The final stop on D's weeklong birding farewell tour was the Arenal Observatory Lodge, a favorite destination we have visited on several prior occasions. Despite the fact that the observatory is among the very top birding hotspots in a very birdy country — with 510 confirmed species, it currently ranks second only to Rancho Naturalista in all of Costa Rica — D had pretty low expectations of seeing anything new there. Of those 510 birds, there were only 17 species D had never seen, and the only one reported with any sort of regularity was the Cape May warbler, a migratory visitor that had departed for northern climes by the end of April. D kept expectations low and focused on enjoying his final visit to one of his ultimate happy places.
With the Volcanic Ultimate Frisbee Tournament set to start immediately after his stay at the observatory, D also dialed down his birding intensity a couple of notches. D would play eight games of frisbee under the scorching sun over the weekend — a fun, but physically demanding competition. He did not want to arrive too tired to play, so he tried to strike a balance between birding and resting. D walked the grounds of the observatory but mostly stuck to the network of trails right behind the lodge rather than making the longer loop hike around the full property. He also caught up with a longtime friend and paid a brief visit to Sendero Bogarin in La Fortuna, another birding hotspot he had visited on multiple prior occasions.
A western woodhaunter D glimpsed too briefly to snap a photo represented his only new find during two days in the Arenal area. D was also pleased to photograph the streak-crowned antvireo — a species he had glimpsed during our last visit to the observatory but had been unable to photograph. At Bogarin, the most notable sighting was the resident black-and-white owl. We had seen the adults during our last visit. This time around, D got to see their offspring, his second black-and-white baby bird in as many weeks!
There were a handful of notable misses during D's birding week, which may ultimately prevent him from reaching his goal of 700 species before we depart Costa Rica. There was a massive raptor D saw for a split-second in Boca Tapada. It had the size and general coloring to potentially be the black-and-white hawk-eagle D had been hoping to see there — and it scared a bunch of vultures out of a tree, just as the lodge staff had told D it was wont to do — but it was raining and misty and D only caught a momentary, partially obscured look — too brief to identify the bird properly. Without a photo to confirm his gut feeling, he left it off his list. There was also a white-bellied emerald that was sighted by D's guide friends not far from the lodge, which is now drawing a crowd of local birders to Boca Tapada; it is the first confirmed record for this hummingbird in the country. As we saw this bird in Belize quite recently, D opted against trying to stake it out the morning of his departure since he had a long drive ahead of him to reach Caño Negro.
These misses notwithstanding, D is immensely pleased with his results. Over the course of this weeklong Costa Rica farewell tour, he added a dozen new birds to his country list; eight of them were lifers. D also logged more than 250 different species in May, which was enough for him to enter briefly eBird's Top 100 for the year (454 species, tied for 96th at the time). For a couple of days, D's 2024 Costa Rica totals actually eclipsed his 2023 big year pace. If we had been able to stay through the end of the year, there's a good chance D would have topped 600 species in the country by December — especially since he did not do any pelagic birding last year and saw some 30 oceanic birds on his first-ever pelagic tour last month.
Most significantly, that woodhaunter sighting pushed D's Costa Rica total to 694 species, representing just a hair more than three-quarters of all species records in eBird for the country (75.03% of 925 confirmed species). Of the remaining 231 species, more than a hundred are birds D has seen elsewhere — and of D's 123 potential lifer opportunities in Costa Rica, none figure on even one percent of the checklists submitted across the country. Also, D has now observed more than 500 species in 2024 to date. With a summer in the States and a move soon to a country that is home to nearly 1,000 birds D has never seen, one thousand species for the year is entirely within the realm of the possible — a new goal for D to pursue regardless of how his quest for 700 ultimately ends.
Pictured from top to bottom: streak-crowned antvireo, yellow-throated toucan, and broad-billed motmot sandwiched between photos of the juvenile and adult black-and-white owls.
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