Given the date of this #146th edition of IATB, I should be marching in some freezing cold Saint Patrick’s Day parade or at least celebrating in true form with requisite green colored spirits. Alas, living in Costa Rica means that there will be no partying nor watching of curly-haired Irish dancers for me BUT at [...]
Continue reading about March On Into Spring – I and The Bird #146
I haven’t been birding in the western end of the Central Valley for at least a month but I was reminded of how good the birding is near the town of San Ramon when the Union de Ornitologos de Costa Rica released the Christmas Count Results for this area on March 4th. The results can [...]
Continue reading about Don’t Ignore the San Ramon Area When Birding Costa Rica
Cotingas! An appropriately evocative sounding name for breathtaking birds that look like the results of someone’s wild imagination. They all seem to be odd or wacky because birders familiar with temperate zone families just don’t know what to make of them. Purple-throated Fruitcrow- hmmm, if it’s a crow then why does it have shiny purple [...]
Continue reading about The Best Sites for Seeing Cotinga Species when Birding Costa Rica
Costa Rica is in the tropics and every time I go birding I am reminded of this fact. Sure the rays of the sun are more intense than in western New York, winter just doesn’t exist (yay!), and there are a heck of a lot of bird species flitting around this place but that’s not [...]
Continue reading about Unpredictable Birding in Costa Rica at Quebrada Gonzalez
Here are a few updates on birding in Costa Rica that may be of help to birders visiting the country soon to see shimmering quetzals, a treasure trove of glittering hummingbirds, and (inadvertently) a whole mess of Chestnut-sided Warblers: El Tapir: The massive Porterweed bushes that were herbicided at El Tapir have not grown back [...]
Continue reading about Some updates on birding in Costa Rica
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
A couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate to finally get the chance to bird Laguna del Lagarto during three days of guiding. I emphasize “finally” because I had wondered how the birding was up there near the Nicaraguan border ever since my first trip to Costa Rica in the early 90s. It was so [...]
Continue reading about Exciting Birding in Northern Costa Rica at Laguna del Lagarto Lodge
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 [...]
In Costa Rica, sometimes highland species take these “vacations” to lower elevations. This regular and well documented behavior of the local avifauna is most commonly exhibited by the frugivores. Sometimes White-crowned Manakins are all over the place at Quebrada Gonzalez, a quetzal or two makes it into the foothills, and Three-wattled Bellbirds give their bonking [...]
Continue reading about Birding Costa Rica soon? Watch for highland species in the lowlands.
The biggest news in 2010 for birding in Costa Rica was arguably the sightings of Harpy Eagle carrying nesting material in Tortuguero National Park. If those monstrous raptors did succeed in building one of their many-stick homes, either the nest was never found or the information was kept more secret than U.S. government embassy cables. [...]
Continue reading about Highlights from birding and guiding Costa Rica in 2010
