Tag Archives: flycatchers

Black-chinned Sparrow: Bird #14 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown

Today, we continue Braden’s countdown of the remaining birds he needs to complete his American Birding Association life list. For more information on this journey, check out his post, Lower 48 Life List Countdown: Crissal Thrasher. As always, if you’d like to support FatherSonBirding, consider buying new copies of some of Sneed’s books shown to the right. If you already have them all, why not buy a copy for a friend? As always, thanks for reading!

On April 4th, 2026, I left my job of eight months, with my internal compass pointing home. I’d lived and worked in Running Springs, California since late August of 2025, as an educator and camp counselor at Pali Institute for Outdoor Education. I’d seen so much of the country during this time, and met some really cool people, but on April 3^rd I finished my last work shift. The next day, I moved out of staff housing and drove south to Ramona near San Diego to stay with my cousins. That night would be the first of many on a twelve-day road trip I’d planned across the American West on my way back to Montana. Though I looked forward to seeing many birds (see my Crissal Thrasher blog) on the trip, I especially set my sights on the last US sparrow that I’d never laid eyes on: Black-chinned.

Black-chinned Sparrows are classic chaparral birds found in canyons and hillsides across much of California, Arizona and New Mexico. They’re particularly drawn to post-fire habitats—the dense shrubbery that rises from the sooty ground five to ten years after a burn. Outside the core of its range, the species can be quite local, which might explain why I hadn’t bumped into one so far. While I have spent extensive time in both central California and southeast Arizona, a lot of the birding I’ve done in these locations is either too wooded or too deserty for Black-chinned Sparrows. The one concentrated effort I made for the species was both at a bad time of year and a bad time of day for the species, when a friend and I had driven up a random road south of San Francisco where a single singing bird had been reported weeks prior.

When planning my route home from Running Springs, I had several goals in mind: to explore parts of the West I’d never before visited and to target a few bird species that would either be lifers, or living in new locations I’d never explored. With all of this in mind, I left my cousin’s house in Ramona on April 5th and drove six hours through the Mojave Desert, arriving at a location known as the Beeline Highway an hour or so after sunset. This section of the highway ran through Sycamore Canyon, a middle-elevation canyon that stretched from the saguaro-covered foothills north of Phoenix up towards 7,000-foot Mt. Ord. No longer a through road thanks to a closure on the lower section, it was known to be one of Phoenix’s top birding locations.

As I began to set up my tent, thinking about all the fun canyon country birds I might see tomorrow, a barking echoed from the creek a couple hundred meters away. I recognized it as a sound I’d only heard a few times: an Elf Owl! Deciding my tent could wait, I grabbed my flashlight and camera, walking towards the sound. When I got to the tree I thought it was coming from, I raised my light and immediately spotted the bird: America’s smallest owl was barking, unperturbed, from a small cavity in the sycamore. Then another Elf Owl landed on a tree on the other side of the road! I’d only heard this species before, never gotten eyes on one, and I hadn’t even realized they lived this far north! Happy, I went to bed as the Elf Owls called into the night.

The next morning, unfamiliar bird songs woke me, and I packed my tent before the sun crested the hills. As I headed down the road, I spotted Northern Cardinals and Ash-throated Flycatchers, knowing full well that Black-chinned Sparrow reports were more frequent higher up the canyon but curious as to what else lived below. Arizona sycamores followed the creek down the canyon, which contrasted with the dry, rocky, juniper-covered slopes surrounding me, and created great habitat for birds like Hooded Oriole, Bell’s Vireo and Cassin’s Kingbird. From the hillsides sang Rufous-crowned Sparrows, a southwestern bird with a messy jumble of a song that I’d been learning to love over the last few months.

Forty minutes after I started walking the canyon, another car pulled alongside me. A woman got out, introducing herself as Shannon and stating that she was a local birder. From then on, we mostly birded together, taking turns pointing out cool birds as we encountered them.

“Zone-tailed Hawk above us!”

“Check out that male Scott’s Oriole!”

“Oooh, that Costa’s Hummingbird is displaying!”

Eventually, we arrived at a natural turnaround point—a large, grassy pile of dirt blocking the road. The road continued behind it, but Shannon decided to turn around. I felt that I should keep going a little farther, a birding strategy that I’d adopted in recent years. Often, when I feel like turning around, I decide to push on around ‘just one more corner’, and it’s gotten me some great birds over the years. I did just that, and wasn’t disappointed.

