Well, Jean delivered Río at 6:57 PM Nov. 19, and I’m a grampa now for the first time. Pretty cool experience. We spent the next week at the Finca Cometa farm where Río was born, and came back to Jean and Alan’s primary home near Tinamaste, Costa Rica where I stayed a few more days. We all agreed that it would be great for Jean and Alan to have time with Río without grampa, and for me to take a break and go for an adventure. I wanted a place I could drive to, a place with some remotemess and an adventure element, and I chose to go to the Luna Lodge, near the entrance to PN Corcovada on the Oso Peninsula. It is an area I’ve never visited, in the only large low elevation tropical Pacific rain forest left in CR. I left Jean’s on the morning of Nov 29, and drove on a pretty rainy day about 4 hours to Puerto Jiminez. It is a small town where the lodge arranged a driver into the lodge. I opted (wisely IMO) not to try driving in as she they described the road as awful due to recent flooding, and I quickly agreed after at the start of the 2-hour dirt road drive we crossed a significant river (washed out bridge that has been out for 3 years) and subsequently crossed at least 8 more pretty fast and deep rivers in the Toyota Hilux 4WD pickup that was my transport. The drive in was pretty birdy, and the once the driver learned I was a birder was very patient with several stops for birds, including a stakeout of his, a lifer Tropical Screech Owl by the road.

The lodge is quite nice, though in the rain forest it is really wet at this time of year. There were few guests, one business retreat group from Budapest, one couple from Atlanta, and me at first, and just myself and one of the stayover guests from the Budapest group and me at dinner with the owner and the massage therapist. The story of the lodge is remarkable. See her book Married to Paradise.
I stayed there for 3 nights, and due to low census they upgraded me from the Hacienda rooms to a bungalow. The bungalow is a stand alone place with a two queen beds, a small porch with 2 rocking chairs, and a bath and open air shower in the back. Overall quite nice, but everything always wet from dew/humnidity. Food was excellent, service great.
I took 2-hour guided morning and afternoon birding walks on the first full day, and a 6 your 6-noon “safari” birding trip on day 2, when the guide recommended that vs. a hike to the PN Corcovado which was all in forest and on the beach with a low number and diversity of birds likely.
The second day the rain finally cleared, and we had a great morning. We started going to an estuary, where a pretty cool drive down a river bed to the mouth of the river brought us to a large sandy lagoon with a good number of waders. Almost immediately on scanning the mouth of the estuary I spotted a very distant wader that was acting like a Reddish Egret, stomping in circles and stopping to feed in the disturbed water. I called this to Mauro’s attention and he doubted me as he had never seen a Reddish Egret, and it was really too far to see field marks even with his scope. We looked everything else over, and I studied the bird, and was convinced it was a dark or red morph of a Reddish Egret. Mauro was agrieved at not cementing the ID, so I suggested we take off our shoes, pull up our pant legs, wade across the river, and walk out to see. I think he was a bit taken aback that this old man was up for this, but quickly agreed when I insisted. We walked across and out, water to just above our knees, and sure enough, even back-lit it was a for-sure Reddish Egret. Lifer for Mauro, and fun to get my guide a lifer.
We spent the rest of the morning going a few miles out the road, stopping frequently to try for hoped for lifers for me, Black-cheeked Ant-tanager, White-throated Shrike Tanager, and had no luck. Out luck improved on the drive back towards the resort when Mauro spotted a grayish raptor in a tree, and excitedly called out “Gray-headed Kite”, a bird I had asked about earlier, and he said he hoped so to but had never seen one, essentially his nemesis bird. It was very cooperative, letting us get out of the truck and walk quite close for photos.

We had a few other cool birds that allowed photos. (I just had my small super-zoom as I didn’t bring my long lens camera on this trip focusing on grandbabies not birds, and was bringing a LOT of baby stuff.

I left about 8 AM to be driven to Puerta Jiminez today, and on the way out road repairs led to a 20 minute delay. While stopped a troop of possibly 100 Squirril Monkeys casually and playfully cruised past us mostly using a cattle fence wire as a tightrope. See my Instagram post to see this video as I can’t easily add it here.
The ride home was uneventful, Jean, Alan and baby Río are all well, and I go to pick up Marian in San Jose on Wednesday. Here is a link
Good birding! A great day today!