Birding, relaxing - 2nd full day in Atenas, Feb 27

Today we got up early to see if we could spot the toucan(s) that hang out near the entrance to the BnB. We heard it/them and saw a flash, but did not really see it well. Christine joined us, which was great because she knows the birds. We saw blue grey tanagers, western (or tropical) kingbirds, more rufous-naped wrens (noisy and happy sounding birds), yellow warblers, a hummingbird, social (or grey-capped) flycatchers, possibly a short-tailed hawk and cattle egrets.

But - the star of the morning was a pair of blue-crowned Motmots. They were behind the pool and literally posed for us. A male was wooing a female by offering her an insect. But she rebuffed him. Eventually, he gave up and flew away. But, they held a group of us entralled as they stayed still for us to take photos. Amazing tails, amazing colors - they made our day.  And, that was before breakfast!

For the bulk of the day, we hung around here enjoying the warmth and also catching up on our blog. We often write it and then add the photos later, so it takes time to upload the photos from both our phones and from the camera. We ate lunch outside here with food we bought.

We had a short Skype session with Nick, Cole and Sage, but had poor reception.

We went to dinner in town with Christine at Don Yayo, a local hangout recommended by Jonathan who works at the BnB. (fluent in 4 languages). Christine told some stories about her work with marine mammals, in particular an oil spill in Spain where she was part of a team gathering data on the dead seabirds, estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Quote of the day as we read and tried to translate the menu as I looked up the meaning of "gallo" which was the heading of a lot of things on the menu. "I am a little put off by the cock." The dictionary's definition of gallo = cock. I guess it means rooster, but that seems to have nothing to do with the dishes on the menu, so we never did quite get what it meant as there was "gallo" with chicken, with veggies etc etc. At any rate, it was a lovely evening with serious conversation punctuated with a lot of laughs, too.