To be honest, Black-chinned Sparrow was not the main reason I’d selected this location. No, the Beeline Highway was known for another species, one I’d seen before in Costa Rica but never in the US—Common Black Hawk. In the tropics these raptors are hard to miss, using mostly coastal habitats, especially mangroves. North of the Mexican border, though, there are fewer than 300 nesting pairs, confined to sycamore-covered canyons.

Sure enough, after walking around ‘just one more corner’, I spotted it: A Common Black Hawk sitting on a nest in the crook of a sycamore. I snapped a bunch of pictures and watched as it began flying back and forth, its calls bouncing off the walls of the canyon.

I headed back up the canyon and again met Shannon, who gave me a ride to my car. We parted ways and I continued driving slowly with the windows down. I’d seen a ton of cool birds so far, but I couldn’t help feeling a little stressed. Where were the Black-chinned Sparrows?

Apparently, near the top of the canyon! Pulling over for probably the fourth time, I immediately heard one sounding off from the valley below—a musical, descending song like that of a Field Sparrow but more piercing. While I don’t enjoy using playback, I went ahead and played its song. My bird didn’t come any closer, but the sound prompted another sparrow to start singing on the other side of the road. I snuck up on him and suddenly, not ten feet from me sat a male Black-chinned Sparrow. Almost immediately, a second male flew in to join him and the two flitted from bush to bush together, never staying in one place for longer than ten seconds but giving me satisfying views. I knew they were both males because only the male of this species has the diagnostic black chin.

The Beeline Highway offered up one more gift before I left. While watching the sparrows, I heard the telltale varied song of a mimid. I walked to the edge of the road expecting a Northern Mockingbird, and instead was treated to great views of a Crissal Thrasher! This high-altitude shrubby habitat differed in nearly every way from the desert wash where I’d seen one in Vegas, but the bird seemed to be thriving here! As I headed north, away from the sycamores and saguaros, I felt a pang of regret since I likely wouldn’t be seeing these birds again for a long time. However, I knew that today’s experience would give me hours of pleasant reflection as I continued my adventure into new, exciting habitats.

Colorado’s Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival (FSB Festival Report)

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I hadn’t visited the Four Corners region of Colorado in sixty years, so when I got an email inviting me to keynote a birding festival almost literally in the shadow of Mesa Verde National Park, well, it took me about one wingbeat of a Broad-tailed Hummingbird to accept. The festival was the Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival and why they chose me harkens back to last year’s blog post In Search of the Green-Tailed Towhee. Each year, the festival selects a different featured or mascot bird to help promote the fest, and the committee just happened to choose the GTTO (the bird, not the car) for 2026. After doing a quick web search, they found my blog—and the rest is history.

**My invitation to the Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival resulted from last year’s blog post In Search of the Green-tailed Towhee.**

Well, not quite. I still, after all, had to attend the festival—and what a delight it turned out to be.

After being invited, the first thing I did was to look up what kinds of birds I might see. It was a good list, consisting of a nice mix of conifer forest, wetland, and sagebrush birds. What got me doing lizard push-ups, however, were the birds of the pinyon-juniper forests—what the locals refer to as the “PJ forest.” These birds included several species that are challenging to find in Montana such as Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Gray Flycatcher, Pinyon Jay, and Green-tailed Towhee. Even better, it included a couple of potential lifers pour moi, especially Virginia’s Warbler and Gray Vireo.

**Having Amy along for the first few days helped make this trip extra special!**

What made the trip even more exciting was that I convinced my wife Amy to fly down with me a couple of days early to explore Durango and visit Mesa Verde National Park—where we saw my first Black-throated Gray Warbler in eight or nine years and heard both Rock and Canyon Wrens right next to the famous Cliff Palace dwellings (see above photo)! Afterward, we took a delightful hike on the park’s Knife Edge Trail, and almost immediately Merlin’s Sound ID picked up one of my top trip targets: Virginia’s Warbler! It took only about five minutes to get a glimpse of this gorgeous little creature and as a bonus, the trip’s first Blue-gray Gnatcatchers joined it. Alas, Amy had to head home Wednesday, but that may have been just as well since three intensive days of birding lay ahead of me.

