A distant Long-tailed Silky-Flycatcher still makes a satisfactory image when digiscoped. Photo: Gary Rosenberg
For its size, Costa Rica may be one of the richest countries in the world for birds, with more than 800 species in an area the size of West Virginia…and it’s only two and a half hours by air from Miami! We have selected what we consider the ideal place for a short digiscoping tour: Carara National Park. Located on the Pacific coast in a transition zone between wet, humid forest to the south and dry, thorn-laden forest to the north, Carara and its vicinity boast a birdlist of more than 350 species. We’ll stay at one very comfortable hotel with a lovely pool and great birding right on the grounds, and best of all only five minutes from Carara. The trails at Carara are perfect for digiscoping”wide and full of birds”and the birding here is fantastic: five species of trogons, seven species of large Thryothorus wrens, great regional endemics such as Black-hooded Antshrike, leks of the incredible Orange-collared Manakin, and Scarlet Macaws perched right over your head! We’ll take a short boat trip on the Tarcoles River for herons and waterbirds, and we’ll visit an area of dry forest for a number of regional specialties”all within 20-30 minutes of our hotel. At the end of the tour we’ll make a day trip to the central highlands for regional endemics and Resplendent Quetzal.
Day 1: The trip begins in San José, Costa Rica. Night in San José.
Days 2-5: We’ll start early this morning and drive the short hour and a half to the Pacific coast and Carara National Park. Carara is an amazingly birdy area and superb for bird digiscoping. We’ll walk along a level, wide dirt road through the park where morning birdlists usually exceed 100 species. The photographic opportunities should be many, with numbers of species that like to sit in the open, such as Slaty-tailed, Black-headed, Violaceous, Black-throated and Baird’s Trogons, Scarlet Macaw, Fiery-billed Aracari, Pale-billed, Lineated, Hoffman’s and Golden-naped Woodpeckers, Boat-billed Heron and Bare-throated Tiger-Heron, just to name a few. The forest is relatively open here and we’ll wander along several excellent forest trails to practice our inside-the-forest photography on species such as Orange-collared Manakin, which will be present on known leks, Spectacled Antpitta, Black-faced Antthrush, Tawny-winged, Long-tailed and Black-striped Woodcreepers, Golden-crowned Spadebill and Blue-crowned Manakin.
We’ll visit the nearby mouth of the Tarcoles River and its mangrove-lined estuary. At low tide the mudflats are often covered with egrets and herons, gulls and terns, as well as shorebirds, and in the mangroves we’ll look for specialties such as Mangrove Black-Hawk, Mangrove Vireo, Panama Flycatcher and Scrub Greenlet. In the late afternoon we’ll take boat trip on the estuary where we should get close-up views of all the common birds, and we’ll search for the rarer Rufous-necked Wood-Rail and Mangrove Hummingbird.
In the dry forest less than 30 minutes from our hotel we’ll see a completely different set of birds, including the flashy Turquoise-browed Motmot, Cinnamon Hummingbird, Nutting’s Flycatcher, Banded Wren, White-lored Gnatcatcher, Rufous-capped Warbler, Olive Sparrow and possibly Spot-breasted Oriole. One evening we’ll wait for sunset and watch the Scarlet Macaws flying to roost. Nights at the Villa Lapas.
Day 6: After a final full morning of birding in the Carara followed by a buffet lunch we’ll work our way back to San José. Night in San José.
Day 7: We have added a full day trip into the central highlands south of San José, for we feel that no birding trip to Costa Rica is complete without Resplendent Quetzal. Our goal will be to see and photograph a quetzal today, and we’ll travel to the San Gerardo de Dota area along the Savegre River, the best place in the country for quetzals. It’s also ideal for many of the “Chiriqui” highland endemics in this region of Central America, and we’ll look for such birds as Black Guan, Volcano Hummingbird, White-throated Mountain-Gem, Black-capped Flycatcher, Yellow-winged Vireo, Sooty and Mountain Robins, Black-faced Solitaire, Black-billed Nightingale-Thrush, Flame-throated Warbler, Collared Redstart and Large-footed and Yellow-thighed Finches. We’ll have lunch at Savegre Lodge, where feeders attract a dazzling array of hummingbirds and there is usually a quetzal nesting on the grounds, and then drive back to San José for a farewell dinner. Night in San José.
Day 8: The trip ends this morning in San José.
Updated: 26 February 2007
Prices
- 2007 price about $2,870
- Single Occupancy Supplement $230
Notes
A brief description of digiscoping tours can be found at http://wingsbirds.com/tours/digiscopingtours. Maximum group size seven with one leader; 14 with two leaders.