RTPIOC Meeting – Wood Thrush
Roger Tory Peterson Institute Ornithological Club – November 18, 2015 Birds on break, and other tropical discoveries… The weather is changing and many of our backyard birds have left, like this Wood Thrush. We all know that they ‘fly south’ and come back next spring, but have you ever wondered what they’re up to in the mean time? Join RTPI President Twan Leenders as he takes you on a journey to some of RTPI’s projects in Central America that focus on ‘our’ migratory birds and their wintering habitats. A few weeks ago, Twan was in Costa Rica to continue his research on critically endangered...
Read MoreKentucky Warbler Recapture and Cabo Blanco Birds
The first session of our fourth year at Cabo Blanco is in the books. Cabo Blanco is Costa Rica’s first national preserve, established over fifty years ago. The preserve is mostly one generation of forest that has re-grown over a 60-year period. It was once all primary forest, but was cut down for farmland. We start the morning walking up a winding trail to our banding station tucked away near a few fallen trees. Along trails we’ve secretly cut are twenty well-placed mist nests to catch a wide variety of avifauna that uses the preserves habitat. Once we reach the base camp every morning we...
Read MoreWood Thrush territory
On Thursday, December 12, during the first banding session at Cabo Blanco Nature Reserve we caught a Wood Thrush, one of our Neotropical migrants. What’s special about catching this species is it’s supposed to be a Caribbean slope migrant and at Cabo Blanco we’re on the Pacific slope. The other intriguing thing is that it’s only supposed to be a passage migrant, meaning that by early November it’s supposed to have left Costa Rica. This is the third year in a row we have witnessed this. It draws attention to the fact that we are still very unaware of where...
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