North American birders who are in Costa Rica for a couple of weeks won’t be going to the Chomes shrimp ponds. The reasoning is straightforward: Why watch shorebirds that you can see at home when you have tropical forests replete with flocks of glittering tanagers, sneaky antbirds, woodcreepers, and dozens of interesting flycatchers at your [...]
Continue reading about A Fine Spring Day of Birding Costa Rica at Chomes
Antbirds just might win the prize for being the most popular family of birds with the least amount of colors. It seems like just about anyone who birds in the neotropics ends up feeling a certain degree of fondness for antbirds. Even before I came to Costa Rica for the first time, I was fascinated [...]
Most recent weekends and brought me to the birdy Carara area. Although the heat in that humid/dry lowland transition habitat can be a challenge (at least for me), it’s an incredible area for birding. Despite a temporary closure of most of the main HQ trail to make it more handicap accessible, birding in the national [...]
Continue reading about February Birding Highlights from the Carara Area
Dominical is this tiny beach village in southwestern Costa Rica that appears to be mostly populated by surfers, people with stylistic tattoos of the moon, and fishermen. Although Hacienda Baru welcomes a fair number of birders, Dominical rarely features in birding tours to Costa Rica. Local birding tours might do more birding in the area [...]
Continue reading about A Weekend of Birding Costa Rica at Dominical
The mountainous country of Costa Rica is better known for its wealth of hummingbirds, highland endemics shared with Panama, and rainforest species rather than shorebirds but waders certainly do find their way to this double-coasted land. In fact, Costa Rica has a very healthy list of plovers and sandpipers, many of which can be seen [...]
Continue reading about Watching Shorebirds in Chomes when Birding Costa Rica
Trip reports from other birders and birding tours are a fantastic resource for planning a trip. Read enough detailed trip reports and you can pretty much plan your own tour. Most people will still be better off by hiring a guide and/or an experienced ground agent but trip reports can at least give you a [...]
This past weekend, I guided the Birding Club of Costa Rica’s trip to Esquinas Rainforest Lodge and surroundings. I’ve been there once before and as with that first experience, I am just dying to get back there! The birding is pretty much first rate, the herps are pretty darn good too, the service is excellent, [...]
Continue reading about The Birding is Always Good at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge
In the highly important block of habitat known as Carara National Park, the birding is always productive even though there are few trails that actually access the forests of the park. Even so, they are enough to provide access to just about every species that occurs there and can even turn up some amazing surprises. [...]
The rains have made their annual return to Costa Rica and the landscape has shown its thanks with a green blush on the Pacific Slope. Areas that were a dessicated gray-brown just a month and half ago would go unrecognized in their present tropical green attire. Tall, fresh grass adorns fields and road verges, insects [...]
Continue reading about Benefits of Birding Carara National Park at the Start of the Wet Season
Carara National Park is one of the premier birding locations in Costa Rica. In addition to the easily accessible rainforests of the park, the area also boasts tropical dry forest, mangroves, and estuarine habitats and other wetlands. It’s a must on every birding trip to Costa Rica but ironically, there are few places to stay [...]
Continue reading about Some Thoughts on Birding Costa Rica at Punta Leona
