Hello OBOLites -
Taghrid and I made our first visit to Costa Rica this past August, and what an
amazing trip it was. We stayed for two weeks, and saw a total of 290 species,
of which 190 were lifers for us, and of those 32 were endemic species. After
studying a lot of tour itineraries, we self-organized our own tour (at
tremendous cost savings), and wound up with a sampler tour of Costa Rica, with
stays in the following areas:
• Volcano Turialba region (Rancho Naturalista)
• High mountains of the Savegre River region
• Tropical lowlands near the Maquenque River
• La Selva Biological Station
• Tortuguero National Park
• Volcano Tenorial National Park (Rio Celeste)
Each of the areas that we visited would be worthy of a two-week trip by itself,
so I can see many future trips to Costa Rica in the hazy future :-). We did not
visit the Pacific side of the country, so there’s likely some similarly amazing
birding areas to be found there as well.
Anyways, for those interested in looking at some birds, instead of reading a
long missive about someone’s Costa Rica trip, here are a couple of links:
Costa Rica birds: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmJqEDKR
Costa Rica flora and non-avian fauna: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmJqY4YA
Word of caution: the two above albums contain 570+ and 330+ photos respectively
(down from over 18,000, after months of weeding, sorting, etc). Anyways, lots
of photos - enjoy!
Any comments, feedback, corrections to mis-identifications, etc, are most
welcome.
Good birding, in Oregon and elsewhere,
Nagi & Taghrid
