On our last day in the Arenal region we had another watery day, a trip to the Cano Negro wetlands. This involved an hour or so drive with our guide and a driver. We passed some very interesting areas including one of sugar cane being harvested. We had been told about the dangers of going into crop fields because of dangerous reptiles, including the fer-de-lance. The field being harvested was surrounded by birds including egrets, vultures and caracaras waiting for things to be flushed out. It was the tropical version of gulls following the plough.
When we got to the wetland area we met our boat driver and set off for our 3 hour trip.
Our boat was nice and small and just for us, so we spread out and set off. Immediately we found the area very rich in all sorts of water life though the first ones we saw were hirundines, mangrove swallows, who were an ever-present sight along the river, swooping around the boat and catching flies.
After that we got into the wetland bird in a big way though, starting off with a scruffy area of mud on which there were a few waders including black-necked stilts, spotted sandpipers and jacanas.
A lot of the wildlife consisted of herons, egrets and their associated friends. They were all looking very busy feeding around the margins on small fish and amphibians. As we found before on the holiday, being on a boat allowed us to get pretty close to them, or they were just not too worried about us. There were quite a few boats going up and down, but not mass tourist by any means.
Green herons, pretty small birds, were mainly lurking about in the weedy margins, crouching and stalking in their search for food.
Little blue herons were more ambush predators, standing still and waiting for their prey to come to them.
A new bird for the trip was this tri-coloured heron. This is a much larger bird, equivalent in size to our grey heron. We only saw it in flight crossing the wide channel. Either side of us behind the banks were marshy areas which I presume were their preferred feeding grounds.
Sitting up in the trees waiting their turn to fish later in the day were night-herons, in this case black-crowned.
Surprisingly common, bearing in mind the lack of cattle, were cattle egrets. In the fields around they were very common, often in the company of said bovines. Here they seemed to be using the river as a safe place to hold up and have a rest as we didn't see them fishing or hunting.
This peculiar looking creature is a boat-billed heron. There were a few of them resting up in the trees. They are nocturnal feeders and use their strange-shaped beak to lunge in shallow water for fish and shrimps. I suppose it works a bit like pelicans diving into water and scooping up water with prey in it rather than going for the prey itself.
Not common by any means, this juvenile white ibis was another addition to the trip list.
Finally for this group, we saw a lot of wood storks flying around. They were never really near the river but were circling over us at quite a height, presumably heading off to feeding grounds more suited to them, like for the tri-coloured heron.
The next group of ubiquitous bird were the kingfishers. You get 5 types in CR and we saw 4 of them on this trip alone. Rarest, and the one which created the most excitement in the boat was all the smallest - the American pygmy kingfisher.
They are absolutely tiny, barely sparrow-sized. We saw 2, or the same one on two occasions. The guide did really well to spot it and it was a lifer for him, so celebrations all round!
Next up in size order was the green kingfisher.
They are a bit bigger, and larger than our kingfishers. They seem to have very oversized beaks compared to their heads.
The largest of them is the ringed kingfisher. These are absolute beasts of a bird, almost the size of pigeon. They are also very vocal.
The final one is the amazon kingfisher.
They are intermediate in size, with a combination of all of the colours of the other birds. Again, it shows how rich the waterway is in fish if it can support all the birds on one short stretch.
As we moved along we kept our eyes open in the vegetation by the bank, and were rewarded with a number of very good birds and reptiles.
Basilisks were easiest to spot, with their garish green colouration. The iguanas, like this bold male with his female, looked very superior as they declared their territories from high bushes on the bank. We saw a few terrapins out basking on logs and branches but they seemed quite nervous compared to other animals. We soon found out why.
This quite small caiman had caught a river turtle by the foot and was hanging onto it in the shallows. We watched it for 5 minutes but there seemed to be no progression in the stand off. The turtle was too large for the caiman to do anything with but it wasn't going to let go. I'd be fascinated to know how it ended, I guess badly for the turtle which have been drowned in the end!
On the bird front we got a variety of good species. This stunning bird I thought was a grey-necked wood rail. I have since found out though it is part of a species pair which have now been split and this is now called russet-naped wood rail (told by the rusty patch on its head apparently!). Very smart bird either way round.
There are not a lot of grebes in this area of the world. but one which we did see on a few occasions was the sungrebe. They were a bit skulky, mainly keeping to the overgrown banks but when you got to see them they were very striking.
We saw a hawk perched up by the edge, which we identified as broad-winged hawk. It was clearly hunting a small bird lower down in the foliage.
Our guide got very excited when he identified it as a gray-headed tanager. This is apparently a very rare bird for this area, and was a lifer for both him and the boat driver. As far as we know it survived the hawk!
There were other birds looking for a free meal along the bank as well, including this striped caracara. They are as much scavengers as hunters,
like these black vultures who were mooching about doing not very much,
just like these groove-billed ani's.
The star of the show though was this incredibly smart black-headed trogon. It is a bit out of its normal range but looked very much at home.
This was one of our favourite trips of the holiday. The two guides were great fun, we saw loads of wildlife and had a good craic at the same time.
The trip didn't finish there though. On the way home we stopped at a sugar cane processing plant, which looked very interesting from a health and safety point of view!!
We also stopped for our first scarlet macaws of the trip. This resident pair are a "guides banker" as they were right by the main road and showed quite well. A very exotic sight by a busy road!
Finally, as we were going along chewing the fat the guide spotted a laughing falcon by the side of the road. He saw it, I didn't. "Do you want to back for it?" he asked. Well, you know the answer to that so we did a swift U-turn and I braved the traffic to mange to get some shots of it perched on the far side of the road.
I did think bout crossing the road to get closer but sensibleness prevailed and I got back in the car to go back and have a celebratory beer after an excellent day. Well deserved as was a long soak in the bath before a Japanese meal in the evening. What not to like!!
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