This is 2025. This is the latest of the “new years” and you can bet that 1,000s of birders are already working on their year lists. Or just keeping track of the birds they identify, or traveling to see birds, or simply watching and enjoying birds. Pausing to focus on a cardinal’s red plumage punctuating a snowy landscape. Hearing the echoes of crow calls as a cold breeze sneaks through quiet and suspended winter woods.
In Costa Rica, I have been catching the voices of chattering parakeets flying from morning roosts, interrupted by the shouts of Great Kiskadees, and seen a few hundred other birds. Yes, a week into 2025 and already more than 300 species and if you do enough birding in Costa Rica, that’s more than normal. Bird enough for a week in the right places and 300 plus birds are expected.
Thanks to guiding in some of the right places, I’ve also been fortunate to begin this year with several quality birds. All birds are good to see but, whether because of scarcity or anti-social behavior, some are more challenging or unexpected than others; such are the “quality birds”. Those are the pearls, emeralds, and aquamarines of our ongoing feathered treasure hunt and when you keep a year list, they are also the double and triple bonus birds. These are the some of the more polished avian gems I’ve seen during this first week of 2025. There won’t be many pictures but I’ll try and tell you what it was like to experience them.
Black-eared Wood-Quail
Misty, breezy mornings aren’t the best for birding but they’ll give you thought-provoking ambiance. I was doing my best to whistle in birds and eke them out of mossy cold front surroundings on the dead end road to Sensoria. Yeah, it might sound like a scene from a dystopian tale (especially with signs warning us of imminent volcanic danger) but no, literally, that’s what we were doing.
Such a road exists on the northern, forested flank of Rincon de la Vieja Volcano and, if you catch it right, you’ll have fantastic birding. “Right” being calm and dry weather, and us birding in waves of terrestrial clouds, the birding was rather challenging. However, we still saw and heard birds, uncommon ones too, birds like Black-eared Wood-Quail.
They never came close enough to see but it was rewarding to hear their voices rock and roll in our wonderfully forested surroundings. This is the rarest wood-quail in Costa Rica, one only seen in the more remote and intact rainforests of the Caribbean slope, especially foothill sites on the northern volcanoes.
Ornate Hawk-Eagle
I saw this bird just yesterday, I can still see the heavy raptor flap its way along a ridge line above Cinchona. Yeah, the famous birding cafe with feeders and photographers and smiling people is home to a pair of Ornate Hawk-Eagles. They might not pay a visit, might prefer to freak out their fellow forest denizens away from people but you can bet they check it out, at least on occasion.
With so many Black Guans coming to the feeders these days, maybe one of the hawk-eagles will make a play for one? They do eat them you know, those and even macaws and small monkeys. I suppose that’s unsurprising for a hefty, monster goshawk, that’s sort of what an Ornate Hawk-Eagle is.
I saw that choice bird thanks to Niall Keogh. While birding in “Old Cinchona”, he spotted it soaring at a distance, a non vulture using the same thermals as a Black Vulture. If you are ever in Ireland and wouldn’t mind some guided birding, Niall will show you more than you think was possible.
Lesser Ground-Cuckoo
The easiest ground-cuckoo is common in Costa Rica but it’s always a quality bird. How not with those Egyptian flavored eyes?
On January 1st, we had one while birding the Ceiba-Orotina road, more or less by accident. Stripe-headed Sparrows were high-pitch chipping from some brush. Common birds, easy to see but still nice to look at. Must have been why I automatically raised my bins.
I glimpsed a sparrow tail but found myself focusing in on the painted face of a ground-cuckoo! Happily, the bird stayed long enough for all of us to see it.
Bare-necked Umbrellabird
Whoah! Yes, that early in the year. Go to the right place for it, hang out long enough, and you might see one. At least that was my chance strategy. Unless you find the right fruiting tree in the right place, that really is about all you can do; I’m glad that birding gambit paid off!
Niall and had already been trudging through the mud-root trail at Centro Manu for a couple hours. We had heard and seen some manakins and a few other birds but not a whole lot else. I knew umbrellabird had to be in there but despite the bird’s silence and crow dimensions, it’s still a crapshoot. All you can do is stop every few steps, scan the forest and repeat, keep on and hope you notice something fly or a dark bird obscured by green that doesn’t end up being a toucan or an oropendola.
I had stopped and noticed palm nuts on the ground, food that can attract rodents and, in turn, snakes. I scanned the ground, wondering if I might discern a hidden serpent when I was interrupted by a large black shape flying past us at close range.
“Umbrellabird! There it is!”
Thankfully, this odd bird of birds perched nearby and stayed there, only 20 feet above the ground. It didn’t seem to be afraid of us as we watched it at leisure, watched the adult make Bare-necked Umbrellabird slowly turn its head back and forth, using its big obsidian eyes to peer into the forest.
We marveled in the rare moment and how much it resembled a goliath manakin topped with a pompadour, how its neck was touched with shining iridescence. A truly unreal bird, a reminder that our world, this natural place, is replete with living treasure.
