How many birds can you see in Costa Rica? A couple hundred? Yes and a lot more. As with birding anywhere, your final Costa Rica tally depends on where you go birding, how often you go birding, the number of birding days, and how you carry out the avian observing endeavor (like, if you just hang in a hotel garden or spend hours on forest trails to track down quail-doves and glimpse RVG cuckoos).
Ten days can easily reach 300 species, two weeks can turn up 400 plus, and more than 600 in a year is pretty normal. That’s a healthy bunch of birds and yet, Costa Rica’s got more! The current official bird list for Costa Rica stands at 942 (947 if we count additional, yet to be accepted species) and now, as of November 15th, we’ve got one more bird to add.
That most recent addition is a bird I saw yesterday on a Tarcoles River boat trip. No long slog in a remote area, no border birding in search of overshoots from Panama or Nicaragua, just a regular, enriching and easy going boat ride on the Tarcoles.
Before boarding the boat with Jose’s Crocodile Tours, I did realize we could see something weird or out of range or odd. Such birding fortune is always possible at that particular spot but, rarities are never the norm. It’s worth being aware of possibilities but you can’t have any expectations. Better to just open the mind to birding, watch, listen, and go with the birding flow.
Yesterday, that strategy seems to have worked. It’s also a reminder to check every bird and, if you don’t recognize it right away, take a closer look.
It was a quiet morning on the river, high brown water typical of a wet season river that drains the stormy and densely populated Central Valley. Being the low season, we were also the only boats on the river, the others moored and waiting for crocodile viewing sometime December.
Our boat driver Isaac motored upstream and Barbara Seith and I enjoyed the easy-going and productive birding. Great Egrets waded and waited for hand outs that we failed to provide. The occasional Bare-throated Tiger-heron stalked the river edge along with other wading regulars.
Yellow-crowned Night-Herons perched on driftwood, Mangrove Swallows fluttered alongside the boat, and we scanned for more birds; Tropical Kingbirds and Great Kiskadees perched on tall riverside grass, a quick and distant flyby of an Amazon Kingfisher, and a Peregrine flapping into view, lazily checking out its killing domain.
Upriver we continued, seeing thick-knees, spoonbills, and other regulars but not much else. It was still good, ultimately better to be boating a tropical river and looking for birds as opposed to say driving or walking on nearly birdless busy streets.
On that upriver journey, I noticed a tall grayish bird and as I did with most birds, automatically raised my binos to my eyes. After nearly half a century of focusing on birds, that movement has become a reflex, a gesture as quick and normal as smiling when the rain stops and the sun makes its welcome appearance.
As I moved the focus wheel and the bird came into view, my expected “just another Great Blue Heron” morphed into a not Great Blue Heron. Time seemed to slow as I realized I was looking at a more uniformly colored bird and one with a reddish or rusty front. But no, it couldn’t be…um…that just didn’t make sense and yet, there I was, undoubtedly looking at a Sandhill Crane.
Costa Rica’s first Sandhill Crane. And it was standing there right in front of us like that was completely normal. Except that’s not! At least not in Costa Rica!
I asked Barbara to please take photos of this country first, told the boat driver likewise and then we worked on getting the word out. Thankfully, we had a good signal and, in real time, sent messages to forums and friends that we were looking at a Sandhill Crane, that this was no joke, and tried to relay the exact location.
Although the bird was a clear Sandhill Crane, it was still sort of unbelievable. I mean, I had other species on my radar as birds that could and should show up but Sandhill Crane really wasn’t one of them. In retrospect, I guess it should have been, after all, the bird is a long distance migrant and has a large population but, they don’t usually fly further than central Mexico.
I figured some pelagic species or maybe a Bar-tailed Godwit or Tibetan or Siberian Sand-Plover or Altamira Oriole and other possible species I included on the Costa Rica Birds Field Guide app but Sandhill Crane? Well, I guess I need to add that one too!
A country first is nothing to scoff at but, with other life birds to look for, we got back on our birding mission and boated on the rest of the river. Nope, no other new birds for Costa Rica but it was still good.
As for my fellow local birders, they got the word and several made their way to Tarcoles as quick as they could. Jose set up boat trips for a big discount and they went looking for the crane. Unfortunately, it was not in the same spot and, for much of the day, I feared it had left and would turn into a major dip (chasing and missing a bird). Although some did miss it, those who arrived later or stuck around until 4 p.m. did manage to refind and see the star bird.
Today, the day after, more birders went looking for the crane and some did see it in flight. No close looks but at least they saw it and, so far, it seems to still be hanging around. Hopefully, it will stick around a lot longer; staying for a few more months would be nice!
Thanks to Barbara Seith for taking the picture shown above and more documentation of this country first. See more at our ebird checklist from that eventful boat ride and more of her photos and artwork at her site.