… one just below my cabin and one further down by the bridge over the stream. It is amazing how many birds, including this Woodcreeper, are specialized ant swarm feeders. For the next few days I will be sharing some of these ant swarm birds. I did a little research this morning to refresh my memory. Army ants are nomadic. They do not build permanent nests like other ants but can stay in a camp or bivouac for up to 20 days, foraging in lines out from the camp and feeding the queen as she broods eggs (up to a million eggs a month so these swarms are huge). The new worker ants reach maturity just as the eggs hatch and the whole swarm has to move on, in order to find enough food to feed the new larvae. That is generally when you see the long lines of ants moving through the forest. If you look carefully you will see that ants are moving in both directions as they carry prey back to feed the larvae and the queen, which are being carried along in the rear of the march. They pretty much kill any living insect or spider, small reptiles and amphibians, even birds, that they encounter (though many army ants can not actually consume the birds they kill)…so they stir up just about everything that is able to get out of their path. A surprising number of birds have specialized in following the ant swarms and feeding on the insects, spiders, an small vertebrates which are exposed as they flee. Some of them have the word “ant” as part of their name, but the Northern Barred-Woodcreeper is rarely seen except when an army ant swarm is passing over an open trail…as one was on that morning at Danta Corcovado. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications with multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixelmator Pro and Apple Photos. Terrible light so equivalent ISO of 2500 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Scarlet-rumped Tanager
Scarlet-rumped Tanager: Danta Corcovodo Lodge, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2022 — The world is a poorer place since they lumped Passerini’s and Cherrie’s Tanagers into Scarlet-Rumped Tanager. I am sure they had good reasons, but still. Passerini’s used to the be the bird on Caribbean slope and Cherrie’s on the south Pacific slope…which includes the Osa Peninsula and the foothills above. Granted, the males, like this one from the roadside almost into Danta Corcovado Lodge, are visually identical, but the females are distinct…distinct enough to make anyone not armed with DNA data suspect that these are different species, especially combined with the clear geographical separation. But no. They are now all just Scarlet-rumped Tanagers. We saw them here in the lowlands, and we saw them in foothills at Wilson Botanical Gardens. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 1250 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Bronzed Cowbird
Bronzed Cowbird: Danta Corcovado Lodge, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2022 — Another bird from the wet field just as you turn toward Danta Corcovado Lodge. There were many Bronzed Cowbirds, a few Shiny Cowbirds, and at least one Giant Cowbird in the field around the cattle. I had only a limited view out the windows on that side as I was sitting on the “wrong” side of the van, but I managed this portrait of a Bronzed on the wire. In other light that iridescence would be more bronze and gives the bird its name. I have seen these birds in Southern Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and they have a foothold in California and Louisiana. They are occasionally seen along the coast as far as Florida. You can see them almost anywhere in lowland Central America where there are cleared fields and cattle. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f5.5 @ 1/1000th.
Smooth-billed Ani
Smooth-billed Ani: Danta Corcovado Lodge, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2022 — Also on the way back from our morning excursion to find the Yellow-billed Cotinga, we stopped by a wet field just as you turn off the main road toward the lodge with cattle, Cattle Egrets, and lots of back-birds, including a couple of Smooth-billed Anis. The Anis in Costa Rica are well separated geographically, at least according to the range maps in both field guides to the birds of Costa Rica that I have, with the Grove-billed occupying the larger territory on the Caribbean slope and half way down the Pacific…then maybe somewhat of a gap before the Smooth-bill takes over in the southern lowlands, on the Osa Peninsula and down to the Panama border. The Smooth-billed is predominantly a South American Bird, only reaching up into Central America in the south, while the Groove-billed has a range that covers from South Texas in the US, trough all of Central America, and well down the west coast of South America. However, the ranges on eBird, which rely on field reports, are not so clearly defined, especially on the Osa, where both birds are regularly reported. This does look like a Smooth-billed to me though…with that big crest on the bill. What remains of the tail is too scraggly to see whether it is square or rounded. 🙁 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Roadside Hawk
Roadside Hawk: Rincon, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2022 — On our way back from the Rincon River Bridge and our search for the Yellow-billed Cotinga, still before breakfast, we came up on this hawk sitting on the wires by the road. It is, of course, a Roadside Hawk…the most common hawk of the lowland tropical Americas…with a range from the US border (it is occasionally seen in extreme South Texas) to Northern Argentina and Uruguay. Costa Rica has two of the 12 recognized subspecies. This is the one that inhabits southwest Costa Rica and the adjacent Panama. Seeing this bird, so close and so cooperative, only a yards from the windows of our tourist van, we had a brief discussion of what it might be called if there were no roads…or what it might have been called when there were no roads. It is certainly a hawk of the openings and edges, and is, therefore, closely associated with roads, which are often the first openings in any forest where man travels or lives. I said they were all thinking backwards…roads are called roads because that is where you see the Roadside Hawks from. 🙂 (Okay, I know, but remember it was still before breakfast.) Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. (These photos were actually taken across the width of the van through an open window, so we were indeed pretty close.) Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f4 @ 1/640th.
