Newbie Birding Adventures: Costa Rican Adventure

Costa Rican Adventure

Ever since I’ve been involved in birding, I’ve heard about the marvelous birding opportunities in Costa Rica. There are still numerous species I haven’t seen in the U.S., but when I learned that I could see hundreds of species in a week or two in Costa Rica, I just had to go there. Luckily, two friends were just as excited about embarking on this adventure as I was. We left on a Road Scholar birding trip in early February, and it far exceeded our expectations. We each increased our life list by over 200 species.

I could go on and on about the trip, but this blog is about birds, so I’ll limit myself to sharing pictures of a few of them. Unfortunately, since I am fairly new to photography as well as to birding, I didn’t always have the correct settings for the changing conditions, especially in the rain forest. There were also times we were in a small boat, which took us to see birds we otherwise wouldn’t have seen. However, small boats sometimes rock, making clear photos difficult. One of my many treasured memories is of riding in such a boat, shortly after dawn, drifting down a hazy river, with herons, egrets, and various other picturesque birds in trees and along the shore and caimans lying at water’s edge.

I am still going through the thousands of pictures I took, deleting, deleting, deleting. Over the next days, or weeks, I’ll post some of the better ones. Not all of these will be of the best quality, but I am hoping people will overlook that and focus on the birds.

Inca Dove

Black and White Owls

This Boat-billed Heron was very hard to see from the boat. It was deep in the foliage.

This picture of a Scarlet Macaw was taken from a great distance. Notice that it's sitting on a blue barrel. These barrels are put out for the Macaws to nest in. This is a bird that should NOT be kept as a pet. It is very unhappy in captivity.