Cerro de la Muerte

We are hoping to depart from San Jose tomorrow, after a day of banding, for Madre Selva, our high elevation station in Cerro de la Muerte. I believe the house we will be staying at is at around 8,000 ft, so it's going to be chilly, and I like it! There will be no interwebbbing however, so here 7 photos for the next week without posts.

Amanda, ziplining!


Name that hawk...


Croc


Giant Red-winged Grasshopper


My sis


My ma, and a huge leaf!


Ochre-bellied Flycatcher

To SJ

Green Heron


Yellow-headed Caracara

500

This is post number 500!

A few looks at where we're living.

Walking into the CCC compound where we are based out of in Tortuguero


Four of us share this


Our room and the "library" are in this building


Sunset in town


Northern Barred Woodcreeper

Bare-throated Tiger Heron

Um, found this in a net today...

CCC

Olive-backed Euphonia


Long-billed Hermit

Took a paddle across the canal today

While we only caught manakins and a hummingbird the other crew caught a kingfisher and a trogan, blast! At least there's potential.

Laughing Falcon


Barred Antshrike

Roberts and Co.

Tomorrow night we're spending the night at one of our sites, which happens to be another research station, but for herp-lovers.

White-faced Capuchin


Brown Pelican downing chow


A Jared special of the Roberts and Co. vacay at Arenal

Man can

Saw my first trogans of the trip, Slaty-tailed, along with a pair of Blue Dacnis, and White-flanked Antwrens

We're still trying to figure Amanda's new macro lens...it worked great for some birds, like this Spotted Woodcreeper:


But all of the Red-capped Manakin pictures turned out a bit like this one, very bright and looking photo edited to hell, though I still like it. It was pretty bright where we were shooting, but maybe there's some odd quality to those fluorescent red feathers that make then particularly hard to capture...


More natural looking with the point and shoot:

Aero

Went banding with Amanda and Charlotte today near the Tortuguero airport which has one flight in everyday for those spendy tourists, but may be flying in banders at some point in the future, cutting out the 6 hours of travel to get here.

The boat ride to the site was much nicer today, with no rain then or the rest of the day. Though only 11 birds and four species, the birds are obviously still mind blowing.

Clay-colored Robin


Rufous-tailed Hummingbird


White-collared Manakins:

Carrots for legs


A pair caught together


Prothonotary Warbler


Our banding station, with the beach in the sun


The beach, two feet from the station, where we do migration counts on the odd hour


Ah yes, and this

Tortuga Lodge

Kingfishers were caught! One American Pygmy and one Green. Along with a White-collared Manakin and a Bright-rumped Attila. It was pretty slow, but I saw a lot of new birds (Purple-throated Fruitcrow, how do you exist?) and experienced my first bit of tropical downpour on the boat ride to the site.

Crappy Green Kingfisher picture, still working on the humidity/fog issue...


Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

Lodge

We made it Tortuguero today, after 7 hours of travel with a walk, bus, bus, boat walk. Tomorrow we'll start up the job at one of the sites where they often catch kingfishers, something that I've looked forward to for a long time. The humidity is stifling, but it's beautiful here, I just have to watch out for the geckos pooing in the food from the ceiling.

Tortuguero tomorrow

We're staying at the InBio Park dorms tonight and heading to Tortuguero tomorrow for about a week, probably starting up banding on Tuesday!

Three-toed sloths, looking cute?

Costa Rica

After 10 days of vacay in Costa Rica with the family and all associated significant others, it has come to an end and Amanda and I will be starting out banding job today. We had 5 days on the coast and 5 or so inland a bit, some in the cloud forest some in the rain forest, all on the Pacific side of the country. There have obviously been ups and downs of the trip including lots of new birds and sites for me and the rest but also a robbery that left us minus five cameras (including my two cameras...). It's been great, but it will be nice to settle into a routine in the near future.

Though we did lose hundreds of pictures and lots of gear, I still have my computer and managed to load the first few days of pictures. So until I get another zoom lens I'll be working with what I got in the first few days and macro shots galore.

Montezuma Oropendola

Pack it up

There are upwards of 12 Mourning Doves at a time below the feeders here in Leverett, Mass, resulting in this at times:

New years in VT

Sitting like a nightjar