The other heron at the bridge…
Green Heron: Rincon River Bridge, Rincon, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica — Along with the Bare-throated Tiger Heron I posted yesterday, we had this very cooperative Green Heron…well, maybe just “close” Green Heron. It did not, in fact, ever sit completely in the open and in good light at the same time…but one out of two is not bad either…and with some selective focus, it produced a pretty good shot. Of course, the Costa Rican Green Heron is no different from the Green Herons we can see almost anywhere in the United States (or anywhere in between for that matter) but the Costa Rican birds are resident there. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo. ISO 100 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Bare-throated Tiger Heron
Bare-throated Tiger Heron: Rincon River Bridge, Rincon, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica — The Rincon River Bridge in Rincon, just a mile or so from the Bay, is famous for one bird: The Yellow-billed Cotinga which can often be seen in flight, and rarely perched, there early in the morning. This is a very hard bird to see elsewhere, and I suspect that most birders who have seen it, have seen it right there on the bridge, just at sunup. We went. We saw it…though we did not get a look at a perched bird…but while we were there we had some fun with Herons and other birds as the sun finally burned off the morning mist. This is a Bare-throated Tiger Heron. I looked it up…or tried to…and there are 6 species of Tiger Herons. The name, apparently, comes from the striping in the plumage and the overall rufous coloration. They used to be Tiger Bitterns. I long ago stopped looking for logic in bird names. 🙂 This one looked particularly ruddy in the morning sun. I am not sure what was going on in the second shot with the ruff of feathers around the throat…this is not behavior I have seen in Herons before. It might have been a trick of the wind…but I had the impression that the ruff was intentional and part of the hunting posture??? If anyone know different, please chime in in the comments. 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 and 160 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Wet Rufous-tailed Hummingbird
Rufous-tailed Hummingbird: Las Tardes Community Ecological Project, Corcovado National Park, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica — We got caught in the rain on our exploration of the road above Las Tardes station, but made it back before we got soaked…not so much true for this Rufous-tailed Hummingbird that was hanging around off the covered deck where we had our lunch. I suspect he was enjoying the shower. The Rufous-tailed Hummingbird seems to be the most prevalent hummer in Central America…and is certainly the most present around feeders. No feeders at Las Tardes, and this one was still trying to dominate the available resources. 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Pro on the Mac Air. ISO 400 @ f4 @ 1/500th. Plus .3EV.
Mixed feeding flock…
Pic for today: Mixed feeding flock: Las Tardes Community Ecology Project, Corcovado National Park, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2022 — White-throated Shrike-Tanager, Rufous Mourner, Ruddy-tailed Flycatcher, Black-cheeked Ant-Tanager, White-winged Tanager, Twany-winged Woodcreeper. As I mentioned yesterday, we had already turned back from our exploration of the road into Corcovado National Park above the Las Tardes station when we encountered this mixed feeding flock of hard to see and hard to photograph birds moving through the undergrowth at just about eye-level. (In fact, if I had not stopped to tie my shoe, we would have missed it.) Yesterday’s Black-striped Woodcreeper was with these birds…along with a few others that I did not manage even a bad shot of. That is the way it happens in tropical birding. We had seen very little until this point in our hike, and then, for a few moments there were so many birds we did not know where to look. And of course, they were all buried in undergrowth so the photographers among us were very frustrated. Just how it goes in the tropics. Sony Rx10iv at around 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications and multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. (Disclaimer: Facebook may rearrange these photos randomly, so I will add the names to the individual photos as captions.)
Black-striped Woodcreeper
Black-striped Woodcreeper: Las Tardes Ecological Project, Corcovado National Park, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2022 — In our guide, Mario’s opinion this is the most handsome of the woodcreepers of the Osa Peninsula and Costa Rica. It is not any easier to see than any of the others, sharing the habit of working up the trunks of trees in heady cover, but this one, part of a mixed flock we encountered after we had already turned back on our exploration of the road above Las Tardes, was more cooperative than most…giving us several good views. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications, and multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixelmator Photo on the iPad Pro. Equivalent ISO 3200 @ f4 @ 1/500th.