This past Saturday, birders celebrated another October Global Big Day. It was a day dedicated to birding, to be part of a massive birding collective and see how many birds you can find.
You don’t have to do October Big Day like that, the sole requisite is watching birds and recording your lists in eBird. However, with “Big Day” being part of the equation, a birder feels compelled to do a bit more, like maybe birding all day long, maybe starting before dawn and going well into the night.
Yeah, that is extreme but in Costa Rica, there’s so many birds waiting to be seen, it can hard to stop birding. Keep going and you’ll keep seeing more. Get carried away with birding here and you really got a check yourself before you birding wreck yourself.
On October 12th, more than 1,000 birders in Costa Rica did their part. Thanks to most folks birding all day long and several covering remote parts of the country, us birders in Costa Rica identified 716 species! My partner Maryllen and I were part of that effort, here’s how our day went.
A Good Plan but…Weather Happens
I can’t help but make Big Day plans. There’s so many birds concentrated in Costa Rica, crafting plans to see large numbers of them in one day is all too easy. There are roads that can bring you to quetzals, a wealth of hummingbirds, macaws, and more, all in one day.
If the birds cooperate, you’ve got a chance at identifying hundreds, all in one day. There’s always a chance of breaking a Big Day record, maybe even the biggest world Big Day of all! Those possibilities provide fuel for the imagination and drive to make calculated plans and bring them to fruition.
For this October Big Day, I made a fair plan. It starts with spending the night in the Caribbean lowlands so you can get plenty of rest and begin birding at 3 in the morning instead of midnight.
You’ll need that rest because you’ll be non-stop birding the rest of the day and into part of the next night. You’ll drive from the Sarapiqui lowlands up to Cinchona and Poas and then onward to the Pacific lowlands for shorebirds at night.
If all goes well, if most birds call at the right time, well, you just might identify 400 plus species. However, that’s a really big “if” because the birds aren’t the only thing that has to go right. Anything that keeps you from birding in the right places at the right times throws a wrench into the works. Road issues? Mixed flock somewhere else? Weather no cooperating? Any of those factors will do.
On Saturday, weather more or less thwarted the plan but we still had a fantastic morning of birding! Starting out, the weather was actually perfect, at least for birding. Cloudy skies and occasional mist kept the birds going all morning long. But, fog and rain were forecasted for the afternoon and night. A weather system would be arriving and in addition to likely seeing nothing at those times of day, we couldn’t risk potential flooding or landslides preventing us from driving home the following day.
They aren’t guaranteed to happen but, with heavy rains, they sure can and we couldn’t risk that. However, the biggest wrench in the plan happened much sooner, one that was caused by lots of heavy rains in the days before October 12th.
Good Roads Gone Bad
I had planned on hitting the dawn chorus on a road that passes through rainforest in the Pueblo Nuevo area. It’s a place where I’ve seen everything from nunbirds to all three hawk-eagles and more. Being one of the better areas for night birding, it also works in those regards too.

