[wisb] Costa Rica, fairly short report

From: "Seegert, Greg" <gseegert@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "[Wisb]" <wisbirdn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 22:57:27 -0400
All
I birded in Costa Rica for 11 days with a group of Wisbirders organized by Tom 
and Carol Sykes.  I want to thank this close-knit group for allowing me to join 
them.  There was a recent request on Wisbirdn for info re Costa Rica so I 
thought this report might be useful.   I saw way too many birds to follow my 
usual format so instead I'll summarize things, mostly by groups and include 
info on where we were.  Should also mention that we were fortunate to have 
Richard Garrigues, author of "The birds of CR" as our guide.  Speaking of 
guides, unless you've had a fair amount of experience birding in Central  
America or northern S America, I suggest you go with a group or hire a guide 
for your group.  I know lots of you like ID challenges but some of these groups 
(e.g., woodcreepers) are very hard to ID, others forage near the tops of 150' 
tall trees, and others secretly scurry around on the forest floor where it is 
dark and dim even at mid-day.

Our group total was 398 spp, of which I saw 370. This included  19 
hawks/falcons/eagles/kites,  15 pigeons/doves, 10 parrots and macaws, 27 
hummers, 7 trogons, 4 toucans/aracaris, 5 manakins,
5 motmots, 10 woodpeckers, 14 furnarids (mostly woodcreepers), 8 
antbirds/antwrens/antshrikes, 36 flycatchers (you'll need a lot of luck to ID 
many of these without a guide),  4 becards, 4 cotinguas, 5 vireos, 13 wrens, 22 
wood warblers, 25 tanagers/honeycreepers,  14 blackbird/orioles,  15 sparrows,  
6 euphonias, and  numerous other groups.   One thing I did like is that most 
jungle birds have fairly low frequency calls (i.e., even with my poor hearing, 
I could hear them).

Some of my favorite birds were great tinamou, great curassow, black-breasted 
wood -partridge, tiny hawk, laughing falcon, chiriqui quail-dove, white-crowned 
parrot, scarlet macaw, mottled owl, violet sabrewing, snowcap (a hummer), tody 
motmot, whitenecked puffbird, any toucan, olivaceous piculet (a tiny 
woodpecker), chestnut-backed antbird, streak-chested antpitta, eyeringed 
flatbill (a flycatcher), scale-crested pygmy tyrant (another FC), lovely 
cotingua, three-wattled bellbird, all the manakins,  resplendent quetzal, sooty 
thrush, black-cheeked warbler, flame-throated warbler, many of the tangers but 
especially bay-headed and spangle-cheeked, Nicaraguan seedfinch and all the 
euphonias.

Places we visited were Irazu Volcano, Arenal Volcano, Cano Negro area, the 
well-known Monteverde cloud forest, Celeste Mt Lodge, La Selva Biological 
Station, and Carara Biological Reserve.  Birding was good to great at all these 
places except Celeste Mt Lodge (though it produced some of our rarest birds 
like tody motmot and rufous-winged tanager).   I'd say, Arenal, La Selva , 
Carara,  and the Monte Verde area fall into the don't miss category.   At La 
Selva , I went down to the cafeteria for breakfast and spotted an ichthyologist 
from IN that I knew....small world indeed.

All in all, I heartily recommend CR.  Also, the infrastructure for handling 
tourists is excellent so there are plenty of places to stay and bird.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Greg Seegert
Deerfield, IL

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[wisb] Costa Rica, fairly short report

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