Day One
Long travel day - about 9 hours, but got in with a little time to do some birding. We are staying at a home in a neighborhood of Atenas. The house has a front patio and a deck out back with a small yard. I did a lot of birding from these two vantage points. One of my first new birds in Costa Rica was the gray headed chachalaca, a very large chicken like bird with a long neck and tail. It landed on the wall in the backyard.
I also had many sightings of the tropical kingbird. This is not a new bird for me because I have seen it in Maryland (rare bird in MD). In the evening the blue-and-white swallows were feeding, flying over the homes. Other new birds for me that evening was the clay-colored thrush and the white-winged dove.
