Costa Rica Mar. - Apr. 1996 - Scanbird

and edge habitats at last we could enter the primary rainforest. However, there was hardly
any morning chorus and there was far between birds we could see under conditions that
allowed us to identify them. The rainforest doesn't always just reveal it's secrets. Here, the
trails were planks or plain mud and took us through high forest with a rich undergrowth of
different palms and with impressive wooden corkscrew lianas coming down from the
canopy. Paco spotted the nest of a Purple-crowned Fairy in the canopy. Good spotting,
even if the bird was building on it. Paco and Julio were excellent in spotting nests of
hummingbirds or manakins. In another place it was the abandoned nest of a Barbthroat, a
tiny cup of moss and roots sewed to the underside of a banana leaf by spiderweb. It
started to rain and we could walk for hours in the forest hearing the rain falling in the
canopy and hardly a drop filtered through down to us. We passed by some leks of Redcapped
Manakins where the males sat calling. The real display only starts when a female
arrives which we didn't see. It is remarkable how even such intensely coloured birds can
be hard to spot when they just sit quietly in the wast forest, while anything moving attracts
the attention. And small things like a falling leaf can make a tremendous noise, while a
pack of larger animals passing in the forest floor can be almost quiet.
Having had enough of primary rainforest for the moment we spent the afternoon in the
open area along the road up to la Selva. A pair of Pink-billed Seedfinch with the enormous
bill sat in the tall swampgrasses, a Merlin passed by, a Black Hawk-eagle was up soaring
on it's funny butterfly-wings, another soaring eagle looked very interesting and brought
about a lot of discussion, and a Laughing Falcon flew away with a fat snake in the claws.
April 6th
We left Selva Verde early. We drove through the town Virgen, where people pilgrimate
during Easter because of the miracle, that if you stare right at the sun for sufficient time
you can see the image of the Virgin Mary in the sky afterwards. We didn't try, though
maybe this was the way to see a Great Green Macaw! It was a fine, cool, bright morning,
the mountains clear of clouds, and we saw a Brown-throated Tree-toed Sloth in top of a
Cecropia warming itself by the early morning sun. We continued up to Virgen del Socorro,
a place in 750 meters above sea level in the upper Rio Sarapiquí valley where our river
from Selva Verde had become wilder and narrower. Virgen del Socorro was set up a
settler colony as part of a programme of giving land to landless labourers. But as the soil
was poor and the settler life hard the colony was abandoned. Now, the forest on the
slopes is protected and Virgen del Socorro is known as a place where some special birds
restricted to a narrow altitude band can be found. The forest appeared thin probably due to
the poor soil and there were traces of many landslides, large scars on the slopes, places
where trees still lay fallen across the road where vehicles could pass under them. A Barred
Hawk was spotted in a tree-top from where it flew out, and later we had it in display-flight
high up and far away above the valley, as it suddenly folded it's wings and dropped as a
bomb towards the forest below. An unidentified voice of four whistles was heard form the
forest. Julio imitated it. First it answered form inside the forest and after a long
conversation it finally came out - a Brown-billed Scythebill that for a brief moment sat fully
exposed in front of us peeling in the bark of it's branch in confusion of the voice without the
bird.
The infortunate victim of the theft of the first evening lost his second pair of binoculars as
they were smashed in a fall on the road in a wild run not to dip on a Dipper. He also got a
wound in the head that was mended with plastic surgery on the American clinic back in
San José where we conveniently ended in the afternoon.
We continued along the river to a small restaurant called el Mirador with a fine view of the
valley. We had our pack lunch there enjoying the hummingbirds fighting around the
feeders hanging from the eaves. A Green Hermit and a Brown Violetear came in together
with the more common species. The prize was a pair of Green Thorntail. They were
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