We carried on our exploration of Costa Rica by visiting another of the central highland regions .This time we were heading into the cloud forest of Monteverde - a very lush, green area. We started off with anther boat ride, across Lake Arenal. This cut off about 3 hours of road transfer and was an additional highlight.
Unfortunately this was about as good a view of the volcano that we could get - part from on our first day when we forgot to take any photos! It does spend a lot of time in cloud apparently. The boat driver was very good and took his time, darting into little inlets to show us wildlife like this anhinga and these kingfishers.
It took us about 45 minutes to cross the lake, where we were picked up by a very young driver and transported across some hairy roads to our new home in Monteverde.
Just as in Arenal, the hotel grounds proved a very rich source of bird sightings. It was bizarre being there though. The cloud forest started just behind the hotel, so we were right on the edge of its extent. What this meant was that the cloud would fall off the mountainous area down onto the town and our hotel. The sun would burn it off quite quickly so it never progressed much. You did find yourself in the garden under bright blue skies with a hot sun and its was raining, or at least drizzling. That rain when you never get wet as the heat evaporates it immediately. We went up into the forest twice and each time you only drove a mile or so and you went into thick mist. A really strange environment but a very rich one for wildlife.
Our first visit to the cloud forest was for a night walk. Its always interesting on these walks, you see a very different perspective on the landscape. When you are in almost constant rainy, misty, clouds drizzle it makes it very atmospheric. WE saw quite a few things, but not too many that we could phhotograph. We again saw a number of birds roosting in the tree, like this slate-throated redstart.
We also saw sloths, snakes, a collared trogon of the orange-bellied sub-species and this.
It is a wasp that has been tanner over by a zombie fungus. It gets init the insect wilt it is still alive and gaudily takes to over.
The following day we went back to the forest in the daylight. It was interesting to see it in a different perspective even though it was still incredibly misty and damp. The low-point was missing the star bird, the resplendant quetzal not once but three times in 3 hours. Twie we missed it by less than 5 minutes which was a tad disappointing. Other ones we saw were this yellowish flycatcher,
and a number of these slaty-backed nightingale-thrushes pottering about on the forest floor.
What were to become the stars of the day started slowly with a hummingbird on its nest.
This tiny bird on a tiny nest was an incredible spot by the guide, though I suspect he know it was there all along! When we were leaving the reserve we finally got to find a site where they had feeders. They generally font like them, but this was a research site so I suppose it was ok.
One of the commoner ones was the green-crowned brilliant, this one with its orange chin. is a juvenile. Others were this lesser violet ear, showing its clear violet ear-patch,
purple-throated mountain-gem, with its white eye-stripe,
and this tiny magenta-throated woodstar.
They all came in really fast and buzzed round our heads.
Telling them apart is a nightmare as well. This one above is the female of the purple-throated mountain-gem, totally different. A few were even harder, being a lot less common at the feeders. this giant is the violet sabrewing. A beast of a bird but one that resolutely reaches to play ball by coming to the feeders in the light.
We had great 15 minutes watching them and could have stayed a lot longer but we had to get back to our hotel.
As before this was good for birds, and they had their own feeder in the garden which attracted this spectacular blue-crowned motmot.
as well as blue-grey tanagers and variegated squirrels.
The numerous fruit trees in the garden brought in grey-headed chachalacas as well as the very charismatic agoutis.
In the trees were a number of smaller birds such as red-legged honeycreepers,
golden-browed chlorophonia,
this juvenile yellow-crowned euphonia,
more red-legged honeyeaters and a masked tityra.
We were very sorry to leave the cloud forest, a superb place, great hotel and nice people. Still, more places to explore as we moved into the second half of our holiday.
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