Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Costa Rica final days and trip totals

Black-mandibled Toucan (Chestnut-mandibled), Rio Magnolia Lodge, Dec 10, 2011

Golden-naped Woodpecker, Rio Magnolia Lodge, Dec 9, 2011

Short-tailed Hawk (light morph), Rio Magnolia Lodge, Dec 9, 2011

The final days in Costa Rica were spent at Rio Magnolia Lodge and continued to be quite productive.  It was quite relaxing just walking around the area of the lodge and enjoying the peace and quiet of the area.  I added only a few new species to the list on my final days there but got some fantastic looks at birds I had previously seen.  The tanager show in the trees just outside our cottage continued to impress as did the hummingbirds, toucans, parrots and many others.  Our final evening there was closed out with our typical walk from the lodge to our cottage with 'our' pair of Common Paraques along the road right outside the cottage.
The ride out from the lodge to the airport on December 10th  proved to be shorter and more scenic as the trip took just about four hours and occurred during the morning so we could actually see the scenery throughout the ride.  A few more birds were added to the trip list as we travelled up the coast on our way to San Jose. 

A morning view from our cottage, Rio Magnolia Lodge

We ended up delayed by a few hours in San Jose due to the late arrival of our aircraft.  We therefore could not make our connection through Charlotte for the night and ended up spending the night in Charlotte.  Even with the stress at the end of the trip it was a simply fantastic trip we hope to repeat soon.

Now for the totals of the trip.  Overall I saw a total of 185 species of birds during the week long trip with 121 of those being life birds.  This brought my life list up to nearly seven hundred with the total now at 697.  This trip featured far and away the largest number of new birds I have ever seen on a trip.  I'm still sifting through all the photos I took as well as some audio so there may be some minor changes to the totals.

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