The tour proper started on 14 February with all the participants meeting for breakfast at the Hotel Robledal before we set off for our first destination, the Braulio Carrillo National Park, which is about 30 km northeast of San Jose via Route 32.
Along the way we made a couple of stops at interesting birding locations that had clearly been productive on earlier Tropical Birding tours. As we drove towards Santa Clara on the edge of the park we stopped beside the main road and headed up a fairly steep slope in search of the Dull-mantled Antbird. This bird has a faily limited range within southern Central America and can be difficult to see as it’s usually found of the floor of evergreen forests. After a bit of searching we did get sight of the bird, although it was very sculky and difficult to photograph in the thick vegetation. There were not many other birds in the forest, although we did see a Black-headed Nightingale-thrush, which is another interesting bird found only in Central America.
After the challenging photographic conditions of the dense forest we then moved to the much more open El Tapir Reserve, which is also known as the Old Butterfly Garden. There is not much evidence left of the gardens but there are still enough flowers to draw in the hummingbirds. Unfortunately, we didn’t see the spectacular Snowcap that is sometimes observed here but the beautiful Black-crested Coquette did put in an appearance, along with Green Thorntail, Green Hermit and Rufous-tailed Hummingbird.
Besides hummingbirds there were plenty of other birds at the reserve, including Bananaquit, which is a common bird across Central America and northern South America, Scarlet-rumped Tanager, Silver-throated Tanager, Collared Aracari, Pale-vented Thrush and Common Tody-flycatcher.
After lunch at a roadside restaurant we moved on to the famous La Selva Biological Research Station, which reportedly has the record for the largest number of bird species seen at any site in Central America. The station carries out research, but also provides accommodation for 180 overnight visitors and has a dining hall and other facilities for guests.
Soon after we’d checked into our rooms the group went out for an evening birding session. The La Selva site has an extensive area of lowland tropical rainforest as well as more open areas near the accommodation and it was the latter that we explored during the early evening. There we had lots of parrots flying over and feeding on fruit in nearby trees, allowing us to get photographs of Red-lored Parrot, Mealy Parrot, Great Green Macaw and White-crowned Parrot.
We also had a Bat Falcon and a Chestnut-headed Oropendola fly over, while Masked Tityra, Great Kiskadee and Variable Seedeater were in the trees and on the fencing.
