Nov 13 - Abra Patricia

This morning Paul got up to go owling at 4:00 AM with the group, but I decided to stay in. He said they were hearing lots of sound, but the guide, Juan, was not playing the tapes to match the sounds, so no owl sightings! I met them for breakfast about 6:15 and then we walked the lower trail at Abra Patricia. Once again, it was pretty quiet, but the first bird we got was a great one – the Golden Headed Quetzal! Fabulous looks, but no photos as it took off too quick. The only other highlight bird was the Long Tailed Antbird, gorgeous one. We checked the road for a bit and decided to head back up to the room around 11:00 to catch up on stuff. I’m still trying to dry out all my wet stuff – but our room is in the shade which makes it difficult. I figured I would come down to the lodge to try to connect to the internet using a cable since there is no wireless here, but they said the generator was down. Hopefully it will be back soon.

After lunch it started to rain so we had to wait until about 3:00 to go birding on the back trail, but we did bird from under the overhang of the rooms, primarily watching the hummingbird feeders: Emerald-Bellied Puffleg and Speckled Hummingbird. It is amazing how the birds come out after the rain, but are very quiet when it is sunny. We had quite a few nice birds towards the end of the trail: Emerald Toucannet, Masked Trogan, Band Tailed Fruiteater, Streaked Tuftedcheek, Pearled Treerunner, Metalic Green Tanager along with lots of other tanagers previously seen this trip. We had on and off light showers the whole time, but this didn’t interfere with the birding. We met to start the checklist around 6:45 and also had a nice dinner – spinach soup and chicken with rice and French fries. The food has been very good here. Julio arrived with the repaired van just after dinner.