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We woke up early this morning to the sounds of birds in the trees outside our room. Being good bird watchers, we scrambled outside and were greeted by a cacophony of bird calls. We didn’t recognize any at the time, but we made some mental notes and decided to get a Costa Rica Bird Guide as soon as the resort gift shop opened. Later on, we figured out that we saw Magpie Jays, Groove Billed Anis, White Winged Doves, Orange Chinned Parakeets, Great Tailed Grackles, and a Streaked Back Oriole.

A few weeks ago, I sold my telephoto lenses to buy a new short telephoto lens, and I am missing them. The new lens is great, but I have no range to get a close photo of the birds, so the Magpie Jay above is a cropped image.

We strolled around the grounds and found more birds before working our way down to the beach. At the beach, some of the resort staff showed us our first Howler Monkey. He was just slowly eating his way across a tree limb. I had been warned that they like to pee on you if you get too close. It didn’t happen, but I tried to stay clear of the pee-zone.

While I was taking photographs of him, there was a distant sound like what I remember a howler monkey sounding like. The monkey in front of me stopped eating for a moment while the other monkeys howled. Then he went right back to business.

We made our way to the breakfast buffet and ran into some people from our group who said they were going to take one of the rental cars to Coco Beach (Playa del Coco). We weren’t sure about whether we wanted to do that today, but we agreed to go. We heard from some of the staff that nothing would be open on Sunday, but it was only an 8 minute drive to the beach. In the end we decided that we wouldn’t go today, but maybe a different day when things were open. When everyone got back, they had gotten lost for a while and found the shops were open anyway. Oh well, live and learn.

We picked up a slim book called Photographic Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica. There was a larger book, A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica, that seemed more thorough, but we decided against it because we weren’t sure how much we would need it (we didn’t even bring binoculars on this trip) and we didn’t want to lug around such a large book.

Later on, when we got back to our room, we found three more howler monkeys lounging in the trees. One was a little baby clinging to his mothers back. The photos didn’t come out very well though.

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