Pasture and farmland

We wanted to do another walk in the Rancho area so had arranged with Harry to try the Silent Mountain ascent.  Our book suggested it was hard going so we saved it until the latter part of our holiday on the basis we'd be fitter than when we arrived in Costa Rica.

On the way we passed a pair of Blue-crowned Motmots:

We stopped at one particularly busy spot, seeing Variable Seed-eater:

Speckled Tanager:

Paltry Flycatcher:

Sociable Flycatcher:

We then headed up to the base of the hill, parked and started our ascent.  The ground to start was pretty good, and the birding was productive too.  Here for example a Buff-rumped Warbler:

Grey-crowned Yellowthroat:

Groove-billed Ani:

Black Phoebe:

And a view down the pasture based on what we'd done thus far.

The next section however was much tougher.  We had to climb through very steep cow pasture.  This is basically rutted ground filled with deep holes, stones, soft and hard ground, ground rivers, etc.  Neither Helen nor I had bought heavy boots for the trip and it wasn't long before we were struggling.

In the end it proved too tricky so we turned around.  Harry, improvising, decided to take us down to some farmland to grab some different species, which we did.  

Tropical Pewee:

Roadside Hawk:

Eastern Meadowlark:

Southern Lapwing:

Olive-crowned Euphonia:

Tropical Kingbird:

A lot of the volcanoes in Costa Rica seem to be steaming:

We finished off by a lake though the birds were very remote as people were zooming around on jet skis.

We made it back for lunch and spent the afternoon enjoying the birds in the garden and on the feeders.