Tag Archives: Roger Kohn

Birding Costa Rica—Beginning at the Airport

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

**Braden has a passionate fondness for Costa Rican food, and after our first birding session we wasted no time in getting him a traditional Tico breakfast just a block from the park entrance!**

Birding 2025: It’s a Wrap

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As always, we encourage you to share and link to this post. We absolutely do not give permission to use it to train AI models or for other purposes without permission. Happy New Year, Everyone!

As 2025 rapidly winds up, Braden and I want to thank you for your continuing interest in FatherSonBirding and all that you do for birds. We can’t believe that it’s been almost EIGHT YEARS since we published our very first post, A Quest for Snowy Owls! We certainly wouldn’t have kept at it without your interest and support.

We’re thrilled to report that 2025 has been FSB’s biggest year yet. We published a record 49 posts this year, including our 250^th post, “Binoculars and Scopes for the Happy Holiday Birder”. Speaking of that, we also launched FSB equipment reviews—articles we do NOT get paid for, but which have attracted a ton of viewer interest.

FSB received a record 20,000 views in 2025, greatly helped by our equipment and travel reviews!

And speaking of viewers, our site attracted 20,000 views this year, shattering last year’s record of 14,000—with the caveat that about a thousand of those views were likely from AI bots stealing our content without permission (Grrrr…). Still, the vast majority of those extra visitors were legitimate—and from an astounding variety of places. More than 15,000 viewers from 104 countries visited our site this year! Huge gracias, arigatos, mercis, and many more thank yous to our international visitors!

By now, we can hear you pleading, “But please, Sneed and Braden, tell us your Top 5 most popular posts!” Astoundingly, four of our five top posts were equipment review posts:

1) Vortex Triumph 10X42 Binoculars: Entry Level Excellence with 1,425 views. (View post here!)

2) Nikon Monarch HG Binoculars: FSB’s First Equipment Review with 950 views (View post here!)

3) Vortex Razor HD 13-39X56 spotting scope with Mountain Pass tripod: A Perfect Travel Combo? With 580 views (View post here!)

4) Birding Barcelona, Part 1: The Urban Core with 510 views (View post here!)

5) Vortex Viper HD Binoculars (Equipment Review, and/or Texas 2025 Part 2-½) with 480 views (View post here!)

Our 2024 blog about birding downtown Barcelona snuck into the Top 5 for 2025—with several of our Japan and Costa Rica posts close behind!

The numbers reveal some clear trends: with rare exceptions, our most popular posts have been our equipment reviews and reports from travel destinations. Our posts from Japan, Spain, Colombia, Mexico, and Costa Rica have been especially popular—as have posts about very birdy domestic locales such as Texas and San Diego. Our book reviews also have done well, but a decline in America’s literacy rate is clearly evident, as our statistics reveal that many more viewers are interested in buying gear than in reading books.

On a personal level, Braden and I are grateful for the many wonderful birding experiences we got to share, both together and separately. Braden was fortunate to visit both Mexico and Costa Rica in 2025 as well as take an epic cross-continent trip from Maine to Montana following his graduation from the University of Maine. He also birded the heck out of Arizona while on his way to his current job in California, where he’s racking up all kinds of new birding experiences.

As for Sneed, I kicked off the year with a trip to Victoria, Canada, thanks to my wife, Amy—and, honestly, the year never seemed to slow down. As soon as we returned, my buddy Roger Kohn invited me on an epic last-minute trip to Colombia. There followed journeys to Texas, Maine, eastern Montana, California (twice!), and most recently, Georgia and Oregon. Most of the latter were not planned as birding trips, but you won’t be surprised to learn that we saw a ton ‘o birds along the way.

Thanks in great part to trips to California with my friend Scott and . . .

You also won’t be surprised to learn that, quite unintentionally, Braden and I shattered most of our own birding records. Braden finished out his birding year with a remarkable 867 species while I smashed my own previous record with 551 species!

One of the low points for the year was having to say goodbye to our wonderful “birding dog” Lola. She left us far too soon and we still miss her terribly. (See this post.)

**Besides finding birds, Lola proved adept at finding marine mammals such as this whale. We miss you Lola!**

Moving forward, we hope to continue to publish a wide variety of posts for your reading pleasure, including those about everyday birding experiences that are at the heart of a birder’s joy and wonder. Just a few adventures that we have lined up for 2026 include trips to Costa Rica and Germany, along with visits to birding festivals in Colorado, Arizona, and Montana. Meanwhile, it is our sincerest wish that the next year brings you all good things, including many incredible birding experiences and a brighter outlook for birders, birds, and the planet we all share.

For some ideas about how to help birds this coming year, please visit our last post, Giving Back to Birds—with Great Breaking News! As always, if you would like to help support FatherSonBirding, consider buying new copies of some of Sneed’s books by clicking on the book jackets to the right.

