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White Hawk (Pseudastur albicollis)
We found the White Hawk one a day as we hiked through the entrance road at Yatama Ecolodge. We went down in search of the Bare-necked Umbrellabird, to no avail. As we were getting close to the lodge, we watched a female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker on a Cecropia tree, which I had seen a few times before. We spend about 10 minutes just watching the bird, and it suddenly went away, so we continued walking to the entrance, when a big white bird flew across the road, and perched on a branch where it started to vocalize. Our theory is that the Sapsucker flew away because she spotted the hawk as it was approaching the area, but we will never really know.

Red-capped Manakin (Ceratopipra mentalis)
This little pretty bird is sought after by many birders in Costa Rica, myself included. Like the White-collared Manakin, it is found in the Caribbean lowlands and foothills, but given that its preferred habitat is dense rain forest undergrowth, it is difficult to find and even more difficult to photograph. But then one can be lucky, and for me that means finding one male whose home habitat was very close to a fruiting tree, located right by the window of my room at Yatama Ecolodge; it actually came every single day to feed on the little purple fruits, sometimes having fights with a female Violet-headed Hummingbird which came to drink nectar from the tree’s white flowers. What’s even better, a female also visited a few times. We also heard other individuals as we hiked through the trails, although spotting them there is a lot more work.



Russet-naped Wood-Rail (Aramides albiventris)
The Russet-naped Wood-Rail was recently split from the Gray-cowled, with which it obviously has a lot of similarities. As its name indicates, the differentiating feature versus the Gray-cowled is the brownish patch on the back of the neck. The rest of the body is essentially the same, starting with the yellow bill, gray neck, rufous chest and back, deep red eyes and pink legs. These are noisy birds that are usually found in pairs, presumably male and female. A pair of these birds frequently arrived to forage close to our room at Yatama Ecolodge; most of the time they would make a weird low frequency sound, similar to the noise your throat makes when drinking water very fast.











































