We had such a comfortable night last night that we woke up at 5:30am and COULD have gone ahead and gotten up, but neither of us did.  We got up around 6:30am and got dressed to hike the same trail we did last evening.  The exciting thing we saw on our hike this morning was a sloth!  But we were mildly disappointed how few birds were out - and we got up so early because we thought it'd be a better time to see birds.

After breakfast, we got in our rental car and drove out to the Heliconias Hotel, just to check about doing one of their trails tomorrow.  Then we went back to our hotel and asked to have our same room one more night, because we really do like it at the Tenorio Lodge.  I took this picture, which is more or less the same as on the last post, but we rearranged the curtains a little, and we like it better this way.

You know, today we saw a Toucan fly right by these windows and land in a tree just to the left in this picture. It was beautiful!!!

So, this afternoon, we drove out another little road by the hotel and the exciting thing we saw on that little drive was a Laughing Falcon!  The road started becoming un-driveable so we turned around and went into Bijagua to have lunch.  

Once we were done with lunch, we decided to drive out to Tenorio National Park - not to do the trails or anything, but just to see what birds we might see along the way.  There was this tree along the road that had several Oropendula nests and the tree was very active with interesting birds, including a Black-Cheeked Woodpecker, a Masked Tityra and we also saw several Swallow-Tailed Kites flying high above the tree.  Here are some pictures of the Oropendula nests:

Here's a not-too-good picture of an Oropendula - you can see the end of his tail is yellow.  That yellow really flashes when he flies.

Oropendulas also make this loud sort of gurgling, liquidy bell-type sound.  This next picture shows the same Oropendula as above making this sound.  It almost looks like he's flinging himself off the tree since he does actually turn upside down while making his call!

This is one of the views from the road.  You can't see it very well, but in the background is Lake Nicaragua.

Once we got back to our hotel, we rested just a little before we went back out on the trails of the hotel property.  These trails are really very nice and an exciting bird we saw on our walk this evening was the Uniform Crake.  He kept trying to hide from us, but fortunately we heard him and were able to follow him for just a little bit.  We also saw a Dusky Nightjar.  This hotel may not be on the slopes of Tenorio, but it sure does have a lot of interesting birds and animals around it!!!!!