Costa Rica Day 8

Day 8 may not have been a triple digit species day or a day with more lifers than we could count, but it was a high quality day of birding. We met up with a Costa Rican birding legend, Jim Zook. Jim, a CSU alum and friend of Jorge's, reached out to Jorge to see if he could tag along with us for a morning. He had seen me sharing all of our lists with the CSU Ornithology Club Big Year eBird account and wanted to help us get a few more species for our total. We birded "Old St.", an old road that has now become so overgrown its even kinda difficult to walk. It was a serious pleasure to get to bird and chat it up with Jim, he's essentially an older version of me. He's a big-time rock climber, and one of the early Fort Collins climbers from way back when, which was really cool to pick his brain about. 

Bird-wise, we hit the ground running with Collared Redstarts, Barred Parakeets, Rufous-browed Peppershrike, Yellow-winged Vireos, a Giant Cowbird, White-winged Tanagers, Black-cheeked Warblers, Costa Rican Warblers, and more. We hit a part of the road that was basically just nothing but a landslide, and headed back. We traded warblers and zippy passerines for woodcreepers on our way back as we got Lineated Foliage Gleaner, Buffy Tuftedcheek, and a Black-banded Woodcreeper, Costa Rica's second hardest to find woodcreeper species! We said goodbye to Jim, and headed back to the lodge for breakfast and more birds. Middle American Leaftosser, White-throated Spadebill, and more were the sights and sounds of our morning walking the trails. 

That afternoon, we decided to walk up the road from the lodge and see what we could find. Dark Pewee, more Zeledon's Antbirds, Barred Parakeets, Spotted Barbtails, and Yellowish Flycatchers kept us company on our steep walk uphill (the road maxed out at 16 degrees!). Towards the top, we found a Barred Becard, and as some thick clouds rolled in, a couple of Spangle-cheeked Tanagers! It was lucky we caught them when we did as they were the only ones we got the whole trip. Yellow-bellied Siskins, Slaty-backed and Ruddy-capped Nightingale Thrushes, and Costa Rican Warblers escorted us back down as we hoped to not get shin splints to round out the day. 

Trip Report: https://ebird.org/tripreport/347551