A full day of birding at La Selva. Early breakfast here, then off along the very fancy – concrete – trails of La Selva. A couple of real treats, including a Great Tinamou, and a couple of very high energy moments with mixed flocks. The trails are paved with concrete with a roughened surface. Excellent walking, but it was hot and extremely humid. A couple of light drizzle intervals but not real rain.
At a couple of points, the trails climbed up on what sure looked like andesite lava flows. The vegetation, of course, smothers most of the rocks. I couldn't find anything at the Registration Center on geology, so it's hard to know. But La Selva isn't that far from those big volcanoes.
Saw three of the major big ground birds today: Great Tinamou, Crested Guan and Great Curassow. Also decent views of Mantled Howler Monkeys and, crossing the suspension bridge, a displaying Green Iguana and a handsome juvenile Gray Hawk.
While this is on the northerly, Caribbean flats, and the Puerto Viejo River through the Station is sluggish, we are quite a long ways from the Gulf of Mexico, probably 30 miles.
We had a siesta under the ceiling fan after lunch. Then tried several places for the Pink-billed Seedeater in the nearby village of El Tigre. No luck. But did find some other good photo ops and got some other good birds.
This is primarily a tropical research station, but they seem to tolerate birders without complaint. We do have to wear plastic wrist bands, but that seems to be primarily for the cafeteria. A terrific place for birds; 467 species documented here.
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