Raptor Festival! Who doesn’t love the sound of a festive gathering that celebrates raptorial birds? Such venue are destined to be cool. And it was. We nearly missed the gig but thanks to a casual Facebook check Friday evening, I noticed a quick, short video that mentioned the second annual raptor festival taking place at Refugio Lapa Verde, October 18th.
That sounded fun and it was free but yikes! We were talking the following day and although the LapaVerde Refuge is straight line close, sans flying car, getting there would mean 2 hours driving up and over the Central Cordillera mountain range (a common situation in Costa Rica). That actually isn’t so bad, especially if you like watching birds; the route passes through a few different life zones that hide 100s of bird species.
It’s the getting back part that can be tiresome (and whoah nelly, read on to hear about that challenge) as well as the leaving early enough part to get there in time (if you like to sleep in). However, on Saturday morning, we shrugged off any worries about those potentially challenging parts of the trip and made our way to the festival. Here’s how that day went along with recommendations and other hopefully helpful tidbits.
The height of fall migration in Costa Rica
This is it, third week of October in Costa Rica, the major final push of birds headed here and onward to the rich wintering forests of South America. See them while you can, see if you’ll get lucky with a quick cuckoo sighting or ironic, non-red Scarlet Tanager flocks and kingbird movements.
There’s also the raptors, the thousands of TVs and Swainson’s Hawks and Broad-wings soaring overhead, many of which pass over the hawkwatch at the Refugio Lapa Verde. Those big winged flyers are the main reason for the raptor festival but there’s other birds too, hiding and foraging in the vegetation of the refuge.
Even before we left for our cross mountain drive, I went looking for those migrants. I did my usual brief walk in our neighborhood, one that passes near a rare adjacent farm and narrow riparian zone. The Traill’s Flycatcher sallying down to the cut grass, a few pewees, Dickcissel, my first Bay-breasted Warbler of the year and a few other birds were a reminder of peak migration happening. A quick message from another local birder who had heard tons of Swainson’s Thrushes passing over pre-dawn skies was another reminder as were the birds we saw later that day.
An important, multi-faceted refuge
The Lapa Verde Refuge is privately-owned protected land that encompasses some of the last sizeable remaining areas of Caribbean lowland rainforest in Costa Rica. Just across the road from the Selva Verde forests and northwest of La Selva, the habitat is also loosely connected to other patches of forest that eventually reach the Nicaraguan border.
These connections and location make the refuge an ideal area to help conserve the Great Green Macaw. We need more reforestation for better forest connections outside of the refuge but Ecovida (the organization that owns and manages the refuge) has certainly been doing an excellent job.
Since 2013, through active reforestation and just letting the forest grow back on its own, they have reforested more than 300 hectares. The remaining 1500 hectares protects older rainforest, swamps, and other wetlands. This wealth of habitats is of course ideal for maintaining the complex biodiversity native to northern Costa Rica including important second growth habitats used by warblers and other small migrant birds (the same type of habitat frequently eliminated for pineapple farms).
Great Green Macaws and more
Thanks to the forests in the refuge, Great Green Macaws are regular (we saw several during our visit), and most expected lowland species have been recorded. This includes Slaty-backed Forest-Falcon (rare), Tiny Hawk, Ornate Hawk-Eagle, Snowy Cotinga, puffbirds, motmots, and more.
Although Agami Heron, Rufescent Tiger-Heron and some other birds aren’t on the list, I’m sure they are at least occasionally present too, probably just in less accessible spots.
On our visit, we didn’t see too much but our birding was also limited to sunny mid-day weather and a short tour mostly meant to educate visitors about the refuge. Even so, we still encountered several expected warblers (as well as a beautiful male Prothonotary), other migrants, some migrating kettles, King Vulture, and some other birds.
Raptor celebration
In addition to free tours to learn about the refuge, festival attendants also enjoyed everything from DJ’d music to face painting, story telling, and an honest to goodness magic show. There was a lot going on and it sometimes got loud but I was impressed!
Local kids had also submitted artwork, there were vendors selling arts and crafts, a Vortex optics stand with binos and scopes to sample, snow cones, and other raptor festival foods.
Although we didn’t stay until the finale, the festival ended with a concert and fire juggling! We made up for missing that by watching the fun folks from dance around in identifiable raptor costumes. As was befitting their aggressive nature, the Ornate Hawk-Eagle and Black and white Hawk-Eagle also chased a couple of kite flying kids around.
The Ecovida hawkwatch tower
Part of our tour included a visit to the refuge’s crown jewell; the hawkwatch tower. Situated on a hill, it provided a fantastic view of the surrounding forests and skies. It somewhat reminded me of canopy towers in the Amazon, I’d love to be up there pre and post dawn. It would also be the perfect spot to do a big sit and raise funds for refuge projects.
Although we weren’t at the tower at an ideal time, the counters do see many thousands of raptors during the migration season along with lots of other cool birds.
Visiting the refuge
The raptor festival was an open house, fun, celebratory event but that’s not the norm. It seems like the refuge is mostly there for research and protecting habitat. Although their site does mention ecotourism and they do receive visits, there’s not a lot of information about entrance fees and so on.
If interested in visiting, it would be best to contact them to get the full deal. I’ll also be doing that and including that information in the next update for my Costa Rica bird finding book. I’ve already got a list of other places to update and include, it’s amazing how many new birding sites pop up for well-birded Costa Rica!
What I can say is that if you do visit, you should have a fair chance at a wide variety of lowland birds while watching from their trails and the tower.
The insane drive back
On another note, the drive back wasn’t as easy going as the drive there. Not quite. Driving up and over the mountains in dry weather and daylight is another world compared to doing that at night and in pouring rain.
The problem with night driving there and in much of Costa Rica is the lack of illumination coupled with a concurrent lack of painted roads with reflectors. That’s bad enough in the driest of weather but when you throw in slick roads and constant rain, you’re faced with a potentially life and death situation.
Seriously. It’s hard to see the edge of the road and if you venture off of it, you’re vehicle will likely be rolling down the mountain. Luckily, the rain was too bad on our drive up and, by taking it slow and easy, we made it to the to without too much anxiety. However, from there, as we descended towards Alajuela, the rain got heavier to the point of deluge level craziness with some road flooding (albeit shallow enough to drive through). Add in other drivers, some of whom insist on passing and it’s no wonder we ran into an accident. Not us thank goodness but it did close the road and made us take a detour to get back on track.
The moral of that story is to avoid driving at night in Costa Rica, especially in mountains and during the wet season. Fortunately, you don’t really have to and it’s much easier during the dry season. Happy birding, I hope to see you here!