On a quick afternoon stroll from home up the road to Santa Cruz to what I call the two bridges area I heard loud alarm calls coming from inside a small patch of trees. The hubbub was from several Gray-headed Chachalacas (Ortalis cinereiceps), a species that is hard to miss in our area.

The noisy Gray-headed Chachalaca; John Beer’s file photo is from nearby Santa Rosa

Almost immediately a medium-sized hawk swooped over my head and into the grove of trees, causing even greater panic among the chachalacas. Luckily, the hawk perched low and on my side of the trees for a moment or two and, as I had suspected from its behaviour and from previous encounters here in San Antonio (see my earlier posts) it was a Bicolored Hawk (Accipiter bicolor), in this case a beautiful adult bird, fierce eye, dark above and grey below. On this occasion I could not see the rufous thighs. These are not visible on Larry Waddell’s photos of an individual at Aquiares, which show otherwise excellent detail:

Bicolored Hawk – back view

Bicolored Hawk – front view

In San Antonio, this is the hawk to expect inside the tree canopy despite its guidebook status as rare. Two species that are almost always at the two-bridges locality on Quebrada La Loca are the White-naped Brush-finch (Atlapetes albinucha) and the Band-backed Wren (Campylorhynchus zonatus); they did not disappoint this day.

Band-backed Wren with nesting material at Siquirres; photo by John Beer

I finish this post with a file photo of today’s hummingbird, a Green-breasted Mango (Anthracothorax prevostii), a species currently easy to find here in San Antonio:

Juvenile Green-breasted Mango at Santa Rosa de Turrialba; photo by John Beer

The full list of sightings (35 species) from my brief jaunt can be found at:

http://ebird.org/ebird/camerica/view/checklist/S38687141