The ultimate auto challenge in birding is doing a Big Day. In addition to birding for hours on end, it also incorporates various other birding challenges. You could, for example, put your ears to the sky to listen for and identify the faint chip notes of nocturnal migrants. On a Big Day, that can really help (granted that there are nocturnal migrants and that you can identify them)!
On the day of birding days, you are also encouraged to get into extreme birding Zen focus mode as you encounter fast moving rainforest canopy flocks. You may also call for owls on a hopelessly windy night.
Then there’s identifying Empids and other birds that look just like each other, without hesitation, and maybe calling out shorebirds by their vocalizations at 0 dark thirty or some other ridiculous hour. Any of those ventures are pretty challenging on their own but enjoying the mental burn during the same 24 hour period seems a bit much. It begs the question to why even do it?
With plenty of other, far easier birding practices to carry out, the concern is valid! Why challenge yourself for such extreme birding? I suppose the answer is the same for why people climb mountains or run marathons or play speed chess. I don’t know, I suppose it’s all for something to do, to see how far you can push yourself, to see what you are capable of within your realm of personal expertise.
Or, maybe just to see what happens if you try!
I mention all of this because, recently, Marilen and I embarked on yet another Big Day. It involved some of the birding challenges mentioned above but since it also involved a quiet dawn chorus and not enough morning birds to break any records, we ended up converting the Big Day into a Big Morning.
It was still good and memorable. Challenges were had, things were learned and we still identified more than 200 bird species. Here be some occurrences highlights:
Windy Weather on Poas!
I was determined to bird Poas, was set on getting a screech-owl, pygmy-owl, and a nightjar. I also like being up there at night because maybe, on one of those nights, we’ll document Unspotted Saw-whet Owl.
Well, none of that happened on Friday night. It was just too windy! Hefty gusts scattered my owl imitations to the four corners and the birds were too smart to come out and play on a night like that. We took the hint and left the area well ahead of schedule.
Bare-shanked Screech-Owl and a Tapir!
I hoped that the San Rafael de Varablanca road would be calmer and that wish was granted! It was a beautiful moonlit night accompanied by lovely quiet, the tinking notes of an unknown cloud forest tree frog, and the anxious sounds of snapping branches!
Imagination influenced by the mysterious dark of the night, I sort of wanted to leap back into the safety of the car. Just as the hoped for Bare-shanked Screech-Owl responded and flew in, I also remembered one of the animals that might break branches in the middle of the night. The very next moment, sure enough, there it was! Baird’s Tapir!
The big herbivore grazed on leaves at the edge of the forest and then slowly rambled into the trees. Based on the amount of snapping branches, I suspect there were two. A nice start to a memorable night!
A Pleasant Nocturnal Drive to the Lowlands
After the tapir incident, we drove down route 126, all the way to the lowlands. It was a beautiful, easy-going drive happily bereft of mist and the many cars that ply this road during the day.
It was also lacking in Dusky Nightjars and other birds but oh well, at least we tried.
Owl Road Pays Off
Our next destination was a road through rainforest in the Pueblo Nuevo lagoon area. It’s an exciting place where I have often had success with owls and other nocturnal birds! I hoped they would likewise oblige in the hour and half just before dawn.
Although they didn’t call as much as on other nights, thankfully, the birds sounded off just enough to pretty much clean up. My “BAWK!” imitation of a Great Potoo was quickly answered by the real deal’s reluctant growl. In response to other imitations and calls, a Middle American Screech-owl softly whined, a Black-and-White Owl gave a cat-like call, and young Spectacled Owls vocalized with glee.
A bit later, we also heard the typical gruff calls of adult Spec. Owls, one distant Crested Owl, and the bark of a Mottled Owl! To top off our nocturnal birding dessert, Central American Pygmy-Owl tooted a few times and Short-tailed Nighthawk gave a few brief whistles.
Uniform Crake, Green Ibis, and a few others did not join in but we still had chances for those wild and crazy guys As I had hoped, we had effectively cleaned up on target night birds, including a sweet bonus bird.
A Common Potoo Flies in to Say Hello!
I have never heard Common Potoo on this road. Even so, I know it must be there so I always try for it. I do my best to mournfully whistle like a Common Potoo and just as sad as the song sounds, none respond.
Early Saturday morning though, my potoo whistling finally paid off. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure what the bird was. Instead of giving its entire whistled song, it only sang the first two notes!
