Costa Rica June 2011

In early June George and I took a trip to Costa Rica. We arranged our trip through Costa Rica Birding Journeys, owner and operator, Randall Ortega Chavez. I have used Randall in the past on several trips and have never been disappointed. (There is a link to his website in the sidebar.) He arranged all our hotel accomodations, picked us up at the airport, transported us to all our hotels and guided us on our birding expeditions. He knows my bird list and what I am missing so he planned our destinations with the best possible chances of adding new birds to my life list. With this in mind our first destination was Heliconias Lodge in Bijagua, Upala in the north of Costa Rica. This was a rustic but very lovely and comfortable lodge that came with a daily 6am wakeup call from the nearby Howler Monkeys. Excellent birding was as close as the grounds of the lodge. There were beautifully maintained trails and a series of hanging bridges which take you to the canopy of the rainforest where the birds are. In two days of birding at Heliconias we were able to see 112 birds of which 29 were new. The highlights were the Ornate Hawk Eagle, Tody Motmot, Long-Tailed Manakin, Ocellated Antbird, Streak-Crowned Antvireo, Black-Headed Antthrush, Green Shrike-Vireo and White-Necked Jacobin.

There are 4 Hanging Bridges along the trails at Heliconias Lodge that take you to the canopy of the rainforest where the birds are. The average height of the bridges from the ground is 90 meters and length is 130 meters. They were very narrow and extremely shaky which made it a challenge to focus binoculars on birds, but the view of the rainforest from this vantage point was awesome.
We found this nest of the White-Neck Jacobin right along the edge of the trail.

Here is the White-Necked Jacobin (hummingbird) on the nest.


This is the Jicaro Danto tree. It is the only tree in the world to bear blossoms on the trunk.




Jicaro Danto blossoms

One of many wonderful old trees in the rainforest.

Heleconias Lodge is located at the foothills of the Tenorio Volcano. This is the volcano as seen from the Lodge.

Just to the north is the Nicaraguan border. If you look closely you can see Lake Nicaragua in the distance and two old volcanic mountains in the Lake.