In a few hours, Molly and I will start the 1+ day trip back to northern Minnesota. My trail cams next to my feeders at home seem to indicate the snow on the ground has finally melted in the last 24 hours. It will actually be nice to feel Lake Superior’s cool weather. Down here in Guanacaste Province, and specifically the town of Las Catalinas it reaches 95F by early afternoon every day. In addition there is zero reason to check my weather app. During the dry season the weather never changes … sunny and hot.

My last two days have been split between the Las Catalinas trails (I get out there before sunrise to beat the heat) and the Zapatal area reached by my 4WD jaunt up and over “The Hump”. Here is a data / bird photography dump from the past 48 hours. Homeward bound!

Great Kiskadee

Magnificent Frigatebird

Banded Wren

Spotted Sandpiper

Boat-Billed Flycatcher

Brown Crested Flycatcher

Gray Hawk

Groove-Billed Ani

Southern Lapwing

Squirrel Cuckoo

Tropical Kingbird

White-Fronted Amazon

White-Winged Dove

White-Throated Magpie Jay

Needless to say, without Cornell’s Merlin App I would have no idea how to ID these birds.

I never really thought about this, but baby monkeys when they are born are NOT ready to swing through the forest canopy. This morning at sunrise I drove over to Zapotal Beach Road from Las Catalinas, Costa Rica. The moneys also like the cooler mornings, and I suddenly realized a baby monkey was hanging on for dear life as its mother navigated the forest canopy.

Howler Monkey & Child

The Movie (video link for email subscribers)

And two more Howler Monkey photographs. There were about 20 above me, and they did not care about my presence at all.

Zapotal came through again this morning … the Savannah habitat. The raptors find this area great for hunting. Today’s find was a Crested Caracara (see yesterday’s post with instructions for birding this area if you are visiting Las Catalinas). I watched “the Mexican Eagle” for over 15 minutes, and then came back later and found the Crested Caracara once again.

Zapotal Crested Caracara

And from a few days ago … the Great Black Hawk (apparently rather uncommon … the double white stripe proves this is not the Common Black Hawk).

And now movie time … a video I took of the Gray Hawk seen earlier this week and today’s Crested Caracara (video links for email subscribers: Gray Hawk | Crested Caracara)

And just to compare the Common to the Great Black Hawk, here is a photograph of the Common Black Hawk which lives and hunts mainly crabs near the ocean, and which I saw over at Playa Potrero at the beginning of this week.

I think there needs to be some better naming conventions for these Costa Rican raptors … Black Hawk … Gray Hawk … Roadside Hawk (links are to posts with these birds). The names of these hawks are exactly original … but they all were seen at the Zapotal Savannah.