Meeting with the group in the lobby and some of the prejudices are immediately confirmed. We are all nerds, but the diversity is at least as wide as the Costa Rican bird fauna.
Cannot say anything about birding expertise of individuals yet, but one member of the group came without binoculars. I found this extraordinary, but it calmed down Chris a bit who was concerned about being the only person not a hard-core birder.
On the other hand, there will always be that one super expert, getting up at 4am every day and out here to check off the last few birds from his world bird list (consisting of around 11.000 species). I am pretty safe here to use the male pronoun as somehow women are usually not that crazy.
And then I already suspect someone with the potential to evolve into an eager beaver (in this case a female specimen), sucking up to the guide by pointing out during the bus ride any single bird flying in a distance of 2km.
Finally, we are in the jungle. Our first stop is the Braulio Carillo National Park which starts less than an hours drive away from San José and covers 470km2 of ground with pristine rainforest across steep hills. And because of the steep hills there are only around 12km hiking paths. We went to a nice mirador overlooking a river and did initial bird watching.
Birdwatching in the forest has the catch though, that there are just too many trees in the way. So, although we heard a lot of birds and got a glimpse of some here or there, it wasn’t as straightforward as hoped for. At least we heard our first Toucan already.
And the nature: Luckily Chris is a big fan of the Berlin Botanical Garden hot houses and never fails to visit them in the winter. Imagine Costa Rica National Parks just being gigantic hot houses with trees and plants of ginormous size. so there is something for everyone, birds and plants. Until it started to rain, but then what do you expect in the rain forest?
Recuperating in a nice restaurant we got our first views of some beautiful hummingbirds. One of the wonders of nature.
On the way to our next destination our guide, Jonathan, did one of these things good guides do: From our driving car he spotted a sloth, chilling in a tree (all they do). After completing a u-turn (the sloth was still there, surprise) we were treated to a nice view and then some howler monkeys and a monster iguana on top, super triple.
Our last stop today is the Gran Gavilán de Sarapiquí Lodge and ALL dreams came true. If I extrapolate today, we are done with Costa Rican birdlife in a bit over 20 days and can get a sunburn at the beach (maybe go after fishies then).
A whopping 41 lifers (birds you have seen the first time in your life). I know, not everyone is as interested in this aspect, I will attach some pictures at the end. I think the lodge knows its audience and caters for birders by catering for birds, meaning they laid out bananas to attract colourful visitors, see below.
Everything is hot here, we are now in the Caribbean plains, not at the ocean. Nighttime low temperature is 24°C, daytime high 36°C, due to humidity my app tells me that it feels like 44°C. I think the sloth has it all figured out.
Chris and I (slowly) walked down to the river and saw some spider monkeys doing five extremity gymnastics in the trees.
Coming to think of it, I need to be careful to appear more casual when birding. It is so much fun, I think Chris is getting suspicious that I will start a World Big Year next year and aim for the 11.000 species. Good that I am far from being an expert.
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