When you get invited to speak at a festival, it is common to be asked to “co-lead” field trips with local birders who are the real experts. Doing this may be the best part of the invitation, and I felt especially excited about the trips I had been assigned. The first, led by Mesa Verde’s Chief of Natural Resources, Paul Morey, took us into the little-known wilderness part of the park—a section along the Mancos River closed to the public. The river—a creek by Montana standards—led through spectacular groves of cottonwoods as well as PJ forest and sagebrush habitat, overlooked by the impressive main ridge of the park.

A special bonus of our Mesa Verde wilderness hike was getting to see the restoration work the park has been doing–including facilitating the return of beavers to the Mancos River. This has already improved water levels and sedimentation that the cottonwood gallery forest needs to thrive.

We got some nice surprises on our four-mile hike: Golden Eagles, Plumbeous Vireos, Lark Sparrows, more Virginia’s Warblers, and two Red-naped Sapsuckers. Lazuli Buntings and Yellow-breasted Chats earned crowd favorite honors, though the chats did their best to elude us visually until late in the hike. Another great thing about the trip, however, was getting to meet wonderful, bird-loving folks from all over the country—new friendships that would solidify over the next couple of days of birding.

**Not surprisingly, Lazuli Buntings were one of the crowd favorites of our first-day group.**

Friday’s trip took me to another place that had limited access—a downstream section of the Mancos River located in the heart of the Ute Mountain Tribal Park. To enter this area, you need to be on an official tour organized by the Tribe (see details here) and all I can say is “Do it!” I got an inkling of what we were in for as we passed the impressive Chimney Rock and entered the canyon itself. On both sides of us, incredible walls like giant Jenga constructions rose for miles upstream, the river threading through them as if nothing had changed for millennia.

A highlight of our Ute Tribal Park trip was a Black Phoebe, a bird common in California but fairly scarce in these parts.

Don Marsh, our fearless leader, had us stop at many locations and the birds repeatedly surprised us. Almost immediately, we saw ten Western Tanagers moving together upstream, surely still in migration. Say’s Phoebes, Ash-throated Flycatchers, Lark Sparrows, and Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jays flitted between trees and bushes while more chats and Gambel’s Quail provided an alluring soundtrack.

**Most visitors to Mesa Verde don’t realize the remarkable number of Puebloan sites—thousands of them—that fill the area, including this spectacular cliff site in the Ute Mountain Tribal Park.**

Don had been charged by festival organizer Diane Cherbak to find me my Number One Target Bird, Gray Vireo, and he set about this task with determination. On only our second or third stop, he said, “I hear one,” and for the next fifteen minutes, we doggedly tried to get a glimpse of it. The little bugger didn’t make it easy! We saw movement in bushes and others in our party shouted, “There it is!”—always a split-second late for me to see. FINALLY, the bird quit taunting us and popped up to the top of a bush where I got a lengthy, glorious glimpse of this drab, but thoroughly enchanting little bird! This trip also provided some additional adventures including a flat tire and a break to admire impressive cliff dwellings and petroglyphs few people ever get to see.

**My top trip target bird did its best to stay out of sight before finally posing for a photo op. Thank you Gray Vireo—and Don, for finding this bird for me!**

Saturday saw us in the good hands of Brenda Wright and Coen Dexter, two of the area’s top birders, as we explored the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, a sprawling region northwest of Cortez. This was the heart of Pinyon-Juniper country and offered a wonderful mix of PJ forest, agricultural fields, Puebloan ruins, and yet more stunning canyons. On our explorations, we saw yet another Gray Vireo along with Brewer’s Sparrows, Cassin’s Kingbird, Juniper Titmice, both Sora and Virginia Rail, and perhaps the day’s highlight, a pair of mating dark morph Swainson’s Hawks! Fittingly, our last new species of the day here was the festival’s featured bird, a Green-tailed Towhee that I saw dive into a bush and stuck around long enough for everyone to see it.

**Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jays greeted us every day of the festival—incredibly adaptable birds that I had seen only twice before.**

I honestly felt sad to leave this amazing festival in a remarkable part of the world—and I encourage you to give it a try. The festival offers more than twenty tours over its five days and has some of the friendliest people I’ve met anywhere. Both Durango and Cortez are fun towns to explore and hang out in, and both offer great Mexican food, fun shopping, and other cool activities. Speaking of food, a wonderful local caterer creates some of the yummiest “field lunches” I’ve ever had—so yummy that I usually ate them by 9 or 10 o’clock each day. Best of all, the festival is for a good cause, being the main fundraiser for the Cortez Cultural Center.

