Rich Hoyer on his just-completed private tour in Costa Rica

One of the participants from the regular Costa Rica in Spring tour requested an extra three days of birding to look for owls and rails, and we had an amazingly productive trip north to the Caño Negro region.

We started with a Uniform Crake, a skulky bird in wet forest understory thickets, which we eventually coaxed out to cross the trail. Then at the Medio Queso wetlands near the Nicaragua border we scored with our primary target, Yellow-breasted Crake. We saw three of them very well, one of them being particularly bold.

Yellow-breasted Crake

White-throated Crake was also seen easily on our short boat ride on the channel through the wetlands.

 
White-throated Crake

The only Least Bittern we saw flew in over our heads and landed fully exposed in a clump of giant reed, and it was hard to tear ourselves away.

 
Least Bittern

We then spent an afternoon and full morning at Caño Negro, and on the boat ride there we connected with a single Sungrebe, actually now known to be very closely related to rails.

 
Sungrebe

We also improved our views of Gray-necked Wood-Rail, even though we had seen it on the main tour.

 
Gray-necked Wood-Rail

Somehow the main tour missed out on all potoos, but we had two on our extension. On our second night of owling we watched a Great Potoo making foraging sallies from a very close post, and this Common Potoo was brooding a very young chick just a short walk from our hotel.

 
Common Potoo

We had done extremely well with owls on the main tour, so our principle target here was just Striped Owl, which we finally found after hearing several Pacific Screech and Mottled Owls and seeing a Black-and-white Owl.

Striped Owl

It was a fabulous finale to some excellent birding.