The least common bird that I was able to photograph on the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica was the Sunbittern. I had seen one two years ago at Canopy Lodge in Panama, but didn’t appreciate it or understand why it has the name it does until nearly the end of my tour of Costa Rica.

Late one afternoon, Glenn guided us to a roaring creek where he had seen them earlier. Here below are all the important members of our tour group watching this bird. From left, Sharon, Niño with Don’s camera, Glenn with one of mine, Win (partially blocked), Don, Jo (partially blocked), Joan, and Bill.

Avid Birders Who See a Bird

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How a Sunbittern (Eurpyga helias) Usually Appears, When It Does

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When we reached Rancho Naturalista we came to a different side of Costa Rica. While we were still in the mountains, we had moved from the Pacific to the Caribbean side of the country. This was a somewhat wetter side, and we experienced a few showers, but nothing that got in the way of our trips or ever wear the raincoat that I had brought just in case.

This wonderful lodge sits just below 3,000 feet, 12 miles from the town of Turrialba, and just east of the Cordillera de Talamanca, the mountain range that includes Costa Rica’s highest peaks. An American family owns this small lodge, which is situated on 125 acres of protected rainforest. From the highway it’s a 10 minute drive up a steep, rough dirt road.

This is truly an ecolodge with wildlife, flowers, and trees all around. It has just 14 rooms, and for the first two of the three nights we stayed there we were the only guests. The main building is in the traditional Spanish colonial style. We ate all our meals in the outdoor dining area where we were out in nature as we ate. In fact, several times I jumped up from the table and grabbed my camera when I saw something special in the garden.

The manager of the lodge is Lisa Erb. Her father, John Erb, bought the land many years ago. When some of us visited his home, which is a few minutes below the lodge, I had a chance to discuss one of his biggest interests, hyperbaric oxygen therapy. He showed me his hyperbaric oxygen chamber and gave me a copy of us book about how to build one. He attributes his good health to his getting a minimum of one hour of this therapy per week. In fact, he proved to me what good shape he is in when I took this photograph of him, smiling no less. Unfortunately, I cut off the bottom of his feet (but only in this photo), but I can assure you that nothing but his arms held him up.

John Erb Demonstrates a Degree of Fitness That's Not Bad for an 82-year-old Man

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Lisa also lives near the lodge.

The View from Lisa's Home

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The morning of the fifth day in Costa Rica took us from sea level to the cloud forest. Niño drove the seven of us participants and our guide Glenn in his comfortable new tour bus, which offered each of us a seat by a big window.

After passing through San Jose, which is Costa Rica’s capital, we took a section of the Pan-American Highway. Then, we turned off onto a steep dirt road in the highlands of San Gerardo de Dota. We stopped for lunch at the aptly named Quetzal Lodge, where a local guide told Glenn that a pair of Resplendent Quetzals was nesting about three miles back.

This was the bird that all of us most wanted to see in Costa Rica. Since the Resplendent Quetzal is near threatened, I didn’t really hope to see this beautiful bird, which many people consider to be of the world’s greatest beauties. It is sacred to the Mayas and is the national bird of Guatemala.

So right after lunch we drove back as far as possible and then hiked about a half mile down a steep path. The male, which has exceptionally long and beautiful tail feathers, was sitting on the nest, while the female was off somewhere else enjoying her lunch. But all that we could see was his tail feathers, because the nest was on the opposite side of the tree from us. Just in case that was all that we could see of the quetzal, I took several shots and waited. And waited. Probably half an hour.

We expected to see the female fly in so the male would leave to eat. But with no mate in sight, all of a sudden he flew off. We were able to follow him to four locations, at all of which I got adequate shots. Finally, he flew back to near the nest. There I got the photo that I went to Costa Rica to capture.

We weren’t able to use flash, so I cranked up the ISO to 3200, which I had to do in the dim light of the forest. Since I wasn’t using flash (which takes time to recharge after every few shots), I was able to take a lot of pictures — 157 of them to be exact. Of course, the exposure was grainy, but my software took care of it quite well.

