Costa Rica
June/July 2021
272 species total, 209 lifers
Checklists:
16 Jun — Bagatzi Rice fields (26 species)
16 Jun — PN Palo Verde (21 species)
17 Jun — Selvatura Park (16 species)
17 Jun — Monteverde Hummingbird Gallery (4 species)
18 Jun — Stella’s Bakery (11 species)
18 Jun — Curi-Cancha Refugio de Vida Silvestre (34 species)
19 Jun — Camino a la Reserva Alberto Manuel Brenes (130 species)
20 Jun — Naranjo — Cerro Espíritu Santo (51 species)
23 Jun — PN Carara (33 species)
26 Jun — Jacó — Humedales Quebrada Bonita (9 species)
27 Jun — PN Manuel Antonio (12 species)
28 Jun — Talari Mountain Lodge (11 species)
29 Jun — Talari Mountain Lodge (13 species)
29 Jun — Los Cusingos (11 species)
30 Jun — Savegre Hotel (13 species)
30 Jun — Batsú Gardens, Savegre (21 species)
30 Jun — Batsú Gardens, Savegre (25 species)
2 July — Chilamate Rainforest Eco Retreat (54 species)
2 July — Costa Rica Nature Pavilion (23 species)
3 July — Laguna Lagarto Lodge (18 species)
4 July — Laguna Lagarto Lodge (23 species)
5 July — Arenal Observatory Lodge (47 species)
5 July — Sendero Bogarín (25 species)
1) Palo Verde
My birding journey began near the Liberia airport I flew into, in the Pacific flatlands of Palo Verde National Park. It was, to put it mildly, not a tourist destination. I don’t believe I saw another visitor there during the entire morning. I did, however, encounter more mosquitos than at any other location in my life.
It was here, on the first day, I would have probably my rarest bird sighting of the trip. I was completely oblivious to it at the time, as I was driving out of the park towards the end of the morning I spotted a large bird in the middle of the road. It was one of the few I immediately identified — a Green Ibis — as I had seen their White and Glossy cousins in Florida. When I went to log it in eBird it listed as rare, but I figured it was just an oversight in the location data and nothing more. It wasn’t until later that I realized that while Green Ibises are fairly common on the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica, they are almost never seen on the Pacific slope. In fact, in the over 1,500 checklists logged at Palo Verde, one had only been seen there once before, and this sighting didn’t include a photo. I can only imagine what this lost fellow was doing here. However, vagrants in C.R. have quite a shorter distance to travel because of the condensed nature of the country — this one was probably only about 50 miles away from where he would normally be despite the dearth of sightings.
2) Monteverde
From the un-visited to the extreme tourist destination, I climbed the mountains near Palo Verde towards the Monteverde Cloud Forest. My first day birding I booked a hanging bridge tour outside the town before realizing, while on it, that this was more about the views than the birds. I rectified my mistake by visiting the much more sparsely visited but ecologically rich Curi-Cancha Reserve next to the Cloud Forest Reserve. This included a productive guide-led tour which led to many extremely dark, blurry pictures of small birds due to the heavily shaded forest. I had already seen the showstopping and hilariously-sounding Three-wattled Bellbird at both locations, so the main prize sighting still remained: a Resplendent Quetzal. It was not the season for them to be out and about in this area, so expectations were low, and all the usual spots at Curi-Cancha were quiet. As we were heading back in, my guide heard what he thought was one. After the second call confirming it wasn’t another guide calling out, he rushed down the trail as fast as I had seen him move and spotted it while it was still calling.
I was also disappointed to discover on this first stop that all of the parks had been forced by the government to take down their hummingbird feeders due to laws against feeding wildlife. I did manage to find a cafe with a few up and tons of activity near the reserve, but it was certainly a disappointment that they weren’t a part of the park experiences I would have throughout my time here.
