pelagic birding in Costa Rica

Seawatching at Puntarenas- September 20, 2025

Costa Rica is flanked by two oceans; drive quick enough, get lucky with traffic and weather and you can visit both in a day. Not stopping to look at any of the hundreds of bird species in between would be an incredible birding shame but, if you were so marine inclined, you could do it.

Or, you could do better at managing your birding time and go seawatching! Sure, in Costa Rica, you could certainly seawatch on both coasts. You might not see much but there’s always a certain degree of therapeutic benefits associated with oggling the waves. The funny thing about seawatching is that although you can technically watch for birds on any coast, not all coasts have the birds, at least not near shore, or in enough numbers to breach birding appeal.

Take Costa Rica for example, we’ve got many wonderful spots to watch those tropical waves but few of them really bring the birds. Yeah, no matter where you look, you’ll probably see something with feathers but, more variety calls for strategic spots at strategic times (just like any seawatching hotspot).

One of the best spots for seawatching in Costa Rica is an old port city situated on a narrow peninsula that points into the Gulf of Nicoya, just about where the inner and outer parts of the gulf meet. It’s a sort of a tropical headland at a joining of waters and an estuary replete with sand bars. Now if those sand bars were closer Puntarenas would be a major shorebird watching hotspot. Alas, the birds are a bit too far to properly observe them but, the port is still good for scanning the water, for getting in some good old fashioned seawatching.

Knowing that Least Terns should still be moving through and, dearly wanting to see some of those dainty birds as they make their annual journey south, yesterday, we paid a morning visit to the Puntarenas lighthouse. The drive to the coast was slowed a bit by truck traffic but we still got there by 7 a.m., still early enough to catch some of the morning seabird action.

These are some highlights and thoughts from this birding sojourn.

Take a closer look

Upon arrival, I looked at the water and saw nary a Royal Tern. Those birds are a given, not seeing them did not bode well. “At least there was the ocean” I thought, “maybe something will fly by or I’ll see a fish”.

After exiting the car and briefly conversing with the car watcher guy (aka “watcheemon”) to yes, assure that I as aware he was watching over my vehicle, despite my low bar hopes, I set up the scope and started scanning with binos. Lo and behold, the birds were there, they were just mostly horizon birds, mostly things flying way out there over distant water.

But there were a lot, they looked like innumerable gnats on the horizon.

The ferry would have been pretty darn good

Upon seeing that lots of birds were out there, I realized it would have been a good day to take the ferry. Why hadn’t I thought of that? That’s right, it was because we would have had to leave the house by 3 and weren’t too keen on going back and forth across the gulf. But, if only we had!

The birds were out there and some. It looked promising and was more or less the same time of year when I had my best birding ferry ride some years ago.

Least Terns

It didn’t take long before a few Least Terns flew by; tiny terns with quick wingbeats, all in dapper white winter plumage brushed with bits of black. Throughout my 90 minutes of seawatching, small groups flew past and foraged by the distant sand bar. Even at a distance, it was easy to pick out their distinctive, repetitive quick dive foraging.

I put down 50 for the list but there was probably more. It was fun to compare them with the most abundant bird on the scene, another small tern often found in the Gulf of Nicoya. It’s a bird that nests in northern marshes, one that brings back visions of smart-looking birds hovering and swooping over the Tonawanda wetlands.

Clouds of Black Terns

A typical feeding flock of Black Terns in the gulf.

Like I was saying, the Black Tern was the big bird on the scene, the one that ruled my seawatching day. Small numbers constantly flew past, most fairly far off shore. The largest numbers were way out there, clouds of them. In one such cloud, at a wavery 60 X magnification, as much as I tried to pick out another species, all I could see was a massive Brown Pelican plowing through the Black Tern ranks to feast on the same unseen sardine banquet.

A few other groups foraged a bit closer and in better light and those were the ones to focus on. Those were the flocks that would have been exciting to watch from the ferry deck. Although such flocks can be solely composed of Black Terns, they are also the situations that attract other, less common species, including the ones mentioned below.

I should also mention putting down 1,000 Black Terns on my eBird list. That was a pretty conservative estimate, there were probably a lot more.

A few distant pelagic birds

A Brown Noddy from another day shares a piece of driftwood with a Black Tern.

Fortunately, the scanning paid off, the seawatching revealed some of the seabird bounty from the Gulf of Nicoya. Try as I did to pick up a storm-petrel or two, no luck there. However, staring at the Black Terns and carefully panning the waves did turn up a couple Bridled Terns (!). The distant looks ruled out divining their age but that’s alright, I’m fine with ageless Bridled Terns, smiling with picking out larger, longer winged, gray backed terns that sliced through the tern flocks.

I was also alright with a Brown Noddy doing the same; a larger, dark brown bird foraging with the smaller migrants from the north. The third pelagic bird species was hardly a glimpse but I couldn’t unsee it, couldn’t deny noticing the fluttering flight and banking of another regular in these estuarine waters; a Galapagos Shearwater.

It was less than a second but it was enough to know I saw it. I bet more were out there and who knows what else? I hadn’t picked up any Sabine’s or phalaropes or jaegers but those are moving through too, might have been some visible from the ferry.

No ferry for me but the seawatching was still good, still therapeutic and highlighted with a jumping stingray and a pair of surfacing Bottlenose Dolphins. It was good stuff, I am grateful.

To learn more about birding Puntarenas and hundreds of other sites in Costa Rica, please support this blog by purchasing my Costa Rica birding site guide. I hope to see you here!

Lifer Benefits of Birding Costa Rica in Cabuya

Bird a place enough and the barrel of lifers gets emptied, bit by bit. Eventually, it only has room for the sneaky tough and unexpected birds; the ones you never imagine seeing, the species relegated to the rarest of blue moon birding moments.

