This pretty little bird does not get a lot of attention and is often mistaken for an immature or small Kiskadee or Boat-billed Flycatcher. This particular Social Flycatcher (eBird link) landed on this rusty old ornamental fencing around a lake platform and made an interesting image to me. 🙂 And of course I have a Social Flycatcher Gallery with photos from all over Costa Rica.
I only have photos of 4 species of the many we saw on the night hike at Chachagua Rainforest Hotel, but any frog I can add to my collection is great for me and two of these are new to me. There are about 150 species of frogs in Costa Rica and my gallery Amphibians CR has 33+ species, some I’m unable to identify. Frogs are amazing! 🙂
This one on the Caribbean Slope used to be called Passerini’s Tanager with the Pacific Slope’s called Cherrie’s Tanager, but now they are all called Scarlet-rumped Tanager (eBird link), yet eBird and others still use “Passerini’s” and “Cherrie’s” in parentheses after the new together name, especially with the females which are distinctly different. And you will see below that I have two photos of females with one either a Cherrie’s or a darker morph of the Passerini’s. Confusing? Yes! 🙂 And of course the new species name only describes the male which is, by the way, identical on both slopes! 🙂
Thus IN MY BIRD GALLERIES, I still have two galleries but added the new name in front of each:
The feature photo is their main or largest waterfall with several other small ones like the one at the swim hole I showed in my May 16 Arrival at Chachagua Post. And repeated here:
Their Main Waterfall . . .
And tourists getting their photos by this falls . . .
One of the things different on the Night Hike at Chachagua Rainforest Hotel was that we saw more sleeping birds than I’ve seen on any other night hike all over Costa Rica. Our guide said this one was a Tropical Kingbird (eBird link) which looks like a baby or a little smaller than usual to me, but this one could be an immature or they just scrunched up tight for warmth and sleeping. 🙂 And the whiter stomach could have been the camera flash, made with a cell phone camera plus people’s flashlights. So I’m sticking with the ID our guide gave us. 🙂
And for comparison, here’s two more Tropical Kingbirds photographed in the daytime . . .
My favorite hummingbird seen or photographed on this trip was this Band-tailed Barbthroat which is not seen very often (only my second time). And I got only one useable photo before he flew off as do all hummingbirds. You can read about this uncommon specieson eBird or see the one other I’ve photographed in my Band-tailed Barbthroat Gallery. The other one was at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge near Golfito (where I photographed almost twice as many species as here). This bird is found only in Central America and Northern South America.
This was indeed a fortunate find and on top of that, in decent light! 🙂 But only one good shot and he’s gone! 🙂 I had very little sunshine the whole week I was at Chachagua, just a few hours on Wednesday, so to get this beautiful bird in good light was a real blessing! My trip gallery is up now but unfortunately is filled with a lot of low-light photos. Sorry!
Though I still have another week’s worth of blog posts about my visit to Chachagua Rainforest Hotel, I have also completed the photo gallery on this trip for anyone who wants to see all the shots from this trip together in one place. 🙂 CLICK on the image of first page of gallery below which this time is all in just 3 folders: Birds, Other Wildlife and Hotel Grounds.
Like everywhere I go in Costa Rica, I was mesmerized by the trees at Chachagua Rainforest Hotel, from their biggest Ceiba Tree to the neat flowers and fruit growing on some trees. Seven photos is not enough to show what all I saw, but maybe an example! 🙂