There’s a few field guides available for Costa Rica along with a massive wealth of information (ranging from accurate and insightful to simple fantasy). It wasn’t always like that; for my first trip to Costa Rica, in 1992, the only book that completely focused on the birds of Costa Rica was the classic “Stiles and Skutch”, a fair-sized tome published in 1989.
The information in that book was and still is golden; it contains a culmination of decades of avian studies still pertinent to this day. The main drawback was its size; a bit large for the field (most of us still carried it anyways) and better suited for the library. Eventually, it also became outdated in terms of additional species found in Costa Rica along with more rounded information about them.
Jumping to the present, this year, many of us birders in Costa Rica eagerly await the third edition of “The Birds of Costa Rica: A Field Guide” by Garrigues and Dean. Scheduled to be available in October, and having heard about the hard work and improvements made to update it, that book promises to be a must have field guide for any birder visiting Costa Rica. However, I won’t be writing about it until at least October. Today, I’ve got another book to talk about, one that was published earlier this year.
It’s called, “Aves de Costa Rica” or, “Birds of Costa Rica” by John Jairo Reyes Londoño and Luis Alberto Peña, and illustrated by Miles McMullan. Published in Colombia by Ensifera, this and their similar Birds of Panama mark their first field guides covering a region outside of Colombia. I’ll start by saying that although it does qualify as a field guide, the small yet handy dimensions make it more of a pocket guide and I mean that in a good way. Light in weight, protected with a handy plastic cover, and graced with less than 130 pages, a birder could certainly fit this little book into any pack (and probably a lot of pockets too).
It’s a far cry from the hefty Stiles and Skutch but, the difference in size brings up a valid question; how on Earth could a field guide for a country with well over 900 species be so small when the first and much larger field guide covered fewer than 900 species? Some pocket guides solve that issue by simply showing fewer birds, others have left out a lot of text. This one meets the challenge in a few ways described below.
QR codes instead of text
Instead of text about habitat, behavior or other interesting and valuable information typically found in a field guide, this book vectors the reader to said information via a QR code. There’s one for each species that brings you to a page with buttons for the species account in eBird, Birdlife International, Xeno-Canto (for sounds), and a couple other sites. While this feature could be a boon for younger birders or people otherwise synched with the digital age, it won’t work as well for folks who like to read books.
This of course also means that you won’t see that QR linked information without a good connection. Lack of connections being common in many birding spots in Costa Rica, this will be an issue in the field but, on the other side of the coin, in all honesty, I don’t believe birders are doing themselves any favors by reading text in the field in any case.
Honestly, given the natural rarity of many tropical birds and the few looks one typically gets, I think birders are better off leaving every field guide closed until the birding has seriously quieted down (say 9:30 a.m.) or, until lunch time. Keep reaching for a field guide during mixed flock madness or other bird activity and you’ll miss lifers. All of that said, with this book, no matter where you are, you’ll need a phone with a QR reader and a good connection to check out info. about the bird in question.
Minimal and small illustrations
The other way to fit 900 plus bird species into fairly few pages is by showing anywhere from 8 to 10 species per page. To show that many, large illustrations are impossible and there can only be one or two per species. This does save a lot of space but ends up giving a fairly limited visual overview for each species. This is in contrast to various modern field guides that strive to show as many images for a species as possible to try and cover every identification angle, juvenile plumages, flight views, behavior in their habitat, etc.
Therefore, illustrations are fairly small and limited and the overall scheme is more of an illustrated checklist but, will they still help the reader identify the birds they see?
Quality of illustrations
In answer to the previous question, I would say “yes” and “no”. While various illustrations are good and fairly spot on (like the Green Honeycreeper), many others are sort of funky but still mostly show enough features for identification. However, various illustrations are just not really up to par for adequately identifying some of the more challenging groups like Furnarids, Empids, shorebirds, and warblers.
The same goes for most of the raptors in flight. Shown on the inside cover, while various plumage details look alright, the most important factor for raptor identification (the shape of the bird) is not quite correct. Something else to mention is that the Great Black-Hawk pictured is the subspecies that occurs in South America (and could perhaps end up being a different species?), and one of the more frequently seen raptors in flight is missing- the Common Black Hawk.
