In Costa Rica, the birding deal is always fantastic. Drive an hour and you could feasibly lay eyes on a quetzal, the one and only Wrenthrush, Scarlet Macaws, antbirds, a dozen hummingbirds, and more. I mean, honestly, that’s pretty darn good.
Take this morning for example. In my urbanized, very much people-centric neighborhood in Heredia, I walked down the street, birded for an hour and saw 39 species, one of which was a Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl with an unlucky Northern Yellow Warbler in its talons (!). It was being harassed by a couple Brown Jays, a bunch of beautiful Blue-gray Tanagers, hummingbirds, Common Tody-Flycatcher, Tropical Mockingbirds, a Yellow-green Vireo, and other species while South American-bound Barn, Bank, and Cliff Swallows and occasional screeching Crimson-fronted Parakeets graced the skies.
Those birds and more can be attributed to lifesaving big trees and vegetation on a small adjacent farm as well as a riparian zone. It’s not much habitat and yet, it still act as vital living space for a bunch of birds and migrants (I recently saw 3 to 4 Cerulean Warblers there and will likely see a Golden-winged soon). It’s wonderful but the best birding is, of course, further afield. Regarding that, much to our good birding fortune, as I alluded to above, you don’t need to go far to see a wealth of incredible birds.
With that in mind, I’ve designed some short birding tours that maximize birding potential in different major habitats, close to the greater San Jose area. More than 100 species are possible on all of them, 200 even possible on the two night trips. Check it out:
One Night Birding Tour in the Costa Rica Highlands
Who says you have to go birding for a week to see a quetzal in Costa Rica? Although 7 days birding is always better than one or two, if you don’t have the time for it, fantastic birding near San Jose is possible in a morning, day, or one night trip.
3 other of many stand out bird species possible on this tour include:
This cloud forest birding itinerary is also very easy to do!
Two Night Birding Tour to Costa Rica Rainforests
The cloud forest highlands are some of the closest quality birding habitats to San Jose but, you only need to go a little bit further to reach another, completely different biome on the Caribbean slope. These foothill rainforest and lowland rainforest host the highest variety of bird species in Costa Rica; day trips I have guided there have resulted in 150 to 170 species. Imagine how many birds are possible during two and a half days of birding?
Three stand outs of many possible species include:
This exciting two night birding tour in Costa Rica is good for a huge variety of tropical species.
Two Night Birding Tour in a Mega Birding Hotspot- the Pacific Lowlands
To reach the close highlands and Caribbean rainforests, we drive north. Go in the other direction and it only takes 45 minutes to an hour to reach Scarlet Macaws!
These and hundreds of other species live in the mega ecotone of Carara and Tarcoles. In this river valley, coastal habitats, rainforest and dry forest meet and offer a fantastic array of birds. The following are three of a huge number of avian possibilities:
This two night birding tour to the Carara area is a good way to see an excellent blend of dry forest, edge, and humid forest endemics in a short amount of time.
Have an extra day or two in the San Jose area? If you are in San Jose for business or starting and ending a birding tour, these itineraries will enrich and expand your birding experience in Costa Rica. They can also be done as one night tours or even as a day trip. Prepare for your trip with my Costa Rica birding site ebook and study your field guides, there’s a lot of birds waiting for you in Costa Rica!