And there were more! A wetland rainforest like Tortuguero has many animals and this is just a sampling from the River Otter to the Spider Monkey – a lot more than just my birds! To keep it simple I’ll use the auto-slideshow today, randomly presented and the name of each animal appears at the bottom of photo. This is part of the beauty of Tortuguero National Park – enjoy!
OTHER WILDLIFE – Tortuguero
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“A forest’s beauty lies with its inhabitants.”
― Anthony T. Hincks
This is not all the birds seen but the ones with a halfway decent photo, 28 photos here of 24 species – 2 shots of the Boat-billed Heron since one is mother with chick and other the nest-guarding father, two of the White-crowned Parrot because the images are so different, two of Mealy Parrot front & back, and separate male & female shots of the Grackle. My only “lifer” or first-time-seen bird was the Agami Heron and he was at night meaning not a real good photo. Now that my Costa Rica Birds Gallery is up to 301 species, it is getting harder to find a new species I haven’t already photographed, but thus far every trip in 4 years has had at least one! 🙂 We saw several American Pygmy Kingfishers sleeping on the night tour, but none of my photos are good.
Since my first trip to Tortuguero in 2010 on the Caravan Tour I have liked the rainforest/Amazon atmosphere of living on the water and what I’ve always thought was a lot of birds. Nine years later I have discovered several places with more birds and better food in the lodge, but I still like Tortuguero and will return again someday. I’ll do a lodge post later and compare the two lodges I’ve stayed in here.
I’m sharing the photos in a gallery format rather than the auto-slide show because you can see the image larger when you click on it or at same time start a manual slideshow. Also hover your mouse pointer over an image to see the bird’s name. Photos are being shown in random order.
BIRDS at Tortuguero
Great Green Macaw
White-crowned Parrot
Mealy Parrot
Great-tailed Grackle female
Montezuma Oropendola
Boat-billed Heron on Nest
Northern Jacana
Yellow-throated Toucan
Gray-necked Wood-Rail
Keel-billed Toucan
Great Blue Heron
Tropical Kingbird
Green Heron
Great Egret
Ringed Kingfisher
Great Curassow
Agami Heron
Great Kiskadee
Great-tailed Grackle male
Boat-billed Heron
Tricolored Heron
Collared Aracari Toucan
Green Ibis
Bare-throated Tiger-Heron
White-crowned Parrot
Mealy Parrot
Black-necked Stilt
King Vulture
In order to see birds it is necessary to become part of the silence.
Knowing from past experiences that the return trip by boat and bus to San Jose is more tiring and less of an adventure, I chose to try flying back this time and not that early 6am flight! 🙂 But rather I took the 12:40 afternoon flight – and here is
The Story in Pictures
The Tortuguero Airport Parking Lot . . . A boat landing. My lodge “driver” dropped me off here and I walked over to the landing strip.
The Tortuguero Airport Terminal. 🙂
Just another bunch of tourists, European & Canadian.I love taking off alongside a beach! (Like in Limon)Up over the village of Tortuguero . . .. . . and over some of the rivers & canals I traveled this week.And the beautiful Costa Rican Farms.Our one stop before San Jose was at La Fortuna with Arenal Volcano towering above.
Sometimes I think I live a charmed life getting to see such beautiful sights! (Even though my suitcase did not make it on our overloaded flight and is suppose to be delivered by taxi sometime this evening.) I love being “Retired in Costa Rica” and I’m still processing the bird and other wildlife photos from this Tortuguero trip – but coming soon!
Getting to and from anywhere in Tortuguero is only by boat with outsiders able to use the Tortuguero Landing Strip to fly here by small plane. All week I have been traveling around this rainforest park by boat including my private birding trip in a canoe this afternoon with Ricardo doing the paddling and me making photos! 🙂 One photo below is from that canoe trip. It is a different world, a water world! Tomorrow the lodge takes me by boat to the Tortuguero Landing Strip for my flight out which is a relief since the gravel roads between Guapiles and the boat dock are in bad condition right now. It is only the second time I’ve gone to an airport by boat with the other being at Drake Bay.
River Scene Shots
We passed all kinds of other boats.
Palms remind you that this is a tropical paradise!
My dusk canoe birding today.
From the main river a sign marks the canal to this lodge.
Tranquil and green!
As the sun goes down it gets dark in the canals and river, but you can see all the stars! 🙂
Tours, birding and general transportation is all by boat.
On tours we pull up under birds, monkeys and other sights along the way.
Wilderness is a necessity there must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls.
I hesitate to rank or say there is only one favorite birding lodge, but this is in the top 3 or 4 best easily based on both the number of birds I photographed (53+) and the new birds I photographed for the first time or “lifers” of which there were these 7:
This is also one of the best or easiest places in Costa Rica (the whole world?) to get close photos of the King Vulture. My previous photos were made through a spotting scope, so I was thrilled to have Sergio pick me up at the lodge and take me to his blind on a nearby bluff where the King Vultures hangout and from his blind that he calls a “hide” I was about 20 to 30 feet from King Vultures.
Plus the lodge guides are excellent birding guides and found birds I would never have found on my own plus on the night hike I got a photo of the rare Red-webbed Tree Frog which is on the cover of my book. The DIY trails are excellent also for birding where I got several birds on my own.
The food is very good with excellent wait staff and by planning ahead nearly a year I got one of the 4 Tree Houses as my Treehouse Room for the week – an unbelievably unique experience which yielded all the Howler Monkey photos in my gallery (by climbing up 55 steps to my room). Or see my entire “Trip Gallery” 2019 Maquenque Ecolodge.
And check out the lodge website: Maquenque Ecolodgea true experience in nature! I highly recommend it for all nature lovers and especially for birders! Just be aware that it is not near anything familiar, a 4-hour drive from my house in Atenas to a river on the Nicaragua border.
Every leaf is a work of art and I love trying to capture some of it! There are so many things to see and focus on in the rainforest and sometimes a simple leaf is the best eye candy! Enjoy the slideshow!
Lots of water adds intrigue and adventure to any landscape or outdoor experience and that is an important element at Maquenque Lodge from the moment you cross the river to get to the lodge until your bags are carried across the lagoon to your cabin while scores of birds fly overhead. Click an image to see it larger:
PERSONAL NOTE: Right now I’m writing my posts at least one day in advance and scheduling them for 5 am publication the next morning or future morning. I prepared the above Tuesday the 29th in morning. This afternoon I am scheduled for my second skin cancer surgery at a clinic in Alajuela. It will be “Mohs” surgery where there is a second doctor, a pathologist, running a continuous biopsy until the two of them are sure they got all the cancer. This one is on my face next to my left eye and is a more complicated and difficult surgery than the last one on my arm. But I have confidence in my Dermatologist and will give a report later.
Not often enough do I look at the details surrounding me in a rainforest like Maquenque Lodge & Reserve – but this time I did get a few shots of small nature art:
These are the most beautiful little birds and I think this is some of my better shots yet of some of them, especially the Red-legged Honeycreeper & that Blue Dacnis with both shots being made at a cultural stop on our Rio San Carlos boat trip at a small farm which was a joy in addition to these two photos, relating to a simple small farm family. 🙂 Pura vida.
