As you drive around the winding mountain roads of Costa Rica on your way to Monteverde, La Fortuna, or Sarapiqui, you won’t help but the notice signs that state “canopy here!” “longest canopy!”, and even “fly like superman on our canopy!” Some of these odd advertisements happen to be the size of billboards and also [...]
Continue reading about Costa Rica Finally has a Canopy Tower!
During recent guiding in the Carara area, Scarlet Macaws were hanging out at the beach near the village known as Tarcoles. These unbelievable looking birds do this now and then to feast on seeds of the “Beach Almond” (Terminalia catappa). A common sight on beaches in Costa Rica, this tree species isn’t really an almond [...]
Carara National Park is one of the better sites in Costa Rica for seeing ground birds of the forest interior. These are the terrestrial bird species that opt for shade over sun, that relish quiet, careful walks through the leafy texture of the forest floor, that haunt the dark understory with ventriloquial voices. You wont get warbler neck [...]
Continue reading about Carara National Park is good for ground birds
In the latter months of 2010, we opted for traveling to Niagara Falls, NY for Thanksgiving in lieu of Christmas. We may have missed out on watching “A Christmas Story” with the family and couldn’t go to my Aunt Florence’s and Uncle Kevin’s on Christmas Eve but the fact that we also missed out on [...]
I took a second class bus from the bowels of San Jose up and over Cerro de la Muerte (” mountain of death”) to the frontier-like southwestern lowlands of Costa Rica to get to my destination. It was ten hours on the bus, two of which involved slamming our way over a section of remote road that was seriously afflicted [...]
Continue reading about The 2010 Osa Christmas Count at the Bosque del Rio Tigre
Some readers may have noticed a general paucity and possible recycling of bird photos on this blog. The reason that posts may have been a bit more wordy than “imagey” for the past two months is because my other digiscoping cameras weren’t cooperating very much for bird photos. Well, most birds didn’t either but although [...]
One of the most exciting aspects of birding Costa Rica is the variety of different habitats that are easily accessible from the Central Valley. For example, if you get tired of sweating it out in the lowlands while watching flyovers of Scarlet Macaws, you can head up into the mountains for cool, cloud forest birding [...]
Continue reading about Highlights from guiding while birding Costa Rica this past weekend
The Yellow-billed Cotinga is an endangered species that only occurs on the Pacific slope of Costa Rica and western Panama. Although range maps in field guides show it occurring from the Rio Tarcoles (at and near Carara National Park) south to Panama, don’t expect to run into this cotinga at most sites along the coast [...]
Continue reading about Birding at Cerro Lodge, Costa Rica- a good site for Yellow-billed Cotinga
Many birders that visit Costa Rica end up with an afternoon or a morning to kill in San Jose or the Central Valley. With so few options for birding in the sprawl of concrete and asphalt, most opt to relax in the garden of their hotel, visit a market in San Jose, or buy souvenirs. If you [...]
Continue reading about Birding the University of Peace, Costa Rica
I made a short trip to the Carara area this past Friday to scout the vicinity of Cerro Lodge, a new option for accommodation near the national park. From visiting their website, communicating with the owner, noting its proximity to Carara, and taking into account the habitats near Cerro Lodge, I had a hunch that [...]
Continue reading about Where to stay when birding Carara, Costa Rica; Cerro Lodge
