Highlights from the Costa Rica in Spring tour

With no rained-out mornings or afternoons (and hardly any showers during non-birding times), we were able to make the most out of our thirteen wonderful days of birding in Costa Rica, seeing and hearing about 470 species of birds. We visited amazing variety of habitats from north to south, in both Pacific and Caribbean lowlands as well as high in the central and Talamanca highlands. We ended in the tour in the latter where we stumbled into a male Resplendent Quetzal feeding in patch of aguacatillo trees. He offered decent views of his back after a couple of fruitful sallies, but then before flying off into the forest uphill, he perched in the open facing us, and we were brought to our knees at the incredible train of upper tail coverts, glistening greens of the head and back, and pulsating red of the belly.