For more information, check out the festival website: https://utemountainmesaverdebirdingfestival.com/

I certainly hope it’s an event I’ll return to one day.

My Colorado eBird Trip Report: https://ebird.org/tripreport/519560

The Ute Mountain Mesa Verde birding festival is the major fundraiser for the Cortez Cultural Center each year. The center’s mission is to “provide programs that enrich the lives of our community and its visitors by increasing cultural awareness, promoting the arts, and educating about the area’s history, diversity and natural environment.”

Caño Negro: Costa Rica’s Epic Wetland (Birding Costa Rica, Part 3)

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When blogging about a birding trip to Costa Rica, it’s almost impossible to choose which things to cover. As anyone who’s been there knows, every day offers avian delights, whether you’re walking through rainforest or hanging out in a town or city. One place we simply cannot overlook, however, is Caño Negro Wildlife Refuge.

**The lagoon area of Cano Negro, at high water because of recent rains.**

Caño Negro is one of Costa Rica’s rare, large interior freshwater wetland areas and lies almost within sight of the Nicaraguan border. I had never heard of it until Braden sang its praises when he studied abroad down there two years ago. As he planned our itinerary for this year’s trip, he left no doubt it was a must-see destination. To reach it, we left the La Fortuna area (see our post Arenal for Antbirds) and drove an hour and a half up highway 35 through flat agricultural country, before turning west on the access road to the refuge.

**Seeing such large numbers of Northern Jacanas was a first for me!**

The access road is one of those tricks perpetuated with great amusement on tourists. Paved for its first few miles, it suddenly degenerates into a cratered track that reduces the speed of rational drivers to about 10 km/hour. Nonetheless, this road is not to be endured, but to be birded. Along its stretch are a rich variety of grasslands, mini-wetlands, and patches of trees that are loaded with birds. I was thrilled to see my first Northern Jacanas and Purple Gallinules of the trip, but these were quickly overshadowed by the Variable and Morelet’s Seedeaters (see our post Chasing Morelet’s Seedeaters), and Thick-billed and Nicaraguan Seed-Finches. The highlight of the drive was a brief, but spectacular view of yet another lifer for Braden—a Black-collared Hawk!

**These overcompensating “giant-billed” Nicaraguan Seed-Finches are a specialty of the northeast part of Costa Rica.**

The next morning, we eagerly met our guide, Chambita, and his boat driver/assistant, Yalvin, at one of the town boat docks. Because of the heavy unseasonable rains, the Rio Frio was running higher than usual, but still flowed along at a placid pace perfect for birding. Most birding boat tours have two components—the river itself and a lagoon that feeds into it. From Braden’s past comments, I was most excited about the lagoon, but the river relentlessly amazed us.

**Chambita and Braden proved a dynamic duo in detecting Caño Negro’s astonishing bird life.**

As we began slowly making our way downstream, I was thrilled to see both new and familiar species. Over the first hour, the kingfishers stole the show, as we saw five of Costa Rica’s six kingfisher species, missing only the most common one—our own Belted Kingfisher that we enjoy back home. The ones we saw included both the big bruiser Ringed Kingfishers and the two that are hardest to find: Green-and-Rufous Kingfisher and American Pygmy Kingfisher.

**I’m a sucker for kingfishers and was ecstatic at seeing FIVE species, including this American Pygmy Kingfisher.**

Chambita, though, quickly demonstrated why he is a local legend among expert birders by calling out dozens of other bird songs and calls, many of them flycatchers that I had no hope of recognizing, but that Braden raptly absorbed. Then, we spotted a species Braden most hoped to see—Snowy Cotingas.

I’ll just say it: Cotingas are bizarre. And I’m not alone in thinking so. Birds of the World remarks, “No family of birds exhibits more diversity of auditory, behavioral, and plumage elaborations, all the result of rampant sexual selection, than do the cotingas.”

**We saw five Snowy Cotingas on our outing—an unusually high number that pretty much made Braden’s entire day.**

I actually didn’t think I’d ever seen a cotinga until Braden informed me that two of Latin America’s most spectacular birds, the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock and Three-wattled Bellbird, are cotingas. Even then, I only started getting interested in them as a group when mi amigo Roger and I saw Black-tipped Cotingas last year in Colombia, inspiring a spate of jealousy from Braden.

Today, when we saw the Snowy Cotingas, I had to restrain Braden from jumping out of the boat. “I wanted to see them,” he gushed, “but I didn’t think we would!” That, of course, got me super excited about them, too—delicate white birds perched atop trees high above the river.

