La Selva and the area around

I discovered very quickly that Green Honeycreepers are excellent at posing for photos. This female gave great views and posed quite nicely.   It was a start to an awesome day. 

Male Green Honeycreepers, as I found out, aren't all that inclined to pose. They prefer finding Bananas to eat........

They sure do light up though. Like an iridescent fluorescent light bulb. 

After breakfast, we hopped on the bus to La Selva. This time, we stopped only a couple times on the entrance road. Once, long enough to find and photograph this Slaty-tailed Trogon: 

While waiting for our guide, I found out that Blue-black Grosbeaks don't like to pose either. This one stayed for only a second long enough to snap this shot: 

Black-striped Sparrows are open-country birds and we found them only when we left La Selva and headed toward the foothills.  This cooperative individual posed quite nicely: 

The research station did have a few species that we couldn't do without and couldn't find elsewhere.

This Crested Guan was one of a group of 6 Guans that came to the feeders at the station. 

They're pretty awesome birds and nothing like anything else I've ever seen.

Kind of a cross between a Chicken and a Turkey.........

Very cool to see. 

Many species in the rainforest are easy to see. They have bright colors, they're gaudy, they sit out in the open, etc.  But some species can be very difficult to see. Tinamous are a family of birds that has roots that go back to the first bird-like creatures.  They have no other living relatives and are in a family to themselves.  Looking a bit like big chickens almost, they are very seclusive birds and very difficult to find at all, much less see.  Our luck turned out to hold for the good as Dave spotted this bird sitting right beside the path.  I was surprised it came out so sharp since I was using manual focus practically in the dark when I took this: 

The other species we couldn't go without was another Guan-like bird. 

This time, a special bird of the lowland rainforest of Costa Rica, Panama.

Great Currasow is perhaps the most striking of these birds and deserves it's place here at the bottom as the last bird mentioned and a prominent one.

It was definitely a highlight species of the trip as this was our only chance to see one: 

Sorry for the clipped post, but I wanted to get some photos out there. I have a couple more posts about Costa Rica coming soon and hopefully, I'll include more story-telling. 

Til next time, Happy Birding!