Cock-of-the-Rock Extravaganza—with Video! (Colombia Birding Part 5)

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We wrap up our Colombian birding blogs with a terrific post by Roger Kohn, sharing his recent experiences with one of South America’s most famous birds—the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock. If you’ve been reading recent posts, you know that in addition to being a past guest contributor to FSB, Roger was the evil genius behind getting Sneed to Colombia! Alas, an injury kept Sneed from seeing the cock-of-the-rock this time around, but Roger was able to experience these wondrous birds in full glory. He even took an awesome video of a male Andean COTR that’s almost like being there. Our big thanks go out to Roger, and we know you will enjoy this post. Oh, and be sure to watch the Cock-of-the-Rock video below!

Four a.m. My cell phone alarm chirped and the screen lit up and pierced the early morning blackness, rousting me from a sound sleep. If you want to see one of the iconic birds of the Andes, you’d better be dragging yourself out of bed well before dawn!

**Our guide Luis with Roger before they went slippin’ and a slidin’ down to see one of South America’s most iconic birds.**

Today was one of the most anticipated days of my Colombia birding expedition. Sneed and I would visit “Alto Anchicayá – El Descanso,” commonly referred to as Doña Dora’s place. The owner, Doña Dora, began her business by selling empanadas and coffee to workers on their way to and from a nearby hydro-electric facility. The small restaurant quickly became popular with birders because its location, perched in the cloud forest at about 4,000 feet above sea level in Colombia’s Western Andes, attracts a huge variety of bird species to its feeders and offers some of the best birding in South America. As if that weren’t enough, birders have the opportunity to see the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, a bizarre-looking bird that inhabits narrow ribbons of cloud forest slicing through the Andes of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.

**A male Andean Cock-of-the-Rock in its full, bizarro glory!**

After Sneed and I downed a quick cup of coffee and a muffin, our guide Luis picked us up at the Araucana Lodge (see “Video Post: A Visit to Araucana Lodge”) at 4:30 a.m. Light rain fell as we drove west for about 50 minutes. Our destination? An Andean Cock-of-the-Rock lek located in steep terrain below Doña Dora’s place.

Leks are assembly areas where males of some bird species, including Greater Sage-Grouse and Greater Prairie-Chickens in North America, perform courtship displays to attract prospective mates. At this time of year, we were pretty much guaranteed of seeing the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock between approximately 6 and 7 a.m.; the only question was whether we would see both sexes or only males.

Arriving at Doña Dora’s, the last raindrops fell as we gathered our walking sticks and prepared for the hike down to the lek. I was a little nervous, having heard that the trail is rough and steep. The recent rain added an additional layer of concern. Turning on our headlamps, Luis, David—a visiting birder from Spain—and I departed in the darkness. Sneed, nursing a sore leg and having already seen the Andean Cock-of-the-rock in Peru, opted to skip the hike and instead get an early start birding at Doña Dora’s.

**Tawny-breasted Flycatcher, one of five flycatchers Roger saw on his ACOR trek.**

Fortunately, the trail wasn’t as treacherous as I feared. The ground was damp, but the soil and leaves seemed to have absorbed most of the rainfall, so the trail didn’t have much mud and standing water. Steps built into the trail, along with a rubber handrail, made the descent very do-able. Pausing at the moth trap, a great birding area we would visit on the way back up, we turned off our headlamps as the first light of the day penetrated the cloud forest, and made our final push. About 25 minutes after we had departed, we arrived at the lek, an area with lots of open space for the birds to strut their stuff, and a small shelter with benches for birdwatchers.

**Buff-rumped Warbler, a New World warbler species that does NOT migrate to the US—or anywhere else for that matter.**

Immediately we saw two male Andean Cock-of-the-rocks, then three, and eventually five. These were the strangest-looking birds I’ve ever seen — veritable avian aliens. Bright red on the head and chest, black wings, silver tertiary feathers in the back, large pale staring eyes, a helmet-like round crest on the head with their bills only barely visible at certain angles, and bright orange legs. They perched on branches, and periodically pranced with herky-jerky movements to attract the attention of females. Their periodic calls, which eBird describes as “piglike squeals,” were odd guttural shrieks, comical to the human ear.

Ever wonder what male Andean Cock-of-the-Rocks do at their leks besides drink beer and boast about past conquests? This highly-classified video gives you a behind-the-scenes look! (Copyright Roger Kohn)

We did not see any females, which are brownish and look more like a conventional bird species, but we assumed they lurked nearby. Despite the absence of the females, I felt privileged to witness this display and add this remarkable Andean cloud forest dweller to my Life List. It was a sublime encounter that I will always treasure.