A Male Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno) Was What I Most Wanted to See in Costa Rica

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At this point I told Glenn that as far as I was concerned we could stop the trip because I had already seen far more than I had hoped to see in Costa Rica. Nevertheless, we drove on. At once stop a little bird got in a fight with itself.

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A highlight of my tour of Costa Rica was an afternoon boat trip near the mouth of the Tárcoles River. We took a small flat-bottomed boat with an outboard motor up and down a river that looked like a Garden of Eden for birds — and for birders. While we had seen many crocodiles in this river earlier, they were miles upstream from here.

Together by the Tárcoles River: Two American White Ibises (Eudocimus albus), Two Northern Jacanas (Jacana spinosa), and 14 Black-necked Stilts (Haematopus palliates)

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Close up of a Northern Jacana (Jacana spinosa)

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The birds that we saw in and around Punta Leone include some of the most beautiful on the planet. Macaws and other parrots, motmots, manakins, trogons, toucans and more all live there. Macaws are the world’s largest parrots, and the Scarlet Macaw may be the most colorful one.

I Saw and Photographed this Scarlet Macaw (Ara macao) on One of Our Forest Hikes

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The Yellow-naped Amazon Parrot (Amazona auropalliata) Lives Near the Pacific from Southern Mexico to Costa Rica.

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On our second day in Costa Rica we left the city and began to explore the country. We drove about 70 miles southwest to the Punta Leone Nature Reserve on the Pacific Ocean where we stayed three nights at the Hotel Punta Leone. Our driver Marco, whom everyone calls Niño, drove his new Toyota bus for the entire trip. Niño is an excellent driver and a knowledgeable birder who spotted many birds for us, augmenting Glenn’s great knowledge.

En route to Punta Leone we stopped at the town of Orotina to go birding in its park. High in one of the park’s trees Glenn located a species of one of my favorite order of birds, the owls. These are a pair of Black-and-white Owls, which I had never seen before. The smaller one is the male.

A Pair of Black-and-white Owls (Strix nigrolineata); the Male is the Smaller One

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Less than one hour after the nonstop flight from Denver arrived in Costa Rica at 6:15 a.m. on April 7, Sharon and I were out in the beautiful 10 acre gardens of the Hotel Bougainvillea. The hotel is just 25 minutes from the airport, and we stayed at this modern, comfortable hotel for the first and last nights of our trip.

Just a few feet from the entrance to the gardens at the back of the hotel, the first birds we saw were a family of Inca Doves on a nest.

This Inca Dove Chick (Columbina inca) Tests its Wings as it Prepares to Leave the Nest

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American Dippers are the only aquatic songbirds in North America. They are unique in finding almost all of their food underwater in swiftly flowing streams. They dive into the water and walk on the bottoms of streams where the current can be too fast and the water too deep for us to stand.

They can stay underwater so long because they have more oxygen capacity than any other songbird. In the rest of the world are four other dipper species, but the American Dipper lives only in Western North America on streams where the water is clear and unpolluted.

That’s where I found one yesterday. I watched it for an hour as it fed in Boulder Creek in Boulder County, Colorado.

We now call them American Dippers (Cinclus mexicanus) because they jauntily bounce their bodies up and down as they look for food. But for at least 800 years we called them Water Ouzels, and some people, myself included, still prefer the old name.

This American Dipper or Water Ouzel lives year round on Boulder Creek, where I had found it before. But I got my best photographs of it yesterday.

The day was chilly and windy, but the sun shown brightly. However, most of the creek where I found the dipper was in the shade, so I waited patiently for the bird to move into the sun.

An American Dipper Takes a Break for Some Sun

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Up for Air after Finding Some Food Under Water

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As I watched the dipper from the bank of the stream I was cold in my down jacket and gloves. But even in water barely above freezing it was all in a day’s work for this remarkable bird.

I didn’t have my best camera and lens, and the temperature wasn’t a record high for the day. But on both scores it was close.

