Costa Rica Day 3

Day 3 was another wonderful adventure, even though much of the day was spent on the bus traveling from La Fortuna to Sarapigui.

The bird for Day 3 is the Cherrie’s Tanager and the Passerini’s Tanager. I’ve grouped these two together because they were formerly conspecific, known as the Scarlet-rumped Tanager, but have since been distinguished as two different species. The males of the two are identical but the females differ a little in their color. The female Cherrie’s Tanager has an orange breast and rump, whereas the female Passerini’s Tanager has more of a yellowish body. The other difference is there geographic location. Cherrie’s Tanager lives on the western side of the country, along the Pacific, and the Passerini’s Tanager lives in the east. Since they remain at lower elevations, the mountain range that runs through the center of the country keeps these two species separated. 

 

Another one of those fabulous Costa Rican bird feeder, just plain old fruit stuck on a nail.

Here is a male and female Passerini's Tanager. It amazes me how different they look from one another yet they are the same species.

Neat looking blue bill.

One of the stops along our trip to Sarapiqui was a crazy road side clump of trees that was inhabited by iguana. Invested by them might be more like it… there were dozens of huge iguanas laying on the branches of these trees.

After getting off the bus to stretch our legs and gawk at the iguanas, we went on a tour of a local coffee farm.

 

The farm also ran a restaurant on their property and raised fish as the main course

… not much fresher than this!

One of things I loved about all of the restaurants we visited was the open air dinning. No screens on the windows either… and no bugs! February must be the right time to visit Costa Rica because there were truly no flying insects buzzing around our food and none of the places we visited had screens on the windows.

After a wonderful day we arrived at out next hotel and was given a little free time to enjoy the amenities or just relax in our own person hammock on our own personal patio.