**Andean Cock-of-the-Rock female (photo taken at Machu Picchu, Peru, copyright Sneed B. Collard III)**

A huffy puffy ascent awaited us—but also a treat about a third of the way back to the top: the moth trap. The trap is a large white canvas sheet suspended vertically, and is a birder’s delight. Moths and other insects land on it, providing a feasting opportunity for resident cloud forest birds, which converge and gorge on bugs they pick off of the canvas. Pausing here, we racked up 15 species in 20 minutes of very fun birding. They included four species you can find in the United States: Summer Tanager, Canada Warbler, Acadian Flycatcher, and Blackburnian Warbler. The rest were species I’ve never encountered before. We saw five flycatcher species, including great looks at a handsome Tawny-breasted Flycatcher. Four warbler species graced us with their presence, including a very cooperative Buff-rumped Warbler. A Yellow-throated Chlorospingus, a yellowish “tanager-like sparrow” (eBird), dined on a big fat moth.

**A Yellow-throated Chlorospingus, a member of a bird group Sneed & Roger had never heard of before the trip.**

The superstar of the show was a Squirrel Cuckoo, a large dull orange bird with a yellow bill and a long black and white tail. It flew in and perched on a branch out in the open right in front of us, giving us fantastic looks and unbeatable photo opportunities. It would be my only sighting of that species during my 16-day Colombian adventure.

**Is this a good-looking bird or what? Squirrel Cuckoos are quite common throughout Latin America, with a range extending from Argentina all the way up into Mexico.**

Elated, we climbed up the remainder of the trail, arriving back at Doña Dora’s place, where a pile of scrambled eggs and a full morning of world-class birding awaited us. If you ever have the chance to take a birding trip to the birdiest country on earth, do not miss the opportunity to visit this cloud forest gem.

https://ebird.org/checklist/S215430499

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out our previous Colombian birding blogs:

Video Post: A Visit to Araucana Lodge (Colombia Birding Part 4)

Antpittas and Tody-Flycatchers (Colombia Birding Part 3)

Owl’s Watch Ecolodge (Colombia Birding Part 2)

Layover Birding in Bogota, Colombia

Video Post: A Visit to Araucana Lodge (Colombia Birding Part 4)

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Roger and I could easily write another ten or twelve posts about our recent birding adventures to Colombia, but I thought it would be fun to pack a lot of our experiences into a video featuring our main destination down there, the Araucana Lodge. The video not only introduces you to the joys of lodge birding, but features some of the famous birds and birding opportunities to be had in the mountains above Cali. Since large files don’t always work well on this blog host, we embed a YouTube link below. Let us know what you think—and enjoy the show!

Click Here to see the first of our Colombian birding post!

Antpittas and Tody-Flycatchers (Colombia Birding Part 3)

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Note: This blog post—and all others on FatherSonBirding—are written by REAL PEOPLE! No compensation or gratuities were provided to us in connection with this post. If you’d like to support FSB, please consider buying one—or ten—of Sneed’s books and contributing to a bird conservation organization of your choice. Thank you!

Our second morning at Owl’s Watch ecolodge, Roger and I felt particularly excited. Although we’d had a great day birding on our own the day before (see post Owl’s Watch Ecolodge Colombia Birding Part 2), this would be the first time we went out with an expert guide. We met Owl’s Watch owner, Dennis Bailey, at 6:00 a.m. at the Social, the lodge’s main meeting building, and he served us coffee and a snack. Then, we climbed into his pickup and he drove us up to the Enchanted Forest. This was an area of cloud forest at the top of his property, where he and his team had developed a nice trail system complete with hidden gnomes associated with an information guide about the ecosystem. This is also where we met Daniel Muñoz Buitrago, our Colombian guide for the day.

**Our guide Daniel (right) posing with one of the educational gnomes set up along the trail.**

Both Roger and I liked Daniel immediately, and he began our tour by walking us along the road above the forest. “This is often where mixed flocks of tanagers can be found,” he explained, and sure enough, it wasn’t long before he started calling out names: Blue-capped Tanager, Saffron-crowned Tanager, Beryl-spangled Tanager, and one I especially hoped to see—Grass Green Tanager. This bird sports a stunning green color with a vividly contrasting red mask across its face.

**One of my favorite tanagers of the trip, a Grass Green Tanager, backlit in the top of a tree.**

Along with the tanagers, Daniel called out names of warblers, wrens, woodcreepers, and other birds. We glimpsed some of these, but I must pause here to say a word about what it’s like to bird in tropical forests. Many people see fabulous photos of tropical birds and naturally assume that these birds will be dripping from every branch. Unfortunately, tropical forest birding can often be very challenging. Many birds never show themselves at all and are “heard only” species, identifiable only by their songs and calls—and yes, Merlin’s Sound ID still has a long way to go to become accurate in places like Colombia. Many other birds can be seen—but mainly high in the tree tops against gray, backlit conditions. This makes it tough to get good views through binoculars, and darned well impossible to capture good photos. Daniel, though, was about to greatly improve our “photography problem.”