**Though not rare, Sungrebes can be shy and difficult to find, so we felt lucky to see one. The birds are actually more closely related to rails than grebes.**

The river offered many other treasures including a rare Sungrebe, eight species of warblers, three kinds of orioles, and four kinds each of woodpeckers and parrots. Oh, and caimans and monkeys, too. And that’s before we turned around and went to the lagoon.

A troop of Squirrel Monkeys provided us with a welcome bonus as they fearlessly leaped a twenty-foot gap between trees. Look closely and you can see a baby on this one’s back! Talk about Livin’ on a Prayer!

When we reached it, the lagoon presented a totally different view than Braden had previously experienced. On his past visits, the water had been relatively low, i.e. perfect for wading birds. Recent rains, however, had raised the water dramatically. We still found a great diversity of birds, but numbers were lower than usual.

**Ever since seeing a Fasciated Tiger-Heron with Roger in Colombia last year, I have been in love with tiger-herons, and this was my first chance to get good looks at Bare-throated Tiger-Herons!**

Still, all manner of wading birds presented themselves. My favorites were Bare-throated Tiger-Herons and the uber-strange Boat-billed Herons. It was a tough call, though, with Tricolored Herons, a Roseate Spoonbill, Little Blue Herons, Green Herons, and three kinds of ibises—Glossy, White-faced, and Green—all competing for our attention.

**A yawning Boat-Billed Heron is a bird after my own heart. Not only is it one of the coolest birds in Costa Rica, it needs its afternoon nap, just like moi!**

A special treat for both Braden and me was getting to see our first Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture, which Chambita identified from a distance as it swooped down low over the lagoon and passed within a couple hundred yards of our boat. Resembling a Turkey Vulture—and sharing many of its characteristics—the Lesser Yellow-headed’s yellow head became visible only as it approached more closely. I love vultures.

**This intriguing Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture was a special first for both Braden and me.**

As we continued to explore, many more species kept showing up including a couple of Wood Storks, a Greater Yellowlegs, and both Crested and Yellow-headed Caracaras.

**Roger and I had seen a Yellow-headed Caracara leap up onto a cow last year in Colombia, but this guy gave Braden and me an even better show.**

A couple more of our favorite finds were a pair of Yellow-tailed Orioles and a Black-headed Trogon, all of which offered close up incredible looks.

We finished up our boat tour with classic looks at both Yellow-tailed Orioles and . . .

We were happy that Chambita and Yalvin seemed as excited by the day as we were. They spent far more time with us than was strictly necessary and you can bet we appreciated it.

After bidding them farewell, we headed back out the same cratered road we came in on and were rewarded as richly as on the day before. On the drive, we paused to enjoy Green Kingfishers, Common Tody-Flycatchers, a Fork-tailed Flycatcher, and the perfect capstone to the day—our lifer Red-breasted Meadowlarks! We ended the day with more than 130 species, one of our best days of birding ever. Pura Vida!

Our Caño Negro checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S303336007

I was especially thrilled to see a Red-breasted Meadowlark after recently reading that the similar-looking South American Pampas Meadowlark is critically endangered. Loss of grassland habitat and rampant use of pesticides has drastically reduced populations of many meadowlark species, including those found in the US.

To arrange a trip with Chambita, check out his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100047210666376.

Arenal for Antbirds: Birding Costa Rica, Part 2

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After our surprising morning birding near San Jose’s Juan Santamaría International Airport (see our previous post), Braden and I wasted no time heading into the heart of the region where we would spend the next nine days—the northern Caribbean slope of Costa Rica. Our first destination? The flanks of Arenal Volcano.

Despite having spent more than two months in Costa Rica back in 1994 (when I was writing my books The Forest in the Clouds and Monteverde: Science and Scientists in a Costa Rican Cloud Forest), I had never before explored this region. During his semester abroad here, however, Braden had thoroughly scoured the country for birds and had put together an itinerary that would give us the most bang for our birding buck. The Arenal area—near the bustling tourist town of La Fortuna—held many avian riches, but Braden and I had one group of birds we especially wanted to see: antbirds.

