Hello Friends,
This is my first attempt at this blogging thing, so bear with me. I hope the information posted will be informative and fun to read.
Muñeco May 6 & 7, 2008
Tour Partipants - Bart Brown, Magdalena Easley and Steven Easley
On the afternoon of the 6th we visited a birding site called Muneco. It is located near the Tapanti National Park in Costa Rica. This wonderful cloud forest reserve is open to the public and there are no charges to enter. It can only be reached by 4x4, and even after the tough road a lot of hiking is still needed.
The purpose of our visit was to locate as many new species as possible for Bart and my wife as they are working on building up their Costa Rican bird lists. Both have seen more than 700 species in the country, so as you can imagine it is much more difficult to find new birds.
We arrived late in the afternoon and barely had enough time to get in some birding. The only star bird noted on the late afternoon outing was Streaked Xenops.
We started early the next morning and quickly the birds started piling up. Some of the many highlights on the day were: Highland Tinamou, Black-breasted Wood-Quail, Barred Hawk, Short-tailed Hawk (dark morph), Chiriqui Quail-Dove, Black-bellied Hummingbird, Purple-throated Mountain-Gem, Scintillant Hummingbird, Resplendent Quetzal, Golden-olive Woodpecker, Buffy Tuftedcheek, Scaly-throated Foliage-Gleaner, Olivaceous Woodcreeper, Three-wattled Bellbird, White-winged Tanager, Elegant Euphonia and Yellow-bellied Siskin.
However, the highlight of the day was finding a large Army Ant swarm on the edge of the trail. We were treated with close range views of the rare Black-banded Woodcreeper as well as stunning views of Emerald (Blue-throated) Toucanet, Prong-billed Barbet, Spotted Barbtail, Hairy Woodpecker, Ruddy-capped Nightingale-Thrush, Three-striped Warbler and a tail-bobbing Immaculate Antbird.
We are all looking forward to our next visit to this magical pristine enviroment.
Bart finished with 5 additions and Magdalena added 2 more to her list.
Hope you enjoyed this brief report, I'll post as much as possible in the future!
Good Birding, STEVEN EASLEY