3) Naranjo/PN Alberto Brenes
My third birding stop was both my most intense and unique, and it started from some chance browsing on eBird. During the pandemic, I tried to get more species where I was stuck in Davidson County, NC. As I inched up the pathetic leaderboard, I recognized most of the names — Forsyth County birders who had made stopovers, but one, Jim Zook, I was unfamiliar with. Exploring his page, he had made visits to the county back in 2008… and was based in Costa Rica. I tracked him down and asked if he’d be willing to include me on what looked like his daily birding excursions near where he lived north of San Jose. He responded enthusiastically and I planned to spend two nights in his area. What I later realized is that he is probably one of the most accomplished birders in Costa Rica, having logged more bird sightings than anyone else in the country (864!) and with his historical data forming the basis for all of eBird’s data there. This is tantamount to a park pick-up basketball player arriving to San Francisco and emailing Steph Curry asking if he wants to go shoot hoops. But, since this is birding and Jim doesn’t bear the burden of international superfame outside of the ornithological world, it was possible.
So after Monteverde I headed to Naranjo, a town that no one I encountered in Monteverde was especially familiar with. They had almost certainly never heard a tourist say they were going to Naranjo next. Jim took me on two separate birding outings each morning, the first to the road leading into a National Park about 45 minutes to the north of town, and the second to an overlook just outside of town. The first trip was a whirlwind adventure starting at 5:30am and ending at 4:30pm. We did a solid eight and a half hours of birding along a road where we saw one other car the entire day. And when I say we birded, I mean Jim, like a birding supercomputer, immediately identified the bird behind every call and passing movement. I think perhaps I was able to be first on one or two, but only because he was looking the other way and didn’t see it before I did. We ended up with a monster checklist of 130 different species, of which 102 I had never seen before (lifers, in birder parlance). There are not many days where one will accrue over 100 lifers.
Our outing even featured a few rarer sightings, some of which Jim had not seen so far that year (his year list). An early good look at a Bicolored Hawk was an exciting spot, one he correctly assured me I would likely not see again on my trip. We heard a very reclusive Black-headed Antthrush, which had not been logged at the park in almost two years, but it did not deign to show itself. The setting did not make for exceptionally show-stopping pictures — most of the birds were very far away and poorly lit. However, the extremely rare feeling of knowing that every call or visible movement was being identified and that, if something was there we knew it, was unparalleled.
Jim uses this incredible skill on a daily basis — any why wouldn’t he? If I could ID like him or shoot like Steph I would be out in the field every day. But, as he told me and demonstrated, it never gets boring because you literally will see or hear something different every day, especially in Costa Rica. No two checklists are alike, and each one represents a daily treasure hunt for something potentially incredible.
Interlude: Jacó
After the intense and legendary birding weekend in Naranjo, I decamped for the coast, where I did a weeklong surf camp in Jacó. It was a spectacular experience, and learning to surf was quite a bit easier than I expected, likely given the fantastic instruction and forgiving boards. Here are a few decidedly non bird photos of that.
4) Carara NP
One morning during my week of surfing I ventured 30 minutes north to Carara NP to get my birding fix. It was another sparsely attended park but there were a few guides available. After the first section of the park yielded few sightings, we drove up the road to another entrance, and after about 10 minutes we heard what he IDed as a Collared Forest-Falcon. We saw no visual of it, though, and were about to press on when he asked if I wanted to go off trail and look for it. Not knowing what I was getting into, I responded enthusiastically and off we went, into what quickly became thick brush that we were bushwhacking through. About 20 minutes later, we were still in pursuit of it despite being directly below its call. Had the guide not been there, I would have been thoroughly lost, as well. I bemoaned this ridiculous off-roading endeavor as another thorn-covered vine thrashed me, thinking we would never be able to see this camouflaged, semi-common raptor. As I was about to tell him to lead us back, he pointed towards a tree in the distance and at a very small opening I spotted it. I was glad all this effort was for naught, and later realized that this was actually a much more rarely photographed dark morph of the falcon. Thankfully (and clearly, since I am writing this) we made it back to the trail relatively unscathed.
5) Manuel Antonio
After surf camp, I headed to an even bigger tourist draw than Monteverde about an hour down the coast: Manuel Antonio National Park. A reliable haven for spotting all sorts of wildlife (including sloths) draws throngs of people to its park and nearby beaches. I arrived at the park when it opened at the inexplicably late time of 8am and had the grounds to myself for about 20 minutes before massive amebas of tour groups took over. I only lasted about two hours before I couldn’t take all the people. I did see a baby sloth though, so I guess I can see why everyone was there.
