Exciting Birding on the Caribbean Slope of Rincon de la Vieja

Rincon de la Vieja is this large volcano that looms into the sky near Liberia in northern Costa Rica. Not sure where it is? Just look east and north of the highway anywhere around Liberia. You will see a mountain that stands out from the Guanacaste flatlands like a humongous sore thumb. It’s almost always topped with clouds and thus makes for a common, fine photography subject. As befits its stand-out character, Rincon de la Vieja also beckons to birders with a heck of a fine assemplage of birds.

The Pacific slope parts of the volcano are good for just about every dry forest species and host quite a few Caribbean slope birds as you move into the evergreen forests at higher elevations but what about the northern side of the volcano? What are the forests like there? Well, I paid a weekend visit a couple of weeks ago with the Birding Club of Costa Rica and the forests are pretty darn good.

During approximately two full days of birding while staying at the Las Bromelias cabinas (cheap!), we identified somewhere around 170 species and would have got more with further exploration. While there is the usual disheartening deforestation for cattle pastures at various places en route, the road to the place also passes near and through nice moist forests and foothill rainforests that act as a corridor to extensive areas of rainforest on Volcan Cacao. We didn’t have the time to stop and bird in those corridor areas but I bet they are good for a wide variety of Caribbean slope rainforest species.

As one gets close to Las Bromelias, edge habitats and second growth are quite birdy and host expected species along with goodies possible like Black-crested Coquette (we had one in a flowering tree), and Bare-crowned Antbird (not too rare!). At the cabins, there is a nice and birdy riparian grove, second growth, and a good area of forest along one of their trails. We had toucans and various expected edge species at the cabins and some nice forest birds on the trails.

By nice forest birds, I mean things like Rufous-tailed Jacamar, Red-throated Ant tanager, Northern Bentbill, Bay and Black-throated Wrens, Bare-crowned Antbird, Dusky Antbird, an army of White-collared Manakins, Song Wren, and one of the stars of the show, Keel-billed Motmot. We got excellent scope looks at a pair in the back of the quarry and I was very pleased to record it to see if I can parse some sort of difference between its call and that of Broad-billed Motmot. The two species sound so similar that they respond to each other’s calls so I don’t know if I will discern a difference but at least I now have a recording of a definite Keel-billed Motmot.

We didn’t get a chance to do much birding back in the nice forested area but I would love to do some surveys there to see if Tawny-faced Quail and White-fronted Nunbird occur. The R V G Cuckoo might be there too but you can’t really survey for that mega avian wizard of the understory anyways.

The other main area for birding was the road up to good forest and hot springs. We didn’t make it to the volcanic waters but who cares, this was a birding trip by golly! We also had some definite by golly birds. At the edge of the forest, one of our best was a pair of Tawny-chested Flycatchers. It’s always nice to see this colorful Empid.-like bird because they are rare, very localized, and easy to identify. There are only a few reliable sites for them anywhere but based on the places I have seen them, it looks like one of their preferred habitats may be slopes with fairly old second growth (60 year old trees) and various vine tangles near the edge of rainforest.

Further on, we had an antswarm in the forest and had excellent looks at Ocellated, Spotted, and Bicolored Antbirds. No ground cuckoo and few birds overall but we weren’t complaining!

While we watched the swarm, we were entertained by the calls of a couple of Tody Motmots and one eventually showed very well for scope views! In my opinion, this seemed to be even better for Tody Motmot than the Heliconias area at Bijagua because we saw more than one and heard several. We also got Broad-billed Motmot along the road for a nice motmot trip trio.

The road ends at an upscale place known as “Sensoria”. Cars can be parked there and one can continue on foot through nice forest. That spot was especially birdy and gave several hummingbirds coming to flowering Ingas including brief looks at another Black-crested Coquette, Steely-vented Hummingbirds, Blue-throated Goldentail, Violet Sabrewing, and others (we had at least 17 species for the trip). A few tanagers also moved through the trees, the best being Scarlet-thighed Dacnis and Rufous-winged Tanager (!).

We picked up Stripe-breasted Wren there and also had excellent looks at Nightingale Wren. While walking in the forest, we were entertained by the songs of Slaty-backed and Black-headed Nightingale Thrushes and White-throated Thrushes. We also flushed a quail dove that could have been Ruddy or Chiriqui, and although we didn’t make it to an area where umbrellabirds have been seen, we also had White-ruffed and Long-tailed Manakins, and an Eyelash Viper!

The trip ended all too soon but next time, I hope to survey the road from Buenos Aires to the Santa Maria sector because it passes through a good-sized area of intact habitat. Probably some nice surprises along that stretch of road!

As a final bonus, the site had the best swift watching I have ever seen in Costa Rica. I’m not sure if it was due to the cloudy weather, or proximity to waterfalls in good forest, but we had fairly low, good looks at such uncommon species as White-chinned and Black Swifts among more common species like White-collared, Lesser Swallow-tailed, and Vaux’s Swifts.