It's Chri-- er-- Holiday Bird Count season!

[XemaSab]

Are you doing any CBCs?

Have you done any already?

Any good stories about the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat?

:D

[semillama]

1. I'm doing one saturday

same one I did last year, Hoover reservoir in Columbus, Ohio. Highlight for me was my life Barred Owl, and my first red phase Screech owl. bird reports have been sort of quiet lately locally, though, so who knows?

Nothing yet beat the Houghton County, Michigan count where we had goshawk and great grey owl, though. Maybe someday!

[Gato Moteado]

8. how did the bird count go?

what did you see?

[Gato Moteado]

2. i went to one in the osa peninsula last year........

it wasn't in corcovado national park, but rather a large private reserve near puerto jimenez.

i saw a spectacled owl, tons of scarlet macaws, toucans, long tailed hermits, a crested hummingbird (Lophornis adorabilis), honeycreepers, woodcreepers, antbirds, several species of tanagers, some mannakins, pelicans.....i forgot most of what i saw.

our assigned area was mostly primary forest so most of the birds were obscured by the canopy. we saw spider monkeys though.

one of the teams saw a crested eagle. there are harpy eagles in that area but unfortunately, nobody saw one.

[XemaSab]

3. Wow!

Do you have a link to the count results???

That sounds fantastic!

[Gato Moteado]

4. unfortunately i don't have the list

the leader of the count last year still hasn't published the list but supposedly he will in the next few weeks. i'll try to remember to post it when i see it. i think the total species our group counted was 357. there were 10 or 12 of us and we were broken up into 2 or 3 smaller groups.

the osa peninsula is awesome. i've seen so many great birds there. another area in costa rica that is great is around sarapiqui. i have some land up there and it's loaded with awesome birds. we see cool stuff there like green macaws, toucans, white collared mannakins (they make a sound with their wings that sounds like a cracking whip). too many more to even try to list.

even here in the san jose area around my apartment i regularly see great kiskidees, social flycatchers, blue-grey tanagers, parrots, oropendulas (have you ever seen the nest of an oropendula?), motmots, and other cool stuff.

[XemaSab]

5. According to the data on the Audubon website

your count has produced around 190 species that would be new for me.

Unreal. Just unreal.

:D

www.audubon.org

[Gato Moteado]

6. yeah, you should take a week and head to the sarapiqui area...

....there are so many great places to watch birds there. you can hike through some of the national parks and wildlife refuges on the caribbean slope and take a boat ride down the rio sarapiqui.

here's a few links i quickly grabbed off of google:

http://www.exploringcostarica.com/laselva/
http://www.gavilanlodge.com/English/birdwatchers.htm
http://www.exploringcostarica.com/sarapiquis/

hopefully in the next year or two, if i can swing it financially i will start a small ecotour biz on my sarapiqui land. i want to put in a few small cabins along the rio toro (my property borders this river) and offer birders a chance to take a boat ride down the rio toro to the rio sarapiqui and on into barro del colorado wildlife refuge for some hardcore birding. i also have 85 acres of primary rain forest with trails where people would be able to see all kinds of birds including green macaws (the rarest bird in costa rica) which are nesting on my property.

[XemaSab]

7. That sounds amazing!!!!

I totally have to get down there!