Birding La Selva III: Meeting The King, A Sweaty Jacamar Experience, and A Delicous Egg Sack Thing

After taking a break from Hainer showing us life birds, we decided to bird the entrance road all the way back to the main road, as directed by "The Dude" in his top knotch blog, Costa Rica Living and Birding. Although this is not really the deep forest that much of La Selva offers, it was very birdy nonetheless, even mid-afternoon. After we birded the road and had our second round of puttering around the cafeteria and drinking coffee, a vulture kettle appeared low over the treetops that contained a couple of birds I was dying to see on the trip...King Vultures.

King Vulture is one of those birds I've always known about, but are so exotic and blatantly facemelting that it was hard to reconcile that I was finally seeing them. They threw out the traditional, semi-shitty way I view vultures and made me have to completely rethink the entire family.

The birds made multiple low passes over us, leaving us with the cliche "soul-satisfying" views that birders are always going on and on about. Look at that face!

While we would go on to see King Vultures at several other locations, none of those looks approached anything like what these La Selva birds gave us.

We identified this as a Rufous Mourner at the time, which I still think it is...

...although the larger Rufous Piha looks almost identical. Still a very cool and cooperative bird, with hilariously small feet.

Rufous-tailed Jacamar, another amazing tropical bird. I really had a chance to crush this species better but it was so damn humid that I literally could not see through my glasses for quite a while (let alone my camera), no matter how many times I tried to wipe them down. There were 3 jacamars all hanging out next to the road, calling and flycatching, and I just could not get my shit together. Sigh. I like this picture at least.

Chestnut-sided Warblers are everywhere in Costa Rica, including puddles in roads.

A Crested Guan impresses the tourists next to the cafeteria. I did not expect them to be so tame...I may or may not have sharted with glee at this point.

Paltry Tyrannulet is another ultra-abundant Costa Rican bird. They are ubiquitous, and superficially similar to an astounding number of other birds. Note the cicada on the left, and the white egg sack thing on the branch.

Mmmmmm....delicous egg sack thing.

And life goes on for the Paltry Tyrannulet.

We saw plenty of Ruddy Ground-Doves. Their abundance does not hide their good looks. All photos today were from La Selva Biological Station.

Birding La Selva Biological Station Part I: Hainers Gonna Hain

White-necked Puffbird!!!! All photos today from La Selva.

La Selva Biological Station is world famous for the research that gets done in the huge tract of primary forest there...but aside from that important fact, the birding is epic and that is why you and I know it. In fact, the birding here is considered legendary in some circles, so we were really excited to hut the trails here. Upon arriving, we were initially disappointed to find out that A) It costs $32 to get in and B) All that gets you is a guided tour. In retrospect, it might just be worth it to spend a couple nights there to get full access to the extensive trail system (as well as get all your meals on site)...but we bit the bullet, and just hoped that our guide would be a deec birder.

We lucked out; we got a Jedi birder Tico (whose name was pronounced "Hainer"...Tico names were generally not familiar sounding to us) who did an ace job catering to our birdnerd group. Hainer really knew how to spot wildlife deep in dense foliage, much to our amazement, especially birds. By the time we left, we agreed that the birding was so good that it was worth the cost; it turned out that La Selva's entrance fee was the most we paid for the whole trip.

This puffbird was one of my favorite birds of the trip. Look how lovable it is.

Hainer was actually so good that after that morning we began using his name to describe miraculous bird sightings, i.e. "Dude, I can't believe you Hainered that parrot. How the fuck did you even see it? Jesus Christ." Hainers gonna hain, know what I'm saying?

One of the highlights of the trip was when Hainer left us at the end of the morning and we were thanking him for getting us on so many birds. Frank gushed to him, "Hainer, you have amazing eyes.", which totally made Hainer think Frank was coming on to him. Many laughs were had at Frank's expense for the rest of the trip.

More La Selva birds to come soon!

Puffbirds really have a unique bill shape...anyone know what their favorite foods are?

Crested Guan. Lots of these huge, prehistoric monsters roam around La Selva, be it in the deep woods or next to the cafeteria.

Guans know how to cut a pretty sweet profile.

Crested Guan bomb.

I guess its about time I posted a picture of a parrot, since this is the rainforest and all. This is a Red-lored, a very common and widespread Amazona parrot that goes all the way north into northeastern Mexico.

Frank and Stilt get crowded by a Brit photographer. This is the awesome suspension bridge that runs over the river.

La Selva was where we finally ended the trogonless segment of the trip. This is a female Slaty-tailed Trogon, probably the easiest trogon to identify in the country.

After Gartered Trogon (formerly known as Violcaceous Trogon), Slaty-tailed was the most abundant trogon of the trip.

Rufous Mourner. It looks a lot like a Rufous Piha.  Both are cool birds that are really good at just sitting around for long periods of time. Being rufous.

There it is.

You might recognize this creature better in this position, instead of hanging like a bat. It's a Two-toed Sloth.

Dipper Dan may look like he is noticing a third nipple for the first time, but its actually a tick embedded in his chest. I've been in many worse places for ticks, mosquitoes and biting flies in the U.S., but expect more than a little of your blood to be sucked out while in the tropics.