Venture to Costa Rica
March 26 - April 7, 2005

Costa Rica - it's always difficult to come up with a list of what was best about another great trip to a very pleasant and bird-filled country. Of course the birds top the bill with a singing (?) Three-wattled Bellbird that filled the scope, multiple pairs of Resplendent Quetzals, an adult Bicolored Hawk ambushing a Buff-fronted Quail-Dove (wow!), a pair of Black-and-white Owls, Orange-collared Manakins glowing in the forest, a Bare-throated Tiger-Heron nesting over the hotel, roosting Boat-billed Herons, a Sunbittern on its nest, masses of hummingbirds everywhere…..the list could go on and on.

Despite the delay of several flights coming down from the US, the trip started very well at a very comfortable hotel in a nice section of San Jose, where some of us had a pleasant dinner before heading to bed. Others……well, let's not go there! It's always good to get the "hardest" birds out of the way the first day, and our walk through the forests up near the Cerro produced excellent views of Quetzals - phew! It's plain sailing from now on - well, almost! Trout, rice and beans - we also had great food to start the trip off and had beer and hummingbirds in the mid-afternoon. After another very nice dinner that night it was off to the heat of the lowlands and our stay near one of my favorite places - Carara Preserve. The River Trail offers an easy walk through wonderful forest-edge habitat with LOTS of birds. One of the many highlights here had to be the outstanding views of a pair of Royal Flycatchers as they flew around gathering nesting material. While we were not going to see the crest fully revealed, we did see a few colorful crest feathers at times. The Hotel Villa Lapas is set in a great location with forest behind it and the river flowing past the door. Despite the weather (and we did have some unseasonable rain in the afternoon), the birding around the lodge was excellent. To get into the mountains at Monteverde, one still has to traverse the terrible rocky road (although this does not seems to deter the hundreds of tourists that head there), but it is well worth it and it's easy to escape from the tourist trappings and head into the forest. Both Monteverde and Santa Elena have excellent trails systems and along with our excellent local guide we certainly took full advantage of them. Birding in these forests can be quite challenging but we took our time and ended up with an excellent list of cloud forest species, including a covey of Black-breasted Wood-Quail. Birding is also rich in the Caribbean slope forests of Braulio-Carillo National Park and the lowlands of La Selva each with an almost endless number of woodcreepers, antbirds and tanagers. Again we had some "unseasonable" rain, which seems to prove that there is no such thing as normal weather!! At least we managed to bird in the mornings before the storm-clouds gathered again! While some of us did see Great Green Macaws, Green Ibis, others missed these brief fly-overs. Snowy Cotingas did perform for us and who could forget the Sunbittern and Fasciated Tiger-Heron stalking the rocky riverbed in front of the lodge?

Because of the great diversity of habitat, the friendly people and the outstanding bird life (of course!), Costa Rica is a terrific place to go to get an insight into the rich avifauna of Central America. We finished the trip with around 400 spp. - always a good total in such a short time.