**The area around Arenal Volcano was the first major destination of our nine-day itinerary. Unfortunately, heavy rains greeted us during this supposed dry season!**

If you’re unfamiliar with them, antbirds are a group of birds that shadow army ant swarms—not to eat them, but to snag the many other invertebrates that the swarms dislodge during their ravenous raiding parties. I had seen many ant swarms during my time in Costa Rica, but again (and tragically), that was before I became a birder and if any antbirds were around, I had cluelessly overlooked them. Braden had, of course, been more alert and seen several kinds of antbirds—but never in the classic “insect-palooza” situation one reads about in scientific narratives.

**Braden and I looked forward to finding an antbird flock as much as any other birds on our trip. Note the army ants below the leaf upon which this Bicolored Antbird stands.**

We got our first shot at antbirds on our second morning in the country when we birded the internationally famous Arenal Observatory Lodge & Trails, a rather pricey destination with a fabulous sweep of nature to offer visitors. Fortunately, you don’t have to book a room to bird the place, but can simply pay a fee to spend the day. Unfortunately, waves of heavy rain greeted Braden and me when we arrived. Don’t get me wrong. We still had an incredible day here, including bird lists totaling more than 100 species and a fantastic sighting of a northern tamandua, a small, incredibly shy species of anteater—a first for both of us. Alas, we got only a brief glimpse of a single antbird—a Spotted Antbird—and encountered no army ant swarms where more antbirds might be plying their trade.

**On our first day of antbird searching, we saw only a single Spotted Antbird that didn’t happen to be following any army ants. Still, a gorgeous creature, verdad?** **(Note: the featured image at the beginning of this post shows a female Spotted Antbird!)**

Still hopeful, the next morning we headed to another nearby spot, a combo nature area and zip-lining destination called Sky Adventures. And guess what? It was again pouring down rain! After spending the previous day pretty much soaked, neither of us looked forward to another day of damp garments and soggy boots. A ray of hope was that one of the Sky Adventures guides told us that he had seen antbirds only the day before and even told us where to look.

**Braden wondered if he would see any life birds on this Costa Rican adventures, but quickly spotted this Black-headed Tody-flycatcher, the first of FOUR lifers he would collect this day!**

In this kind of weather, we had the trails pretty much to ourselves, and we realized that there was no shortage of birds around us. I should backtrack a bit and explain that while more than a third of the Costa Rican birds I was seeing were lifers, Braden had already seen so many birds in the country that he wondered if he’d get any lifers on our entire trip. That question got answered pretty quickly as we began crossing a spectacular hanging bridge over a lush ravine. Almost immediately, Braden said, “Black-headed Tody-Flycatcher!” Sure enough, on a branch hanging over the bridge, we spotted one of the cutest birds in the tropics—and a lifer for both of us! In fact, a huge variety of amazing birds seemed to be hanging out around the bridge, and before long a yellow and black bird landed just below us. Braden got even more excited by this one. “Black-thighed Grosbeak!” he exclaimed. Ka-ching! His second lifer in ten minutes!

Braden’s second life bird of the day, a Black-thighed Grosbeak, put in a leisurely appearance just below the hanging bridge. Look closely and you can even see the black thighs—though this is still one of the worst bird names ever!

Still, we hadn’t forgotten the antbirds and pressed across the bridge and up a winding trail. And at a sharp left, suddenly, there they were. Antbirds!

I confess that it took both of us a few minutes to embrace exactly what we were looking at. Columns of army ants marched along both sides of the trail, and the antbirds skittered and skaddled all about us.

**Braden, looking happily in shock at finding his best antbird mixed-flock ever!**

According to Vallely’s and Dyer’s Birds of Central America, Costa Rica hosts nine species of antbirds and we recognized four working the ant columns around us. These included Bicolored, Spotted, and Zelodon’s. It also included the one we both most wanted to see. “I’ve got an Ocellated!” Braden shouted with glee—his third lifer of the day.

**One of our top targets of our entire trip, Ocellated Antbirds gave us extensive, if very quick, looks for our full ant swarm visit.**

Why were we so excited about this bird? All antbirds are subtly beautiful, but Ocellated has the most distinct patterns of any Costa Rican species. It sports gorgeous blue, black, and rufous colors around the face and eye, and a remarkable scalloped pattern of feathers down its back and chest. As thrilled as we were to find it, we were even more thrilled to watch what the antbirds were doing.

**Only a single female Zeladon’s Antbird joined the ant swarm, and apparently these do not usually follow mixed flocks, and are not obligate ant swarm feeders. Males are black instead of brown.**

Back and forth they darted snagging insects, spiders, and other arthropods that were startled by or fleeing from the army ants. Braden and I paced back and forth, mesmerized by this performance. At least fifteen or twenty antbirds surrounded us, the most abundant being the Bicolored, who were also the least shy. WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW!

