Toucans!

Yellow-throated and Keel-billed Toucans, Collared Aracari: Dave and Dave’s Costa Rican Nature Park, La Virgen, Costa Rica — We spent our second full morning in Costa Rica, and our second day of heavy rain, safe and dry on the covered observation deck and the back porch at Dave and Dave’s Costa Rican Nature Park. In fact, Dave and Dave accommodated us by rescheduling our visit so that we could avoid getting soaked a second day in a row (it happened to be the last of the heavy rains for the trip). Dave and Dave, father and son, have, over the past 40 years, created a birder’s and photographers paradise on their property on the high bluff that overlooks the Sarapique River. Once a banana plantation, they have carefully reintroduced native plants and trees to attract a wide variety of birds and wildlife. Because they are on the bluff, right at the edge of the drop to the river, they are also at canopy level on one side, which gives them a unique mix of understory and canopy birds. It is a reliable place to see 3 of the 6 species of Toucans in Costa Rica…Yellow-throated and Keel-billed Toucan, and the Collared Aricari. (We had already seen a 4th, the Emerald Toucanet, the previous day higher in the mountains where they hang out, and 3 of us would see the Fiery-billed Aricari at the mid-elevation Wilson Botanical Gardens on the Pacific Slope the following week…leaving out only the somewhat harder to see Yellow-eared Toucanet for the two trips.) Though it rained hard off and on all morning, and we were very thankful for the cover, it did not discourage the Toucans. At times we had all three in view at the same time. Where to look?! I have said this before, but if you are into bird photography at all, don’t miss Dave and Daves on any visit to Costa Rica. Tanagers, Saltators, Honeycreepers, Woodpeckers, Toucans, Manakins, and one of the best selections of Rain Forest hummingbirds any where…and all from sheltered observation. It does not really get any better. Sony Rx10iv at various zoom settings for framing these large birds. Program mode with multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.

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