Cerro Colorado endemics

Matt Denton, birding guide at the Rancho Naturalista in Costa Rica sent the following Report:

On January 25th, 2001 using the directions in Ridgely's book, I drove out to Cerro Colorado arriving at night and camped about 8km above Hato Chami. The road going up was very rough but still possible in a 4wd. The indigenous people are still taking up all types of trucks. That night there were very high winds and rain which continued all of the following day. I did most of my birding between 8 and 9.5 km above Hato Chami. Early in the morning I easily found 4 Yellow-green Finches moving in the open vegetation of the roadcuts. I also had 4 calling Barred Parakeets fly over. Seeing the Glow-throated Hummingbird took a little more effort. I kept a close watch on the pink Ericaceous shrubs in flower. These were guarded closely by the Fiery-throated Hummingbirds and also were visited by Green-fronted Lancebill, Purple-throated Mountain-Gem, and Stripe-tailed Hummingbird. Finally by about midday, it really started raining hard so I decided to start looking lower for the Glow-throat HB. About 5 km above Hato Chami there is a man's house on the right. Two hundred meters below his house there are some Hemelia shrubs where I found White-tailed Emerald. Another hundred meters down at approximately 1100 meters, I found more Ericaceous shrubs with many Green Violet-Ears guarding and it was there I saw a female Glow-throated. Moments later I heard the whirr of a Selasphorus and saw a wonderful male Glow-throated feeding on a yellow-green flowering shrub. With that I called it almost a day and drove out to the Volcan lakes where there were two female Masked Ducks.