Costa Rica: Rancho Naturalista

After Monteverde, we headed for the metropolis of San Jose and we planned 4 nights in this location as it would be an easy place to base any of our day trips.  We teamed up with one of Costa Rica's finest bird guides, Serge Arias.  He is based out of Cartago which is a short distance east of San Jose and he took us to a couple of spots south and east of Cartago where the list of birds were quite different from the northern part where we spent our first nine days.  If planning a trip to Costa Rica, Serge is sure to be an asset for your trip.  

The first day, we headed to Rancho Naturalista, which is might be the best spot in Costa Rica to find the Snowcap, a hummingbird that was high on our list.  If you plan a trip to Costa Rica, please check out Rancho Naturalista and consider making it a destination on your list.

Since the Snowcap was our target bird, we might as well start off this post with that special little hummingbird.  We not only had a nice adult put on a show for us, but a juvenile was visiting the flowers as well.  This is a stunning a beautiful hummingbird!

 Snowcap

 Snowcap

Snowcap - Juvenile

Here is a video of the adult as well as it was visiting flowers.  Yes, there are people talking in the video, but it was a lot of fun!!!

Of course there were other hummingbirds as well as other species of birds.  

 White-necked Jacobin - Male

 White-necked Jacobin - Male

White-necked Jacobin - Female

  Crowned Woodnymph

 Garden Emerald

 Green-breasted Mango - Male

 Green-breasted Mango - Female

Rufous-tailed Hummingbird

 Blue-gray Tanager

 Brown Jay

 Chestnut-headed Oropendula

 Dusky-capped Flycatcher

 Keel-billed Toucan

Olive-backed Euphonia

Gray-headed Chachalaca

 Banded Peacock

 Green Basilisk Lizard - closeup

 Green Basilisk Lizard - Look at the length of that tail!!!!

 Doris Longwing - Blue Morph

 Doris Longwing - Blue Morph

Malachite

After leaving Rancho Naturalista, we headed back to the city of Cartago.  On the way, Serge stopped at a pond on one of the campuses of a university.  This was a great stop because we got to add the Boat-billed Heron to our life lists.  If it wasn't for that enormous bill, it would look a little similar to the Black-crowned Night Heron which is very common in parts of the United States.  What a great addition!

 Boat-billed Heron

What a great first day that we spent with Serge.  The next day took us to another fabulous spot for birds and that will be covered in the next blog post.