Antbirds, though, aren’t the only birds that join in on following army ant columns. As we watched, we also saw Wedge-billed Woodcreepers, Northern Barred-Woodcreepers, and Fawn-throated Foliage Gleaners. As a bonus, the rain had let up by now, letting us fully enjoy what might be for me a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. In fact, we spent at least half an hour with these remarkable birds, trying to grasp exactly what they were doing and just appreciating that things like this could still happen in the world. Finally, as the trail’s foot traffic increased, we moved on.

**Woodcreepers can be intimidating birds to identify, so I relished spending time with several species at the ant swarm, including this Northern Barred-Woodcreeper.**

We, of course, saw many more species on this outing—including Braden’s fourth lifer of the day, a White-throated Shrike-Tanager—but it was the antbirds that would stay with us as we headed to our next, equally spectacular destination, Caño Negro wetlands.

Our Sky Adventures checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S303092147

Birding Costa Rica—Beginning at the Airport

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Some of our most popular posts have focused on exotic travel destinations, and today we kick off our latest series on one of North American birders’ most popular choices: Costa Rica. Braden and I just returned from an exhilarating, intense, nine-day birding adventure to the land of Pura Vida, and over the next couple of months I’ll be posting blogs on our most memorable birding experiences interspersed with our usual entertaining “paella” of reviews, domestic birding, and other fascinating topics. Again, we do not receive compensation for our blogging efforts, so if you wish to support our work, please purchase a few new copies of Birding for Boomers, Warblers & Woodpeckers, First-Time Japan, or any of Sneed’s other books. If you already have copies, why not pick up some for your friends? With that, let’s dive into Costa Rica at—where else—the airport!

Braden and I arrived at Juan Santamaría International Airport at 10 p.m.—just time enough to get to the rental car office before it closed. After collecting our vehicle, we drove to a nearby Airbnb so we could get a fresh start in the morning. Having spent a lot of time in Costa Rica the past couple of years, Braden had organized our entire birding itinerary and even picked this first place to stay—not only because it was convenient to the airport, but because it happened to have a terrific, little-known birding spot just down the street.

**Braden and I from the porch of our Airbnb in Alejuela—practically under the flight path for San Jose’s international airport, and loaded with birds!**

Braden and I are big fans of birding near airports, and have often found hidden avian treasures where you’d least expect them. Just last spring, on my final morning in Texas, I had a remarkable birding session in the vacant lot behind my hotel next to the airport in San Antonio, Texas. And during his spring Costa Rica trip last year, Braden had discovered a special little place only two blocks from our Airbnb. This year, as soon as dawn crept over Alejuela (where San Jose’s airport is actually located), he and I grabbed our binoculars and cameras and headed out.

Our destination was a large city park with the even larger name of Caminito Magico de la Tranquilidad. Being unfamiliar with the rather poor-looking neighborhood, I admit that I felt a bit nervous about our safety, but my concerns quickly vanished. At the park, people were jogging, biking, doing exercises, visiting over coffee, and walking around as in any park anywhere. The park covered several hectares, mostly devoted to playing fields, but a lot of trees threaded the fields and lined the park’s perimeter, and Braden led the way in guiding us on a full circuit.

Even at dawn, Caminito Magico de la Tranquilidad park was bustling with people—and birds! Note the giant mall rising in the background—a good place to escape the heat and grab a bite, though a much better little soda (cafe) sits only a block from the park entrance.

I had spent two months in Costa Rica in 1994, but tragically, that was before I took an interest in birds. Since Braden and I started birding a dozen years ago, I had been fortunate to bird in Latin America several times—most recently in Colombia con mi amigo, Roger—but it was fair to say that I was a novice at Costa Rican birds. I had been studying, however, and to my delight Caminito Magico park presented a perfect warm up for the week ahead.

Entering the park, a Squirrel Cuckoo immediately flew across a soccer field in front of us. Braden identified Orange-chinned and Crimson-fronted Parakeets loudly squawking overhead, and I was thrilled to see my first ever Hoffman’s Woodpecker land in a nearby tree.