Maps and information about bird abundance
Maps also take up space and is why this guide doesn’t have them. However, as with text, that is fixed by visiting the sites in the QR code, at least two of which give pretty good ideas about bird distribution in Costa Rica. The same goes for habitat but, the book does show information about elevation, size, abundance, and some idea of where a species is seen most often.
It does this with numbers related to abundance and Costa Rican provinces explained at the beginning of the book. For example, common species like the Vaux’s Swift have a “1” for being an abundant bird (although I’d call it common), and a “2” to indicate they are seen most frequently in the province of Alajuela.
While this does give a fair indication of how common or rare a bird is, it might not reflect how rare some species really are. For example, the Comb Duck is given the highest level of rarity (“6”) while the White-cheeked Pintail and Greater White-fronted Goose are given a “5” and the Fulvous-Whistling Duck is given a “3” for being “poco comun” or “uncommon”. These assessments are made with eBird sightings but could be more accurate. The pintail has been seen several times but most sightings were of the same bird, the geese were the same flock of 5 seen on several occasions, and I would call the Fulvous Whistling-Duck “rare” as it seems to only occur in small numbers in a restricted area. All of that nit-picking aside, overall, they do a fair job of generally indicating how rare or common a species is.
As for province where a species is seen the most, I’m not sure how useful that is. The problem with associating birds in Costa Rica with a certain province is that most provinces have several, very distinct habitats. It would have been more helpful to have a map showing where different major habitats or bioregions are since these factors of course determine where birds occur. Like so, we would know that the Vaux’s Swift is just as frequent in other highland areas of Costa Rica as the highland parts of Alajuela province.
As far as I can tell, the closest this book comes to mentioning this critical factor (habitat) is indicating elevational range for a species. Once again, using the QR code will bring you to information about habitat preference but, opting for indicating some form of distribution by province instead of anything about habitat within the book itself doesn’t seem like the most useful idea.
For example, since the very rare Speckled Mourner is shown as being seen most often in Guanacaste, once a reader somehow realizes that Guanacaste is mostly dry forest, they may conclude that the mourner must use that habitat and/or be possible in places like Nicoya and Liberia. In reality, this mature lowland and foothill rainforest specialist is only shown for Guanacaste because the main spot where it has been seen (Pitilla Biological Station) happens to just fall within a part of the province that has its habitat.
Granted, the book does mention that their measure of species abundance and occurrence is based on the eBird hotspot with the most observations but that raises a valid question- Should a field guide (1) indicate where birds are historically known to occur or expected to occur based on known range and habitat or, (2) show where a species has been seen the most in eBird? While option 2 is helpful, since I know I can get that information from eBird, I would much rather have a field guide show option 1.
It would be a bit like a field guide for North America mentioning Minnesota for Great Gray Owl instead of anywhere else in its large range because most sightings come from the Sax-Zim Bog area (I’m assuming most sightings come from there).
Good information for beginning birders
One of this book’s highlights is the very good information provided for people just getting started with birding. There is some excellent information in particular about how to identify birds as well as good birding ethics (even mentioning to warn nearby people when you are about to put on insect repellent). The book also has a small box to check for every species, a few pages for note taking, tips on binocular use, and an illustrated index of bird families and orders.
With all of the above in mind, although I wouldn’t recommend using this field guide to identify every bird in Costa Rica, and it won’t be useful for birders who prefer the best illustrations and books with in-depth information, it will work for Spanish speaking folks with an interest in birds who’d like a very portable book about birds in Costa Rica, especially if they also like to use their phones.
I daresay the authors made this book with this goal in mind. In particular, I think this small book would be an excellent way to introduce people to birds, especially young people who use their mobile devices for just about everything, and folks just getting started with birding. It also does well at showing just how many birds have been seen in Costa Rica (more than 940!). Given its size and dynamic, digital connection approach, this book would be an especially good tool for teachers and organizations in Costa Rica who aim to foster more interest in birds.