I figured that it was probably a Common Potoo but it would sure be nice to confirm when lo and behold, this long-winged thing pulls a tapir and flies right overhead! I almost passed it off as a Short-tailed Nighthawk before noticing the long tail. Luckily, it landed on top of a telephone pole for excellent views!
Dawn Marsh Madness
Next on the agenda was the break of dawn. I had hoped to scan a marsh before moving on to the main dawn chorus spot. However, our scanning was thwarted by a thick blanket of marsh mist!
How could we spot roosting birds? What about heron shapes? Well, at least birds were calling, a lot of them! Olive-crowned Yellowthroats and Canebrake Wrens, Northern Barred Woodcreeper, and other birds. Encouraged by the birdsong, I figured we would do some dawn birding around there until it became light enough to scan the wet grass.
More birds called and came out; parrots, a pair of Great Green Macaws flapped into view (!), Pied Puffbird, and more! It became light enough to scan the quiet patches of water and we found a few things but then it was time to move on, time to get to Chilamate, a key forested area 20 minutes away.
Chilamate Birding is Always Great
On the way there, we picked up more birds calling and perching in trees; the three saltators, Gray-headed Chachalaca, and various others. Upon reaching Chilamate, the river had Amazon Kingfisher and hoped for Fasciated Tiger-Heron (!) but not much else.
Luckily, scope scanning the forest canopy further down the road gave us treefulls of toucans and one of our best birds of the day, a male Snowy Cotinga. This is why you bring that scope on a Big Day- scan and yee shall find!
Back in the forest, though, things were already getting quiet. It was warm and rather dry and the birds don’t like that very much. We still had several species but not as much as on other days in that same area.
Even so, highlights included a Northern Royal Flycatcher that responded to my whistle, a surprise American Kestrel, a beautiful female Hook-billed Kite, calling Purple-throated Fruitcrows (uncommon there), and a nice canopy flock with Black-striped Woodcreepers, Rufous Mourner, White-fronted Nunbirds, and some other birds.
The nunbirds were especially entertaining. For their own coral-beaked reasons, they made loud cackling noises while pumping their tails up and down. It was sort of insane.
Eventually, Rufous Motmot, Slaty-breasted Tinamou, and some other birds finally called but we left the area lacking a bunch of key birds.
Hot Weather and Few Birds in the Foothills
Yeah, Saturday was hot and sunny. Although us humans often like that weather, rainforest birds do not! In foothill forests on the San Miguel to Socorro road, we had some birds but nothing like other days. It was pretty darn quiet as we continued on to the middle elevation forests past Albergue Socorro. Our nicest bird was probably White Hawk.
Ditto for the Socorro Forest
By this time, we figured that if we didn’t find a bunch of birds soon, there was no point in continuing on for the entire Big Day. The forests above Soccoro were our final hope but nope, they were quiet too, the quietest I had ever seen for that typically birdy area.
At least it was a beautiful area and we did see some birds but only a handful. By noon, we couldn’t deny it, this day was just too quiet for bird activity. Better to call it a day and enjoy some lunch in beautiful surroundings.
Navigating Holiday Traffic
Finishing with a Big Morning turned out to be a good idea. Even if we had wanted to continue on with the big original plan, we would have been seriously slowed down by holiday traffic.
Holy Week is like Spring Break for all of Costa Rica. That means lines of traffic, busy beaches, and a heck of a lot of people out on the roads. We had to wait for a while in a traffic jam at the Peace Waterfall (where consolation was a calling Sooty-faced Finch), witnessed a ridiculous conglomeration of people at the Cinchona Hummingbird Cafe, and saw lots of folks in rivers and everywhere else.
In other words, it was classic happy Semana Santa behavior- fun but not so much for Big Days.
Lessons Learned
Thankfully, we made it home safe and sound where we could catch up on sleep and reflect on the Big Morning. On the bird front, I was reminded that nunbirds are bizarre, Common Potoos don’t have to sing their full song, and that birds are pretty quiet on hot and sunny days.
On other fronts, I learned that you might not need to start a Big Day in the middle of the night. Missing one or three birds isn’t worth missing all of that sleep. It’s also best to avoid Big Days on holiday weekends, and to hope for cloudy weather.
Is trying for a Big Day in Costa Rica worth the efforts? If you don’t mind a localized Big Day, yes! A record breaking all out Big Day? Given the multiple factors that have to fall into place, and diminished bird populations, I’m not so sure.
To learn about the birding sites mentioned above and dozens of other birding sites in Costa Rica, you might like my ebook, “How to See, Find, and Identify Birds in Costa Rica“. I hope to see you here!
