Three-wattled Bellbird

We enjoyed the view from the Hotel de Montaña Monteverde. One of the joys of our dragonfly tour was the varied expertise of our traveling companions. I am not sure who heard the Three-wattled Bellbirds in the distance. We set up scopes and found several far away. Bellbirds are cotingas, a South and Central American bird family. I immediately identified these birds by their white upper-parts and chestnut bottoms. I tried to record the bellbird calls with my cell phone. I guess it is amazing I got anything at all. The second photo is what we saw without the scope, with a greatly enlarged insert in the lower-left corner. Still fairly small. The bellbird is in both images.

I can not tell you which of our days was the best of the tour. The sixth of July is a contender. That morning we met Dennis Paulson’s colleague, Bill Haber. They are writing a guide to Costa Rican dragonflies. Bill took us several miles down the mountain to a research station run by the University of Georgia. We parked in the middle of nowhere and walked about a quarter of a mile down a dirt road. In the next posts, I plan is to describe some of the dragonflies and butterflies we saw. Then I will talk about birds at our hotel. I will end with our amazing quetzal search the next morning.