Mokka mit Schlag

I’m trying out Dragon Dictate 3 for the Mac. Is it ready for primetime? You tell me:

One of the most impressive features of brains – especially human brains — is the flexibility to learn almost any kind of task that comes its way. Given apprentice the desire to impress his master and a chicken-16 past, and his brain devotes its massive resources to distinguishing males from females. Given unemployed aviation enthusiast a chance to be a national hero, and his brain learns to distinguish enemy aircraft from local fly boys. This flexibility in learning accounts for a large part of what we consider human intelligence. All many animals are properly called intelligent, humans distinguish themselves and they are so flexibly intelligent, fastening the neural circuits to match the task at hand. It is for this reason that we can colonize every region on the planet, learn the local language were born into, and master skills as diverse as playing the violin, high-jumping and operating spatial cockpits.

–David Eagleman, Incognito, p. 71, as heard by Dragon Dictate 3.0

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As dusk was approaching we drove into the small city of Orotina. In the trees encircled in the town square, we found a lot of sloths, apparently released pets. But the real prize was a Black-and-white Owl our guide, Richard Garrigues, had staked out:

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From La Ensenada, we drove back to San Jose; but with quite a few stops along the way. The lunch break in Tabaris added several beach species to the trip list, including Laughing Gull and Black-crowned Night-heron; but these are all long-distance migrants or widespread species of herons and gulls, so no lifers there. However I did have a life reptile, the Black Ctenosaur:

These things are huge! I had great trouble getting far enough away to get one in the frame with my 400mm lens.

After lunch we stopped along a dirt road near the Tarcoles River, where we found #944, Scarlet Macaw! The last is one of those spectacular birds you think of when you think of the tropics. We only saw them at a distance, but they were pretty nonetheless.
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Gray-necked Wood-Rail was a nemesis bird in a Panama. I missed it repeatedly even though it was present on the grounds of the lodge where I was staying. Indeed I had used some of my free time to stake out its reeds and pond.

From Cinchona we took a back road that was a “shortcut”. It was neither short, nor cut, and we got lost; and didn’t find our way out till after dark. But before we got lost we came to a small wetland where we stopped to watch some Black-bellied Whistling Ducks. While we were there we spotted #879, a Gray-necked Wood Rail, and a female Green Kingfisher.

No pictures since we didn’t get out of the bus for this one.

We had lunch at a French restaurant our guide described as “arguably the best restaurant in Costa Rica”. I don’t know about that, though it was good; but it certainly had more life birds than I’ve ever gotten before at lunch. There are hummingbird and other feeders behind the restaurant, visible through plate glass windows that attract, among other species:

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First bird here was a Turkey Vulture. I did not come all the way to Central America to see Turkey Vultures. The second bird was a Rufous-collared Sparrow, just like back at the hotel:

But the third bird was #859 Mountain Elaenia:
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