Having birded Costa Rica for some time, that’s how it is for me and that’s Ok! Like others who have been birding for a lifetime, I find myself delving into bird behavior, moving further into the finer details of birding. Oh, I’ll still take those lifers any which way I can but I’m pleased to watch the Cliff Swallows fly high overhead and imagine what they see, the mountains and plains where they eventually go, to places where I once worked in Colorado, the sun blasted former territories of the Comanche people. I’m grateful to listen to the songs of wrens and watch tanagers forage in a fruiting fig. But, give me a chance to see a new bird or two, there’s a good chance I’ll take it.

A few days ago, I got that lifer chance on a pelagic trip out of Malpais. There were some chances for new birds but even then, they weren’t guaranteed. For me, the open seas hold several lifer possibilities but most of those choice birds are much further than the limits of a day trip. A 6 hour trip holds less promise of new birds but a few were still very much possible and the rest, well, since I hadn’t seen them in a while, they were much appreciated pseudo lifers.

I didn’t really have any chances at new birds on land but anyone new to birding in Costa Rica would have a ball around Cabuya. There’s a good amount of habitat and we had some wonderful birding. The following are some reasons for and highlights of birding around Cabuya:

Good Forest on the Road to Malpais

The next time I go to Cabuya (I do plan on going back!), I look forward to some early morning birding on the road to Malpais. It’s not the best of roads and you might have some serious issues during the wet season but even then, I would walk or bike it because the habitat along much of the road is very birdy. Near Cabuya, the road passes through edge and second growth and then eventually passes through some rare and beautiful mature forest.

During a brief bit of dawn chorus, we heard most of the expected species including Gray-headed Dove, Gray-headed Tanager, Red-crowned Ant-Tanager, and other species. A few days birding along that road would be some sweet tropical birding.

Northern Potoo, Middle American Screech-Owl and More

On the afternoon of our arrival to Cabuya, local birder Wilfredo Villalobos brought us to a side road that can be good for night birds. We stayed until dusk, listening to the calls of the later afternoon and even heard a Middle American Screech-Owl. When it got dark enough for the small owl to feel comfortable about moving around, it indeed popped into brief view. To make the birding even better, at the same time, a Northern Potoo started calling!

Before long, we were looking at that choice nocturnal species before it flew off into the night. Wilfredo told us that he also gets Black-and-white Owl on that road. Other fairly common owl species in that area include Pacific Screech-Owl, Mottled Owl, and Spectacled Owl.

Gray-headed Doves and Other Interesting Species of the Nicoya Peninsula

The avifauna around Cabuya includes a nice assortment of dry and moist forest species. That means lots of Banded Wrens, Ruddy and Ivory-billed Woodcreepers, Thicket and Little Tinamous, Red-lored Parrot, Gray-headed Dove, perhaps the rare Violaceous Quail-Dove, and much more.

Seawatching

On the way to Cabuya, we made a few stops along the coast to check extensive rocky outcrops and ocean waters. The rocks had Ruddy Turnstones and at lest one Wandering Tattler (a rather rare and local bird in Costa Rica), and the ocean had 300 plus migrating Franklin’s Gulls (!). The gulls were in a massive raft just offshore and eventually took to the sky to continue migrating north. Many had the rosy blush of breeding plumage and with their chattering, they seemed to be excited about flying back up to the northern prairies.

I would love to visit on days with stormy weather or just do some morning seawatching during migration; I bet some really good birds fly by that spot.

Pelagic Trips

Thanks to Wilfredo Villalobos of Cabuya Bird Watching, a number of pelagic trips have been done in this area. What’s especially nice about these trips is that since Malpais is fairly close to deep water, the boat reaches the continental shelf in an hour or less. Since the boat captains are professional fishermen, they are in touch with other fishing boats, know how to find the fish, and therefore, the birds.

On our 6 hour trip, shortly after leaving the coast, upon hearing where the feeding Spinner Dolphins were, we made a beeline to that spot. Holy smokes. Try and imagine a few hundred Spinner Dolphins churning the water and jumping and spinning right next to the boat while being surrounded by hundreds of Brown Boobies, Wedge-tailed and Pink-footed Shearwaters along with smaller numbers of Galapagos Shearwaters, some Sooty Terns flying high overhead, and other birds joining the mix. On our wonderful day, those others included a few Arctic Terns, one Bridled Tern, a couple of Sabine’s Gulls, juvenile Long-tailed Jaeger, a few Brown Noddies, a few Pomarine Jaegers, some Least and Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrels, 1 Masked Booby, and 1 Red-footed Booby!

Lest I neglect to mention, oh yes and there was that one fantastic lifer, a White Tern!

This is a screenshot of picture taken by Diego Quesada, an excellent local guide and co-owner of Birding Experiences.

Also known as the Fairy Tern, this Snowy Cotinga looking seabird did us a favor by staying with the boat for a couple hours! I mean, we sort of almost got tired of looking at it. Not really, but we had to look away to keep checking for the other rare birds. Although we didn’t see them on that day, they were probably out there somewhere, we just had too many birds to check over too large of an area!

On the way back, we had more looks at storm-petrels and one sweet Red-necked Phalarope. You won’t see the same birds on every trip, as with all pelagics, they vary by season and other factors, BUT, you will certainly see something cool. To learn more about those trips, contact Wilfredo via his Cabuya Bird Watching page.

If you do manage to visit Cabuya for birding, make sure to contact Wilfredo Villalobos. He may be available to show you around, he and his wife have rooms for rent, and they also serve some tasty pizza!