The umbrellabird swooped to another perch to do the same forest scanning moves and then another, eventually moving out of sight although not before we saw it catch and eat a huge insect, one as big as a frog. I was reminded of Accipiters and owls that do the same act, moving from one perch to another, always stopping to carefully watch for prey.
We saw one umbrellabird but there’s more at Centro Manu. The local guide there, Kenneth, has also recently seen a female and immature (and Crested Owl and other birds). You might want to visit.
Snowy Cotinga
After the umbrellabird, we enjoyed lunch at Centro Manu and ventured onwards. Opting to look for lowland birds around La Selva, we enjoyed views of Chestnut-colored Woodpecker and some other key birds but no Snowy Cotinga.
I figured we would check a spot near Chilamate where I have often seen the surreal things. That figuring paid off, that and maybe the luck of the cotinga because, amazingly, a male was waiting for us. As I pulled into the road, I noticed a bird perched on top of a bare tree. It looked small, it couldn’t be but, I had to of course check it.
It turns out it wasn’t as small as I had assumed. The perched thingee was a full white bird with the slightest hint of gray on its head, a short tail, funny shaped head and beady black eye. That’s what a male snowy Cotinga looks like, we hadn’t even stepped out of the car!
We had also arrived just in time, two minutes later it swooped off and away to hidden branches.
All motmots
Six motmot species reside in Costa Rica, not all of them are easy to see. As luck would have it, I was in the right places to see all six of them. Turquoise-browed was an easy, Rollerish and lapis, mosaic-pieced bird on wires near Orotina (more than one).
Broad-billed and Rufous were rainforest beauties in expected places. As per usual, the Rufous grandfather-clocked its tail back and forth, pausing before switching it back to the other side.
The tough ones were at Rincon de la Vieja, on that same mossy road where wood-quail rollicked and Nightingale Wrens enticed. Thankfully, the Tody Motmot responded to my whistling and perched within easy sight. It’s not like other motmots; more like a green puppet with a fancy face. Then again, all motmots got puppet attributes but the Tody would still be most at home on a children’s show.
The other tough one was the Keel-billed Motmot, another green beauty just up the road from where we took in the Tody.
Then there’s the final motmot, the 6th and easy, common one. No less beautiful, we saw a Lesson’s Motmot in an expected place and situation; perched on a concrete post next to shaded coffee.
Rufous-breasted Antthrush
If birders in Costa Rica see an antthrush, it’s usually the Black-faced variety. That’s still a great bird to see, still a forest-crakish creature that whistles far below crowns of massive trees. However, Costa Rica also has two other antthrushes, two other species less frequently seen, one of which is probably also endemic to Costa Rica and Panama (a classic, intriguing “future split”).
That would be the Black-headed Antthrush, a bird fairly easy to hear in several foothill spots and, not too tough to see at Pocosol and some other sites. The other antthrush is the Rufous-breasted, the toughest and least common of the three in Costa Rica. You’ll hear it at Tapanti and a few other spots but laying eyes on it is another story.
Cotinga luck being with us, we found ourselves in that other story on the track above Cinchona. It’s a slippery road, unless you are very fit and into hiking and fending off confused friendly dogs that become unfriendly, I can’t recommend it. But, the forests up there do have some good birds (see above for Ornate hawk-Eagle), tough antthrush included.
We heard at least three and one sounded close enough to give it a try. However, I knew it would still be a challenge as we still needed a view into the dense forest understory, a spot where we could see the ground to watch the bird walk into view (such is the antthrush way).
Fantastically, after a good deal of speaking with the bird in its whistle language, it gave us a break and popped into sight! It was just a moment but that span was enough to claim views of polished jasper, of a bird that brings me back to the Andes; a Rufous-breasted Antthrush.
Blue-and-Gold Tanager
It’s gorgeous, it’s a tanager, and it’s not easy to see. Well, these days, it is! Go to the San Luis Adventure Center and one might fly into your face. Not quite but close.
With such unruly cool and wet weather for so long, cloud forest birds are having trouble finding their favorite fruits. They’re moving to lower elevations and doing whatever it takes to survive. One of those actions is eagerly feasting on bananas or plantains or other stuff at the San Luis Canopy.
When the guy walked in with the fruit, tanager madness took place. There were maybe 30 Silver-throateds, a few Emeralds, and other birds that literally flew at us and perched within arm’s length. Two of those other birds were chunkier and bigger than the other tanagers and plumaged in yellow and dark, blackish-blue.
Yes, Blue-and-Gold Tanagers, uncommon Bangsia genus tanagers of fantastic mossy forest, just the type of habitat at the San Luis Canopy.
During this first week of birding, I also had other nice birds, lots, including Long-billed Dowitcher (it’s uncommon in Costa Rica!), two massive muppet Great Potoos, beautiful Bay-headed and Crimson-collared Tanagers and more. There’s always lots more birds waiting to be seen in Costa Rica.
To learn more about the sites mentioned in this post and how to see these and hundreds of other birds, support this blog by purchasing my Costa Rica bird finding guide, “How to See, Find, and Identify Birds in Costa Rica“. I hope you see these birds, I hope to see you here in Birdlandia.