White-eyed Vireo and 100 more

Our area is again host to a White-eyed Vireo (Vireo griseus), quite possibly the same individual that stayed faithful to my garden for months last year. Visitors to nearby San Rafael, James and Laetitia Hart, discovered and photographed the bird just a few days ago at a Santa Cruz location barely 2 km from my house in San Antonio.

Not easy, but James did manage to take some convincing photos of the White-eyed Vireo at San Rafael de Santa Cruz de Turrialba

So far, it has not been easy to reliably find the bird, since it accompanies a passing mixed flock that seems not to have a very fixed schedule! Two other migrant vireo species, the Philadelphia and the Yellow-throated, are also typically present, but the White-eyed has been recorded in Costa Rica on only a very few occasions. By way of comparison, here’s a Yellow-throated Vireo (Vireo flavifrons), a fairly common migrant in Costa Rica:

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Yellow-throated Vireo, courtesy of Sergio Venegas and the Asociación Ornitológica de Costa Rica

The San Rafael area is very beautiful, overlooking as it does a wide drainage below the Turrialba Volcano that empties into the Río Reventazón on its way to the Caribbean. My first (unsuccessful) attempts at locating the vireo rarity involved some very pleasant birding among pastures and small forest remnants just below the private Espino Blanco Reserve. The following list of 100 bird species that I have identified recently in San Rafael is typical of what you can expect to find: