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Recent Birding Highlights from Lands in Love

Over the past week, I have been pretty busy with guiding around Carara, Lands in Love, and Braulio Carrillo. Birding overall, has been kind of slow because of the unusually dry weather on the Caribbean slope (yeah, it may be the dry season but that lack of rain is supposed to be reserved for the Pacific side), but the place has still produced some nice birds.

Forest birding has been pretty slow but still turned up a Semiplumbeous Hawk. This lowland species was also been recently reported by other guests of Lands in Love.

A Semiplumbeous Hawk watches for prey from the canopy.

Despite the sunny, happy raptor flying conditions, the only other “good” raptor species has been King Vulture seen soaring from the Loveat Cafe. That said, it’s always worth watching for hawk-eagles and who knows what else.

The trails have turned up a few mixed understory flocks with Streak-crowned Antvireo, Slaty Antwren, and Buff-throated Foliage-gleaner but not too much else. If it would rain, I bet they will be really good and oh how the Caribbean slope needs rain! Since we are talking about forests that evolved with 4,000 meters per year and rain almost every day, dry conditions are not going to do anything good for the habitat.

Back to birds. Although I haven’t seen any Snowcaps at Lands in Love recently, flowering Erythrinas have been attracting Blue-throated Goldentail and should bring in some other nice hummingbirds. The best hummingbird, though, was a White-tipped Sicklebill heard and briefly seen on the beginning on the main trail. There are a lot of Heliconias in that area so keep an eye out for this mega hermit creature.

One day, antswarms were pretty good in the habitat right below the cabins. We saw a few Bicolored, at least three Ocellated, and a couple of Spotted. Other birds may have been with the ants as well but it was too difficult to look into the habitat to see them.

Spotted Antbird.
A rear view of that Spotted Antbird.

Speaking of that dense habitat, there were also one or two Sepia-capped Flycatchers, Northern Bentbill, Black-faced Anthrush, the usual Black-throated Wrens, White-collared Manakin, Red-throated Ant Tanager, and Black-headed Tody Flycatcher calling from the canopy.

As is typical for the area, we also had good looks at Tropical Parula.

Outside of the forest, we have had good looks at plenty of Black-mandibled and Keel-billed Toucans, occasional Crested Guans, oropendolas, and a good variety of edge species. One of the best were a pair of Great Curassows feeding on guava fruits at the edge of a horse pasture! It was fascinating to watch the male fly into a low guava tree to then knock the fruits to the ground. He then flew down to feed on them along with the female.

A bad hand held shot of a male Great Curassow in a Guava tree.
It was also nice to get looks at a pair of Gray necked Wood Rails hanging out at the ponds.

It’s the type of place where you always see something good. I can’t wait to go back so I can find Keel-billed Motmot, ground cuckoo, and other rarities.