Since both my Canon 7D and my 100-400mm telephoto zoom lens are at the local camera store for cleaning, I had to rely on my backup equipment: a Canon 50D (which I recently bought to replace the one destroyed by water damage in the Galapagos) and a 300mm prime lens with a 1.4 teleconverter. The 7D takes more frames per second and the 100-400mm lens focuses faster, but the backup equipment will do in a pinch.

The temperature reached 72° here at 4:15 p.m. in the shade. I guessed that might be a record, but back in 1925 it had reached 76° on this date.

Anyway, I didn’t go out for the photos. The day was so unseasonably warm that I took my Kindle Touch, where I am reading Ron Chernow’s new biography of Alexander Hamilton, to a bench in Tantra Park where I sat and read.

One passerby asked if I had got any photos with my big lens. No, I replied, and I didn’t expect any. But if I didn’t take it, I continued, I would be sure to kick myself for a missed opportunity.

I didn’t have to kick myself when I heard a loud drumming off to my right. At first I dismissed it as some joker with a jackhammer. But then I recognized it for what it was — a woodpecker. A red-shafted Northern Flicker was announcing its presence, not to me but to others of his species.

Quickly stowing my Kindle in the back pocket of my jeans, I grabbed my camera and took off to the path at the right. But after a few steps the drumming started up again. Behind me. The flicker was at the top of the light fixture close to the bench where I had been sitting.

Taking pictures as fast as the 50D will work, I shot the flicker from all angles. Then, he stood up and I knew he was ready to fly. I was ready too.

A Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) Launches from the Light

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Sandhill Cranes have probably flown through the San Luis Valley for 10 million years. I drove there at the end of February to watch them for three days.

These large and graceful birds belong to the oldest known surviving bird species. “A crane fossil found in Nebraska, estimated to be about 10 million years old, is identical in structure to the modern Sandhill Crane,” according to The Nature Conservancy.

The Sandhill Cranes gather around the National Wildlife Refuge near Monte Vista, Colorado. This refuge is close to the southern end of the San Luis Valley, the largest alpine valley in the world. About 7,600 feet high, the refuge sits between the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan mountain ranges. This is the western edge of the Central Flyway where about 25,000 Sandhill Cranes migrate every spring and fall. They spend their winters in southern New Mexico, including the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, which I visited and wrote about in December 2011. Near the end of March they begin to fly to the area around Grays Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho, where they breed and make their nests.

Among the approximately 25,000 Sandhill Cranes that come to the San Luis Valley each spring and fall are some Lesser and Canadian Sandhill Cranes, about 3,000 to 5,000 of each species. Differentiating between the three sub-species is difficult, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which manages our wildlife refuges. “The Greater is larger and lighter gray than the Lesser and Canadian. The Greater Sandhill has a head/bill shaped similar to a Canvasback while the Lesser Sandhill has a head/bill similar to a Redhead duck.”

Greater Sandhill Cranes can be as big as 5 feet tall with a wingspan of up to 6 feet. As big as they are they are among our most graceful birds. On the other hand, the huge flocks of Sandhill Cranes along the Platte River in Nebraska consist largely of the smaller Lesser Sandhill Cranes.

During my three-day trip I went to the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge six times. The three mornings were better, not only because of the light but because the cranes were more active then. But while I had to get up early, this was an easy trip because the cranes were present and the light was good for less than an hour at the beginning and end of each day. Still, the mornings were cold, down as low as 11°F. I made sure to get there and to get my gear set up before sunrise, as in this photograph:

Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) Awaken into a Cold Dawn

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I like to know why birds have the scientific names they do, and Paul A. Johnsgard has a nice explanation. “The Romans referred to the cranes as grues, apparently from the sound of their calls,” he writes. “The related Latin word congruere, meaning to agree, is the basis for the modern English word, ‘congruence,’ and both derive from the highly coordinated and cooperative behavior typical of cranes.” He wrote this in one of his many books, Crane Music: A Natural History of American Cranes.”

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