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Birding Costa Rica

A Few Hopes and Goals for Birding Costa Rica in 2017

According to the way we keep track of time in “Western” culture, a new year has begun. This gives us a chance to make promises to ourselves and is a great excuse for a fresh, brand new start for anything we want. In the realm of birding, we can start counting birds again for the next 365 days, make target lists for the year, and plan trips for lifers. I don’t have a burgeoning number of expectations for 2017 but this blog post does give me a chance to list some ideas to shoot for from now until next December. Here goes…

Surveys in remote areas of Costa Rica: This is what I want to do the most. I want to see what’s out there in those little birded places with intact habitat like the swamp surrounded forest block in Cano Negro, primary forest in the Fila Carbon near Casa Calateas, remote lowland forest sites up near the border with Nicaragua, the La Tarde lodge in the Osa, The Soltis Center, grassland sites in the north, and the Las Alturas area. I’m sure there are more spots but these are the ones that come most readily to mind.

The view from Casa Calateas.

Visit a bunch of hotspots: By doing this in conjunction with the remote sites, I hope to fill in the gaps and connect with a heck of a lot of birds. These sites would be well known places like the La Selva entrance road, Carara National Park, the La Gamba area, Cerro de la Muerte (think Paraiso de Quetzales), Palo Verde, Medio Queso, and other places that make it onto many a Costa Rica birding itinerary.

The birding is awesome around La Gamba. This is a Charming Hummingbird.

See a Tawny-faced Quail: As soon as I wrote that, I was tempted to backtrack and just press the delete/back space key. I mean, I always want to see this bird but it’s such a pain, where’s the hope? I would need to get to out of the way spots in the north and look and look and maybe not see it anyways. But, if you don’t look, you won’t even see a catbird so as long as I can spend time where it lives, I will still have a slim chance. If I can make my first hopes come true, my chances at finally laying eyes on this little ground bird will climb the ladder of probability.

 eBird everything: Yeah, a lot of birders do this and I try my best but I always end up leaving some lists out of the equation. This year, I want all my observations to be documented up there in the digital cloud.

Identify 700 species in Costa Rica: Bird enough in the right places and it can be done. Heck, do a proper Big Year and I bet you could get 750 or even 770 but since I can’t afford to allocate time and resources to nothing but bird chases, that ain’t gonna happen for moi. No matter because I will be very pleased to do enough birding to break 700. In 2016, two guys I know did just that in Costa Rica!

I already saw this one for the year list.

Hope I can get this one again…

Meet more birders: I always like meeting more birders. Birding is what I do, what I have always done and these are the people of my erstwhile tribe (although I also appreciate meeting any sort of biophile along with people who like to hang out in old growth forests). Hope to see some birds with you in Costa Rica soon!

On a final note, I also hope to become more involved in local conservation efforts. Despite the obvious fact that living on Earth means that we also coexist with other life forms, the current extinction event and widespread, self-detrimental ecosystem destruction indicates that too many humans have ignored the obvious for far too long. Planting trees, environmental education, or just helping people to reconnect with nature, I hope I can do something along those lines.

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