A bit after three in the morning, we were out the door and into the dark, quiet night. It didn’t take long to reach the forest but that was as far as we got! The gravel road I have driven many times was caked in wet clay mud, just the kind that can slip you right off the road. We might have been able to do it in a four-wheel drive but even then, I’m not so sure.
I was surprised as I had never seen that road in those conditions, even after rainy weather. Not being able to bird that road was an early blow to the Big Day plan but I’m just grateful we extracted ourselves before getting stuck!
At least we could still bird part of the road and hopefully get enough forest species. I figured we could also still do well with night birds.
Owls and Thrushes in the Night
We listened to the skies from a hill that overlooked marsh and forest. I hoped that owl voices would carry, that the potoos would respond. As soon as I stepped out of the car, the calls of Swainson’s Thrushes filtered down from the sky. Much to our good fortune, it didn’t take long to hear a couple Gray-cheeked Thrushes and a Veery; two uncommon species for Costa Rica!
Around the same time, owls started calling too. Not many, but one of each is enough! A couple Crested Owls called and kept at it until just before dawn, Middle American Screech trilled, and distant Spectacled and Mottled Owls sounded off. Oddly enough, I wasn’t hearing the owl I usually hear the most at that spot, Black and White Owl.
Eventually, one of those beautiful owls called too, a quiet sound, as if reluctant to participate in October Global Big Day. I also heard hoped for Short-tailed Nighthawk but despite whistling like them, Uniform Crake and Central American Pygmy-Owl were no shows.
I was also surprised that the potoos were quiet! I usually hear Great Potoo in that area and we had a Common Potoo near there in March but then again, those birds are usually further along that road, inside the forest.
The eBird list from that pre-dawn birding: eBird Checklist – 12 Oct 2024 – Pueblo Nuevo Lagoon – 14 species .
Good Birding Weather = Constant Birds
As the skies lightened, I was happy that it wasn’t raining and that the birds were calling. Cloudy skies stayed with us for the rest of the morning and made for excellent avian action.
From the same spot where we listened for night birds, we recorded most possible parrot species including a pair of Great Green Macaws that flew directly at us. A bit later on, we would find the other two missing parrots, one of which was Scarlet Macaw.
The birds made it onto out day list one by one and with quick succession; Olive-crowned Yellowthroat singing from the marsh, a calling Laughing Falcon, Barred Antshrike and dozens of other species.

Unfortunately, I was not hearing enough of the forest species we “needed”. We just weren’t close enough to intact forest but maybe we could reach that habitat?
We tried a few other roads in the area, ones I have often birded and found deep forest species but those roads had also gone bad! There was no way we were going to reach intact lowland rainforest in time for the plan to work. That was frustrating but at least the birding was great, there was still lots to see!
Migration!

October is migration month in Costa Rica and Saturday was a good day for it. From the start, roosting Turkey Vultures decorated the trees and we also picked out Mississippi Kites and Broad-winged Hawks waiting for better flying weather.
We quickly turned up Great-crested Flycatcher and had good numbers of Scarlet Tanagers, Summer Tanagers, Dickcissels, and other migrants throughout the morning. Eventually, the raptors took flight and etched the skies with swirling kettles as swallows and Chimney Swifts flew past.
In one of those kettles, we had our oddest bird of the day, a Magnificent Frigatebird! Although unusual, we do see frigatebirds flying over the mountains now and then. This one seemed to be moving with a group of Broad-winged Hawks that also had our sole Swainson’s Hawk of the day.
A Fine Morning of Birding in Sarapiqui
Overall, it was a great morning of birding in Sarapiqui. That’s no surprise, that area is typically nice and birdy. Some of the highlights were an adult Gray-headed Kite perched at the edge of forest, the aforementioned macaws, Gartered Trogons perched on roadside wires, Bat Falcon, the list goes on…
Oddly enough, one of our best birds was Yellow-breasted Chat. In Costa Rica, this species in an uncommon migrant that skulks in dense vegetation. Like some anti-social crake, they are out there but good luck seeing them!
On one of the only back roads we were able to drive (some roads behind Tirimbina), we found ourselves moving through an area of interesting, dense second growth. It looked perfect for a chat. I played its cat-like call without expecting a response but sure enough, one called back! It still refused to come into the open but at least one vocalized and I know where one might spend the winter.
At some point in the morning, we realized that we wouldn’t be able to access intact lowland rainforest in time for the full birding plan. With that in mind, we slowed down and enjoyed the rest of the morning birding in the Sarapiqui area. Our Global Big Day had become a Big Morning but we weren’t complaining. We still saw a lot! Check out the trip report: October Global Big Day 2024 – eBird Trip Report I hope it gets you ready for your birding trip to Costa Rica!
To learn more about birding around Pueblo Nuevo, Sarapiqui, and hundreds of other sites in Costa Rica, support this blog by purchasing my 900 plus page ebook, “How to See, Find, and Identify Birds in Costa Rica”. I hope to see you here!