When we go on birding trips, I am pretty sure that we spend more time preparing for the trip than actually watching the birds when we get there. Seriously, how many of us birders study a new field guide for countless hours before we offically start the trip? How many hours do we spend planning the trip and salivating over sites? How often do we browse through photos and vocalizations on a birding app for Costa Rica? We look at those birds to learn their field marks, and read the text so often that we start seeing those feathered targets in our dreams.
“Whoah, there goes three giant umbrellabirds flying with vultures? Oh shoot, they don’t soar around with vultures…”, and when a bespectacled, bino sporting, smiling werewolf in tweed walks on past, darn (!), definitely just a dream! No matter how cool or crazy our pre-trip birding dreams may dare to be, they of course never compare to the real thing.
One of several birds that looks as if it comes from the land of birding dreams is the Ocellated Antbird. No small brown thing this one. It’s sort of like pumpkin orange with black and buff scale-patterned plumage, has a black face and throat, a tawny crown, and (get ready for this), a big blue face. Yep, not just an eyering but a whole, big blue face.
Despite its incredible appearance, this super cool Central American king of the antbirds is not too difficult to see when birding in Costa Rica. You go to the right places and can run into this gem on several occasions. You have to go to the right place of course, but bird enough at any lowland or foothill site on the Caribbean slope with good forest and you have a very good chance of focusing in on that exotic blue face. I was reminded of that while birding with Josh Beck and Kathi Borgmann the other day. If you haven’t heard, these birding heros are birding their way from California down to Costa Rica and beyond and are seeing like almost everything! Check out the adventures at their Birds of Passage blog.
While birding near Albergue Socorro, a foothill site near Virgen del Socorro, we ran into a small antswarm with a couple Zeledon’s Antbirds, Spotted Barbtail, and a few other birds along with a few of our star species for the day, the Ocellated Antbird. We got lots of perfect looks, saw lots of vegetation moving instead of seeing them, and did not see or hear any much wanted Black-banded Woodcreepers. Josh and Kathi were mentioning that they had seen Ocellateds on several occasions in Costa Rica to the point of it being just about expected. I think this is because they have focused a lot of time and effort in quality rainforest but nevertheless, it shows that this fancy antbird is not all that tough to see if you go to the right places.
Those are places with lots of nice, intact Caribbean slope rainforest like Pocosol, El Tapir, Quebrada Gonzalez on occasion, Arenal, San Gerardo, and so on. I have had several so far this year but the ones near Virgen del Socorro were especially nice because one let me take its picture. Thanks, dreambird!