February 21 – Mangrove tour on the Sierpe River

Another early day and another adventure…a boat ride through the largest mangroves area in Costa Rica.  There are two couples from France and US with us today.  We had a half hour boat ride back to the Sierpe River that we cruised through two days ago.  Our guide is Abraham and he and the captain both proved to have very good eyesight.

We traveled through the mangroves channels... 

as well as along the river. 

Both provided us with many sightings.  Many of the same birds were spotted several times along the banks.  We saw a huge number of birds as well as other interesting things. 

Blue Heron

White Ibis

Let me make one thing very clear.  If you go to Costa Rica (or other similar places) to see the wildlife you MUST be sure to take your tours with a guide.  You don't want to save money by walking the trails by yourself.  If you do you will be lucky if you see anything at all.  And these guides can find the invisible.

So, we are cruising down a canal at a fairly reasonable clip and suddenly the captain stops the boat, steers it to one side and points into the mass of trees.  The entire bank is lined with trees as far as the eye could see. 

He had spotted a sloth.  Awesome.  We wanted to see a sloth.  Where?  Which tree?  Ok, we think we know which tree...now where in the tree?  "See that fork in the branches?" There are dozens of forks in the branches.  "The fork with the dark area."  They all seem to have dark areas...they are called shadows!!

After lots of pointing and coaxing and explaining we finally found the correct dark spot.  

This photo was taken with my big telescopic and cropped in to practically postage stamp size so that the image is even more magnified.  

Three-toed Sloth with a baby.  None of us had any idea how he managed t see it.  Even after the location was pointed out to us most of us just saw a dark blob up in the trees.  With the telescopic capabilities on our cameras we were able to make out a bit of the details but still….

Whimbrel

Spotted Sandpiper

Hermit Crabs

Roble de Sabana – a beautiful flowering tree with large, pink blossoms

Green Heron, Juvenile

Black Vultures.  We saw them many times.

Yellow Head Caracara.  This is the third day in a row that we have seen this bird.

Yellow Throated Toucan

Yellow Crowned Night Heron

Bare Throated Tiger Heron

Great Blue Heron

Grey-Necked Wood Rail

Snowy Egret

Tropical Kingfish

Boat Billed Heron (another one that was hard to see in the shadows)

Jesus Christ Lizard (called this because it can run across water)

More sightings of invisible animals.  This mom (back, grey) and chick (front and more white) were sitting on top of a very tall dead tree a good distance from the boat.  And the guide spotted them.  Amazing.  

This bird, the Common Potoo, is a master of camouflage.  Their coloration looks just like dead trees and they sit perfectly still on the top of the trees.  They look just like the tree itself.

White Faced Capuchin Monkeys (a modest size family)

Mangrove Swallow

Some type of boa snake.  Never could find his head.

Great Egret

Northern Jacanas with a juvenile

Long-Nosed Bats (both lines up on a tree trunk and also on the underside of a bridge)

Scarlet Macaw

Purple Gallinule with a chick

Great Tailed Grackle

Spider Monkeys, again, a nice family of them

Brown Pelican

Crab Eating Raccoon (looked a lot thinner than those in the US)

We had lunch at the Las Vegas restaurant and bar in Sierpe and then the rest of the group picked up their car and headed out to the next stop on their trip.  We got back in the boat with a number of other people.  The boats do double duty as tourist boats and taxis.  We were back in the hotel around 1:00.

We headed over to the bar for some cold sodas at the bar.  Love the views from the bar.

Then it was back to the room where Mary worked on photos and the blog and Paul read and did other stuff.

After dinner we hauled out our swim and snorkel gear as we are going snorkeling tomorrow.