Costa Rica 2013
Fifteen Years Later

January 26, 2013 - Heliconias Lodge and Back to San Jose

This morning the weather was pretty bad at Heliconias Lodge, with wind and intermittently heavy rain, so we bailed and headed to the desert. We drove over the pass on CR 6 to the Pan-American, CR 1, and then south through the fringes of the Guanacaste Desert to Hacienda la Pacifica. This was a lodge we stayed at back in 1998, and it has been refurbished in the interim. Spiffy now. They were kind enough to allow us to bird their grounds. Several new species, and a few photographs, including the White-throated Magpie-Jay.

Then a bit further to the road to Ensenada Lodge, a place Nick has used on other trips, where we got Crested Bobwhite and Lesser Ground-Cuckoo. From there it was about a two hour drive to San Jose International, which is actually about ten miles from the city center. We're back at the San Jose Holiday Inn Express, our starting point. The traffic was bad enough getting that far. Just as glad not to be going back into the city proper.

Sad farewells. The weather sounds a bit grim in Fairbanks. Early start to the airport tomorrow.

Serious props to our guide, Nick Athanas, and our driver, Memo, who was off to pick up 25 French tourists. The guide and the driver are critical on any extended birding trip. Excellent work by both.

Postscript: If I had known 24 hours later I'd be in the Fairbanks Int'l Airport parking lot, in the dark and ice fog, in shirtsleeves at -45 F, trying to find the truck, I might have just stayed in Costa Rica...


Birds
Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
Blue-winged Teal
Crested Bobwhite
Wood Stork
Great Egret
Cattle Egret
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Roadside Hawk
Short-tailed Hawk
Rock Pigeon
White-winged Dove
Inca Dove
Ruddy Ground-Dove
Squirrel Cuckoo
Lesser Ground-Cuckoo
Groove-billed Ani
Rufous-tailed Hummingbird
Cinnamon Hummingbird
Black-headed Trogon
Collared Aracari
Hoffmann's Woodpecker
Laughing Falcon
American Kestrel
Orange-fronted Parakeet
Yellow-olive Flycatcher
Brown-crested Flycatcher
Great Kiskadee
Boat-billed Flycatcher
Social Flycatcher
Tropical Kingbird
Long-tailed Manakin
Philadelphia Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Lesser Greenlet
White-throated Magpie-Jay
Blue-and-white Swallow
Barn Swallow
Rufous-naped Wren
Banded Wren
White-lored Gnatcatcher
Clay-colored Thrush
Tennessee Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Blue-gray Tanager
Variable Seedeater
Bananaquit
Hepatic Tanager
Great-tailed Grackle
Streak-backed Oriole
Baltimore Oriole
Montezuma Oropendola
Scrub Euphonia
House Sparrow

White-throated Magpie-Jay

Crested Bobwhite

Orange-fronted Parakeet

Rufous-naped Wren
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