**Brushfinches are difficult to see in any conditions, but we did get lucky with this look at a beautiful Gray-browed Brushfinch along the road.**

Heading into the Enchanted Forest, he took us down to a set of bird of feeders and began hanging bananas and grapes from various wires and branches. In no time, one of the forest’s most spectacular birds showed up—an Andean Motmot! We had glimpsed this bird on the drive in two nights before, but were delighted to have this additional excellent, intimate look.

After we’d filled our share of camera memory space with the motmot, Daniel motioned us to follow him fifty meters down the trail. Even before we arrived, he started calling “Brownie, where are you? Come out, come out!”—or the equivalent in Spanish. As he did so, he set a few worms on a little fallen log about fifteen feet in front of us. Soon, he said, “Get ready. He’s coming!”

Moments later, a brown, football-shaped bird about ten centimeters (4 inches) high hopped up out of nowhere. “There he is!” Daniel cooed.

The “he” in this story was a Brown-banded Antpitta, one of Colombia’s most difficult-to-photograph species—and about as adorable as you can get. Its appearance was no accident, either. Daniel had trained the bird for months to respond to his calls—and the worms. I, for one, was grateful because I never imagined I’d get to see an antpitta in the wild. Not only are they very secretive, they often have very restricted ranges. In fact, the Brown-banded Antpitta is classified as Vulnerable due to habitat loss, and little is known about its biology and behavior.

**“Brownie”, the Brown-banded Antpitta.** **These birds are extremely difficult to observe, but thanks to patient “trainers” like Daniel, lucky visitors like us occasionally get to see them.**

We left Daniel to “clean up” after Brownie and walked back to the feeders. As I was about to step into the clearing, however, I hissed, “Roger, stop!” There, perched on a feeder branch only seven or eight meters away, sat one of the other birds we especially hoped to see—Black-billed Mountain-Toucan! Roger quickly snapped some excellent photos, but I managed only a couple of crummy ones before the bird flew. Still, it was the only BBMT we would see on the trip.

**Snooze, you lose. Due to having my camera on incorrect settings, I managed only a poor shot of this Black-billed Mountain-Toucan before it fled with its fruity booty.**

Back on the road, we made our way through cloudy conditions down to the trail that left from the parking area above the lodge (see previous post). We returned to the hummingbird viewing platform and immediately saw a species that got Daniel excited: an uncommon hummingbird called a White-throated Daggerbill. Of course, there were also eleven other species of hummingbirds as well (always, always, hummingbirds), but unbeknownst to us, we were about to meet one of the coolest birds that we’d ever seen.

After a few minutes watching the hummingbird action, Daniel motioned us to follow him down to another little spot about thirty meters away. Here he again pulled out his worm bag and began calling, “Gordita! Gordita! Come out!” Gordita, of course, means “little fat one” in Spanish, and both Roger and I chuckled. But who exactly was Gordita?

**R2D2? No, meet Gordita—a Chestnut-crowned Antpitta that quickly hopped into our hearts.**

After a few moments, out hopped one of the most remarkable birds I’d ever seen. It was another antpitta—this one, a Chestnut-crowned Antpitta! The bird was about twice the size of Brownie the Brown-banded Antpitta and to me it looked just like a little R2 unit from Star Wars. In an instant, it became one of my favorite birds ever, and I’m pretty sure Roger felt the same way.

Daniel’s surprises weren’t over. Continuing on down the trail, he called in another remarkable bird—a Rufous-Crowned Tody-Flycatcher. At least three or four of these would easily fit into your hand, but again, we never would have seen it without Daniel’s knowledge and expertise.

Which brings up an important point about Colombian birding. While it is possible to bird on your own in Colombia, I highly recommend taking advantage of its growing network of lodges. Although much safer than it used to be, the country does still have its share of problems, ranging from common crime and armed conflict to dangerous road and trail conditions. Taking advantage of the expertise of lodges will help make sure you don’t accidentally wander into a hazardous area. Even better, the lodges we encountered use locally-trained, Colombian guides. Many, like Daniel, speak excellent English, and prices are extremely reasonable. By hiring them, foreign visitors are giving a boost to the local economy—and creating more incentive to protect Colombia’s environment.

After getting our fill of the tody-flycatcher, Daniel led us back down to the Social for a well-deserved (or at least well-received) lunch prepared by the Owl’s Watch cook, David. It had been a splendid day all-around and we so appreciated everything Daniel had shown us. Even better, we were excited to have one more day of birding at Owl’s Watch. That, however, didn’t keep us from eagerly anticipating our next great Colombian lodge destination—which I’ll introduce in the next post!