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WINGS Birding Tours – Photo Gallery

Costa Rica in Spring

In a mountainous country as small as Costa Rica, we visit many habitats, here Bosque del Rio Tigre lodge in the Pacific Lowlands…
…with the regionally endemic Baird’s Trogon often right around the lodge buildings…
…and Boat-billed Herons at a pond a short distance down a trail…
…and this is one of the best regions in the country to see Scarlet Macaws.
Trails here take us through forest as well as up a small river with refreshingly cool water…
…while in the drier areas oo the Pacific side of the country we have a good chance of seeing Turquoise-browed Motmot.
A different set of birds await us in the Caribbean lowlands, here a view from breakfast at our lodge in Horquetas.
…where Passerini’s Tanager is a stunning though common sight…
…though it will take some effort and luck to see Sunbittern along the river.
Nicaraguan Seed-Finch is even more local, but we always make some effort to see it…
…and we may have to be lucky to find Semiplumbeous Hawk as it sits mid-story while hunting.
We also bird some mid-elevations, such as near Arenal Volcano, though it isn’t always this visible.
Crested Guans are unusually common in this region…
…the popular Yellow-throated Toucan is widespread in middle elevations as well as lowlands on both slopes…
…and the noisy Montezuma Oropendola is also common, dominating at feeders.
Once in a while we get very lucky when a Great Potoo is spotted on its cryptic day-roost.
Higher elevations, such as at Monteverde have a very different set of birds…
including Rufous-collared Sparrow, a familiar bird of open areas…
…Long-tailed Silky-flycatcher which needs a good berry crop, preferably mistletoe, to be common.
We also bird the Talamanca Highlands, where the flower-filled grounds attract many birds…
…including Purple-throated Mountain-gem, one of 35 or more species of hummingbirds we could see…
…and we also go out at night a few times to look for owls, with this Spectacled Owl a prize on a recent tour…
…and if wf we don’t see owls, we could see something else exciting, such as a Kinkajou, opossum, or this Mexican Porcupine.
A White-faced Capuchin is always part of a complete natural history experience in Costa Rica…
…and we also usually come across at least one of the two species of sloth, this one a Brown-throated Three-toed with a baby.
If there’s a chance we’ll look for special critters in addition to birds…
…such as this Gulfo Dulce Poison Frog…
…or this Green-and-black Poison Frog.
There are some fabulous butterflies which may make some of us put birding on hold for a bit, such as this Pink Clearwing Satyr…
…or this Guinanan Jewlemark.

 

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