Our guide, Scott, told us that when monkeys are near, all birding comes to a standstill.

This is even more true when these monkeys happen to be capuchins.

We were taking a morning walk through the coastal, lowland rainforest of Parque Nacional Carara. We had great views of a royal flycatcher, seen two circling short-tailed hawks through the trees, and stood on the trail under a mixed feeding flock as they passed over us.

We took a side trail in search of other mixed feeding flocks and were soon alerted to a loud crashing of leaves and branches that signaled that a large animal or animals were very near. Which-necked capuchin monkeys!

It was impossible to ignore these energetic primates that made the howler monkeys that we had seen at La Selva look like lethargic sloths by comparison. The troop of 10 to 15 monkeys moved up, down, and around the canopy as we earthbound mammals craned our necks to follow their frenetic progress.

It is no wonder why primates and these new world monkeys, fascinate us. When you look into the face of a capuchin, it’s like looking into the face of a long, lost cousin. Albeit one with a long, prehensile tail.

These monkeys also share another trait with Homo sapiens: they also use tools. In Manual Antonio National Park (just down the coast from Carara) a capuchin was observed beating a fer-de-lance (a viper responsible for many human death each year) to death with a stick. Well done!

Capuchins in the canopy of Carara National Park, on the Pacific slope of Costa Rica.

The Hotel Robledal is about 20 minutes from the airport, along the narrow back streets of San Jose. Open fronted markets, barber shops, and houses blurred past as the hotel shuttle made it’s way in streets full of motorbikes, people, and dogs.

I had arrived in Costa Rica a day early before my birding tour started and I hoped the birding was good from the hotel grounds. I had already seen blue and white swallows circling above the roads.

Within minutes of arrival at the Robledal, I was birding the grounds, turning up a few old Texas friends, the great kiskadee, long-tailed grackle, and the National Bird of Costa Rica,  clay-colored thrush. To these I added social and boat-billed flycatcher. I scanned the skies hoping to see a raptor, perhaps a laughing falcon but they only yielded black vultures.

A poolside clay-colored thrush, National Bird of CR, at the Hotel Robledal.

These familiar birds where joined by others that remained unidentified. Two of which were hummingbirds that did not sit still long enough to observe details. I was able to id a Hoffman’s woodpecker that was working it’s way up a trunk and the stunning rufous-naped wrens were practically a yard bird here. Our guide dubbed these birds “rapper wrens” for their songs. A white-winged dove was sitting on a nest and some Inca doves were in the process of building theirs. Beyond the back fence, a  melodious blackbird was tending eggs on a stick nest while a nearby snag was always bearing the fruits of tropical birds. None was as stunning as the two parrots that visited in the late afternoons and early mornings.

A pair of yellow-naped Amazons in the snag in the back garden of Hotel Robledal.

During diner I sat down with some of the family that owned the Robledal to watch the Costa Rica National Team play French Guiana in the Gold Cup. Fútbol or soccer as we call it, is the national obsession in CR, where every town of any size has a fútbol pitch. In the second half Marco Ureña was subbed on and one of brothers turned to me and said, “You see that player? He lives down the street from me.”

Costa Rica is a small country, full of birds and fútbol!

I meet my guide at the point where Madera Canyon Road turns sharply to the left towards Green Valley and the dirt road begins to the right. We loaded a cooler filled with water and snacks into my rental black Volkswagen Jetta. (How could they give me a black car in the middle of an Arizona summer?!)

The car was surprisingly low to the ground in a part of the country that is crisscrossed with dirt roads in various states of maintenance. On a previous trip I had driven over the Chiricahua Mountains, and being from California, I wondered when the paved road was going to start. It never did.

Our destination this morning was Florida Canyon (pronounced Flor-ee-da) and our target bird was ( as David Allen Sibley puts it, a “very rare visitor from Mexico to southern Arizona”), the rufous-capped warbler (Basileuterus rufifrons). This long-tailed small warbler with a stunning facial pattern is not just a visitor to Arizona but a breeder. In Florida Canyon there could possibly be seven pairs on territory.

We started up the trail and it didn’t take long for my guide to pause and listen. He had heard something off to the right, a bird foraging in the trees. He called in a little gray long-tailed puff of a bird. it was another “rare visitor from Mexico”, the black-capped gnatcatcher (Poliotila nigriceps). A great lifer and another tick off my target bird list! This gnatcatcher was now breeding in a few locations in Arizona, including Florida Canyon.

On our way up the dry creek bed, my guide pointed out a tarantula hawk. He noted that the wasp was not aggressive to humans but it’s sting was second only to the bullet ant of Central America according to the Schmidt sting pain index. Both bullet ants and tarantula hawks received a score of 4 which represents the most painful sting on the pain index (a honey bee is rated at 2). So we gave the wasp a wide berth.

We headed further up the canyon on a trail that was blazed by birders in their pursuit of the highly sought after rufous-capped warbler. We stopped, looked and listened. No dice. We headed further in and did the same, still no dice. We continued up canyon and as my guide was pointing out a larger boulder, I spotted the warbler than appeared a few feet above his head. It’s facial pattern was unmistakable. Rufous-capped warbler! Lifer!