Good morning birders, twitchers, twitchy birders, bitchy twirlers, and anyone looking to emigrate somewhere outside North Korea’s missile range.
In January, my wife and I fulfilled our long-time dream of visiting Costa Rica. We went on three guided bird walks during the 11-day trip, and I kept my long lens on the camera during most of our hikes and other activities (but not the snorkeling). All told, I saw about 80 different species, 60-70 of which were new to me. By contrast, I think I’ve had <20 lifers in 15 years in my current house.
Not counting the first and last nights near the San Jose airport, we made four stops. First up was Arenal Volcano National Park in the rain forest of the Caribbean slope. We stayed at the Arenal Observatory Lodge and Spa, the only hotel within the park. Although birds are abundant on its forested trails, my best pictures came from the fruit feeder on a deck near its restaurant. Is that cheating? Eh, maybe a little. But you can’t argue with my yield:
Costa Rica has six toucan species, and I managed to see five of them. Above is a collared aracari, and below is a keel-billed toucan. I snapped this picture from a great distance, ran through a parking lot to get a better angle, and it flew away just as I found it in the viewfinder. So this will have to do:
Montezuma oropendolas were abundant at the feeder, sometimes pushing all other birds away:
Rufous-tailed hummingbirds hung out in the flowering bushes near the feeder:
The most common feeder birds were tanagers. Among them were the blue-gray tanager:
Emerald tanager:
Golden-hooded tanager:
Silver-throated tanager:
Passerini’s tanager:
And palm tanager:
Another feeder denizen was the buff-throated saltator:
Hanging out under the feeders were a Mr. and Ms. great curassow. Here’s the female:
And the male:
Our first guided bird walk was on the grounds of the Lodge. Unfortunately, we spent most of it taking shelter from the pouring rain under the pool ramada. We did see a few birds, including a barred antshrike:
And a chestnut-sided warbler:
Our next stop was the Nicoya Peninsula on the northern Pacific coast, known mainly for its beaches. We spent three nights at Playa Samara, a small town with a gorgeous and relatively uncrowded beach. Though this leg of the trip was intended for snorkeling, kayaking, etc., the beautifully landscaped grounds of our hotel provided some of the best birding of the entire trip. In just one hour — while my wife did yoga on the beach — I saw a turquoise-browed motmot:
Black-headed trogon:
Long-tailed manakin:
The manakins have a striking degree of sexual dimorphism. Here is the female:
Just kidding — that’s a squirrel cuckoo. But here’s the female manakin:
Although we heard parrots everywhere we went, this was the only one I managed to photograph (white-fronted):
I also saw a white-throated magpie-jay:
And a Hoffman’s woodpecker. Weirdly, this was the only woodpecker species we saw on the trip, which was a bit disappointing.
Wrens are among my favorite birds, so it was a treat to have a pair of rufous-naped wrens nesting and courting in a tree outside our window.
After Samara, we spent one night at Playa Junquillal, a stunning and nearly deserted beach. I saw a streak-backed oriole near our lodge:
Our third stop was the Monteverde area, home of the famous cloud forest of the same name, as well as a few lesser-trod forests. Ziplining was invented here, and of course we took advantage of that local custom (I recommend the “Tarzan swing” and the Superman-style, kilometer-long zipline). We stayed in the nearby town of Santa Elena at a wonderful guesthouse called Casa Batsu.
We hired a guide for a morning bird walk in the Curi Cancha Wildlife Refuge, an avian paradise bordering the more crowded Monteverde forest. Like every other birder in the area, we desired a glimpse of Costa Rica’s most sought-after bird, the resplendent quetzal. As the guides passed each other on the trails, they repeatedly indicated that no quetzals had been seen that morning. Nonetheless, our guide took us to his favorite spot, and we stood waiting for our elusive subject. After a full hour, I spotted a large mass of greenish-blue feathers landing in a far-away tree. Before I even bothered to say anything to my wife or the guide, I lifted up the camera as quickly as I could and snapped a single shot before it flew away.
Hmm, all that narrative buildup for a crappy pic? Sorry :/
We saw some other birds on the walk as well, like a coppery-headed emerald:
Yellow-crowned euphonia:
And orange-billed nightingale-thrush:
Our best pics, however, came at Stella’s Bakery, an absolute must-visit for birders in the area. Their fruit feeders, and nearby trees, yielded a yellow-throated euphonia:
Brown jay:
Emerald toucanet:
Lesson’s motmot:
. . .lots of tanagers (same species as shown above) and lots of Baltimore orioles. I see them in Texas about once every 5 years, and am lucky to get a blurry, obstructed shot. Here, by contrast, they were basically posing:
Stocking the bird feeders was a time-consuming task for the bakery staff, because this kept happening:
We took a long hike in the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve, another alternative to Monteverde. High-elevation tropical rain forests are pretty much my favorite thing in the world, and this one didn’t disappoint.
This slate-throated redstart made me scramble to put the long lens back on:
Our final stop was Carara National Park. Situated where the northern (Mesoamerican) and southern (Amazonian) Costa Rican habitats merge, this is known to be one of the best birding spots in the country. It is also one of only two sites where the famous scarlet macaws hang out in large numbers. Our guided walk was quite fruitful, beginning with the sighting of a (far away) macaw nest:
We stayed at a lodge known for its fruit feeders that attract macaws — but unfortunately, we were never there at the right time to see them. The lodge was full of crazy-ass birders with their crazy-ass cameras. At most of our stops, people marveled at my 150-600mm lens. But here, I felt like I had an instamatic compared to their costs-more-than-my-car, needs-its-own-suitcase lenses. One guy sat on the deck with his laptop angled so everyone could see him process a gobsmackingly perfect photo of a quetzal. Sheesh.
Anyhow, the walk. We saw a fiery-billed aracari:
Yellow-throated toucan:
White-whiskered puffbird:
Chestnut-backed antbird:
And northern barred woodcreeper:
There’s more, but this is getting long — so here’s a collage of some other species I saw in Costa Rica:
Thanks for reading! And thanks to Dawn Chorus regular nookular, whose two-part (here and here) Costa Rica stories from a year ago provided the final nudge I needed to commit to the trip.