**My very first Hoffman’s Woodpecker put me in an ebullient mood as we kicked off our first Costa Rican birding session!**

The park was filled with many of the more common birds any visiting birder will quickly get acquainted with. These included five kinds of pigeons and doves, Tropical Kingbirds, Great Kiskadees, Great-tailed Grackles, and Costa Rica’s national bird, Clay-colored Thrushes. Blue-gray Tanagers flew between trees while Blue-and-White Swallows darted for insects overhead.

**Baltimore Orioles are common throughout Costa Rica—and never fail to raise a smile for a visiting Norteamericano birder!**

As we reached the far perimeter, I was delighted to find that a creek skirted about half of the park’s boundary. Trees grew thickly here, and following the pleasant path, the birds got even more interesting. Braden began pointing out Chestnut-capped, Northern Yellow, and Tennessee Warblers while I focused in on a stunning male Baltimore Oriole in a flowering tree. Braden also detected several kinds of wrens: Southern House Wren, Rufous-and-White Wren, Cabanis’s Wren, and the beautiful bruisers of the bunch, Rufous-backed Wrens.

**This would be the only location on our trip where we would see the “giant” Rufous-backed Wren—another reason to bird the San Jose area before heading into Costa Rica’s hinterland.**

This being in the heart of Costa Rica’s largest city, I gotta tell you that I had no expectations for the creek itself, especially because it was strewn with an assortment of trash. The birds apparently didn’t care and almost immediately, Braden pointed out one of the birds I had most wanted to see on the trip—Bare-throated Tiger-Heron! I was thrilled, but hardly had time to appreciate it as we spotted a quail-sized coot-like bird skulking the banks—a Gray-cowled Wood-Rail!

**For me, seeing a Bare-throated Tiger-Heron and Gray-cowled Wood-Rail (above) were stunning surprises in the heart of Costa Rica’s largest city!**

Soon after, Braden pointed out a Northern Waterthrush while I spotted a Green Heron along the opposite bank. This, of course, is one of the magical things about birding the neotropics: how in the midst of all of these amazing new tropical birds, we find many species that are totally familiar to us in North America. It begs the definition of just what a neotropical bird is since in reality, many species we Norteamericanos consider “our birds” are just visiting us for a short time, and can more rightly be considered tropical species. Maybe that’s how this park got the name “Magico”?

**Seeing “North American” warblers such as this Northern Waterthrush in the tropics makes you rethink what we consider “our” birds.**

Our delightful discoveries were far from over. At the far corner of the park, we met an amateur naturalist who visited this spot almost daily to monitor wildlife, and he generously shared that only minutes before, he had seen one of the San Jose Valley’s most intriguing endemics. We hurried down the trail and only fifty meters later saw them: Cabanis’s Ground-Sparrows.

Cabanis’s Ground-Sparrows are related to White-faced Ground-Sparrows, but live only in the San Jose area—an intriguing case of endemism that would make a great PhD research topic!

These are birds that Braden especially wanted to show me—but didn’t think he could. These handsome little guys live only in central Costa Rica, specifically in the valley occupied by San Jose. While not rare, they often tend to be pretty shy, making them challenging to see. They prefer scrubby, disturbed places like forest edges, coffee plantations, and apparently, city parks with lots of places to hide. Braden and I both began clicking off photos, but mostly we enjoyed watching them, one of dozens of unexpected surprises we would encounter over the next nine days.

As we were winding down our visit with the Cabanis’s Ground-Sparrows, I saw a larger bird swoop past us and land on a nearby branch. “Braden,” I hissed. “Look!” It was a final gift from this amazing city park: a Lesson’s Motmot! Not only that, it struck an incredible, leisurely pose. Motmots, of course, are some of Latin America’s most distinctive tropical birds and always high on a visitor’s to-see list. I was no exception, and felt enormously grateful to see one in our very first hour or two of Costa Rica birding.

**Seeing a Lesson’s Motmot in our first birding session left no doubt that we were birding somewhere far different from Montana!**

We finished our list with 47 species—almost as many birds as I’d seen in Montana in the first seven weeks of 2026! It was an awesome kick-start to our expedition, and we celebrated by grabbing our first Tico breakfast of rice, beans, eggs, and fruit at a little family diner only a few meters from the park entrance. We couldn’t predict how many highs and lows the next nine days would hold for us, but we were grateful and happy for such a promising start!

Caminito Magico de la Tranquilidad checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S302412338

Keep Costa Rica rolling with our next post on antbirds! https://fathersonbirding.com/arenal-for-antbirds-birding-costa-rica-part-2/