6) Pérez Zeledón
In another twist of the yin and yang of places, I went from a heavily visited spot to a completely deserted one in the Talamanca Mountain range above Manuel Antonio, in the Pérez Zeledón region. I stayed at the Talari Mountain lodge and also went birding at the Los Cusingos Wildlife Refuge, both of which did not seem to be in the swing of accommodating visitors, as nary a guide or tour was available. I did manage to spy a few birds on my own, though.
7) San Gerardo de Dota
Probably the most curious locale of my trip was the canyon valley of San Gerardo de Dota, in the same mountain range. After descending in elevation from 9800 to 7500ft down a mostly gravel road, I reached the Savegre Hotel, which I gathered to be the genesis of development here about fifty years ago. Some foreigners set it up as a fishing lodge before discovering the cornucopia of Quetzals that they saw, and eventually it became a birding destination. I was staying at this very same trailblazing hotel, which seemed to be priced at one third its usual rate. I quickly realized I was in quite the middle of nowhere and cursed the fact that I had not stopped by a grocery store before descending into Quetzal-land. Due to the high elevation, the sweltering temperatures had suddenly turned into mid-50 degree drizzles that required me to turn on the heat(!) in my room.
I was somewhat worried about my ability to spot a Quetzal since I did not pony up for the $50 guided tour the next morning — that was put to rest when, coming back from breakfast I saw one in the tree directly above my room. And they say birding is hard. Speaking of difficult birding, across the street from the hotel was Batsu Gardens, an incredible covered area replete with loads of feeders, the ultimate easy-mode bird photography. Of course, this produced some of my favorite pictures from the trip.
8) Rio Sarapiqui
Out of the freezer and into the frying pan, I ventured next on a long journey through San Jose and up north to the Sarapiqui River, near the famed La Selva Biological Station. It was pushing 100 degrees when I arrived to my room with no AC, and I wondered how I possibly had been enjoying central heat that morning. The accommodations and the conditions were rustic (a theme for the rest of my time), and I had some moderate luck birding the next morning around the lodging in Chilamate with my guide. That afternoon, I visited Dave and Dave’s Nature Park, run by a same-named father son expat duo. They gave me a private tour of their beautiful land and I even snapped a few pictures at their great feeder setup.
9) Laguna Lagarto
I had debated a detour on my way to Arenal to this curious lodge near the Nicaragua border and finally pulled the trigger for one night after Jim told me of the various different things I might see there compared to my other stops. I did this despite the knowledge that it lacked AC and chances were Wi-Fi were low (it was “broken” while I was there), and that it required driving almost an hour down a gravel road I would describe kindly as “rough.” I arrived to find a large group of German tourists, many teenagers (the lodge is owned by a German). I inquired about a guided trail tour in the morning or a visit to their famed King Vulture blind, one of the few reliable places in the country to see the giant bird, and was told that none of those things were happening, but the feeders would be active. So that’s where all the pictures are from. Perhaps it was fatigue, the lack of activity availability or the laughably bad $17 buffet dinner I was forced to partake in due to being in the middle of nowhere, but I don’t have many fond memories of my time here other than the fantastic shots of all three honeycreepers I got.
10) Arenal
My final stop was the Arenal volcano and its neighboring town of La Fortuna, with the pendulum swinging back to tourist-land. The stunning mountain provided a fantastic backdrop, and after some finagling I secured a guided tour at the Arenal Observatory Lodge (where I was not staying). The surroundings were beautiful and I saw quite a few new birds, though netted few stunning pictures. At least a third of the two hour jaunt was spent trying to coax out a rare Lovely Cotinga that another guide had seen that morning. I had more success with photos at Bogarin, a park near town with a short trail.
And so it concludes, my whirlwind tour of Costa Rica and all the bird photos it produced. Not pictured: the bug spray showers, constant long sleeves and pants in sweltering heat, waking up at dawn (5:06am), a Jabiru (couldn’t find one at Palo Verde, didn’t go to Cano Negro) or Fiery-throated Hummingbird (where the heck where they?!) and the copious amounts of Trits Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich tins littering the back of my rental car, which made me realize how much I valued remote key fob locking and unlocking by lacking it. Until next time when I finally hit 300 species and 1000 lifers…
