Costa Rica - rufous-tailed to steely-vented...

Today we were banding at InBioparque in the capital San Jose. A standard CES type site, within a park with objectives much like Regents Park in London but smaller. Migrants in evidence here, with a Canada Warbler, several Chestnut-sided and a great surprise to see a Worm-eating Warbler

The above photo of a Canada Warbler was taken at our Tortuguero site, more on banding there later...
...back to InBioparque...
I don't associate this inner city site with good hummingbirds...today I was proved wrong. Following a regular Rufous-tailed, show below..

A  new species for me, a Steely-vented Hummingbird with a different but equally stunning tail.

In some hummingbirds males perform at a lek, where tails may have a role. These two species don't lek but are very aggressive towards others. As well as the steely-tail in the photo below, note the standard wing measuring technique taught and used across the Americas...

Agustin doing the biometrics, and below with a House Wren, a wren species found in many different sub-species across North and South America.

Agustin is a local Costa Rican and we are banding together across all our sites in the coming weeks.

A final warbler from our first week's banding in Tortuguero, our Caribbean coastal base. We will return to Tortuguero in about 2 weeks after a spell at our Highland sites.

This a juvenile Mourning Warbler, a species not easy to see though apparently a common Fall migrant, we only caught two last Fall, so a pleasing start.!