Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica: #2 Snowcap

With its rich burgundy plumage topped by a shocking white crown, the Snowcap male is one of the most instantly recognisable hummingbirds of the Neotropics. So recognisable, in fact, that our guide Pat O'Donnell's description of himself when we first met at San Jose airport was: "look for the guy with the Snowcap t-shirt". We found him with no difficulty. 

Even within such a showy family as the hummingbirds, the Snowcap Microchera albocoronata stands out. No other hummer has the combination of a white cap and a body colour that varies from gold to bronze to burgundy to something best described as "beetroot" depending on how the light is shining on it. This is all down to the iridescent plumage of course, which itself is a function of the shape and position of pigment cells within the detailed stucture of the feathers. 

The result is - literally - breathtaking, producing in my case an involuntary gasp of excitement. We were returning from a morning's walk along the trails at Pocosol Biological Station, which had produced such delights as a Checker-throated Antwren and a close view of a Bicolored Antbird, and had just passed the accommodation building when Pat gestured urgently towards a small line of Porterweed bushes. There on the top, positively glistening in the morning sunshine, was my first Snowcap. And it was just as well that the bird is so easy to identify. Within a couple of seconds it had gone, chased away by the jealous and attentive Rufous-tailed Hummingbird that had laid claim to this precious source of nectar. Rufous-tailed hummers are bullies! 

Unfortunately, the sighting had been so brief that my birding companion Richard missed it. To make matters worse, the Snowcap failed to reappear despite much searching. As all birders will know, it is intensely frustrating when you have failed to spot a bird that the others have seen, and when that bird is as sensational as a Snowcap it can all get a bit awkward. Despite putting a brave face on it, Richard was clearly put out. And while I could be excused a bit of smugness about being in the right place at the right time to "tick" the bird, what I really wanted was a more leisurely encounter, and, ideally, the opportunity to take a few photographs. But Pat decided to rise to the challenge. Finding another Snowcap became a top priority. 

The Snowcap is a hummingbird of the Caribbean slopes, ranging from Honduras in the north to Panama in the south. Like many Costa Rican species it is fussy about altitude. At around 720 metres above sea level, Pocosol is near the upper limit of its range, while it is rarely located below 300 metres, although this may be because so much of Costa Rica's lowland rainforest has been destroyed. Fortunately Pat has

literally written the book about where to watch birds in Costa Rica (link here), plus a useful blog about Costa Rica's best Snowcap-finding locations, so there could be few better people to steer us towards another one.

We succeeded a couple of days later at Centro Manu, a small family reserve lower down the Caribbean slope near Guapiles. It didn't look hopeful at first: we arrived in a torrential downpour and had to take shelter in reception building.

A wet afternoon at Centro Manu reserve

When the rain eased off, we decided to explore the reserve's small network of trails. These were very wet indeed - wellies were essential - and the forest was quiet. It seemed as if the arrival of rain in the later afternoon had prompted the local birdlife to simply shut up shop early for the night. All quite dispiriting. But on returning to reception, Pat was not so easily discouraged. "We'll just try the hummingbird garden while there's still light," he announced. The rain was still lightly spotting as we headed down the track, with - it must be said - low expectations.

Centro Manu - the hummingbird garden

The hummingbird garden (above) turned out to be a forest clearing containing a variety of small flowering shrubs. There didn't seem to be much activity, but we stationed ourselves at a suitable vantage-point and waited. And a hummingbird duly arrived, albeit a Rufous-tailed hummer which began to patrol the bushes in a typically defensive manner. This didn't bode well.

Rufous-tailed Hummingbird (from Pocosol) - a bit of a bully!

A couple of Montezuma's Oropendolas flapped overhead, and a Blue-chested Hummingbird made a brief appearance high in a nearby tree. This was good, but still not what we were really after.

And then, as in all of the best stories, we hit success. Weirdly, two male Snowcaps arrived almost simulataneously. One popped up high in the tree where we'd seen the Blue-chested; I called out "Snowcap!", while simultanteously Richard said the same thing. I assumed at first that we were both looking at the same bird, but then discovered that he had spotted one down on the Porterweed bushes. This second bird then perched very obligingly on a bush at the opposite side of the clearing, and I was able to advance some distance towards it brandishing my Canon, which I'd put on a suitably high ISO setting. I didn't want to disturb the bird by getting too close, but even from where I was standing, its colours seemed to light up the gloomy evening.

Snowcap - Centro Manu reserve

Fittingly, it was the final bird of the day. We drove away from Centro Manu into the gathering darkness and made our way back to our base for the night at La Quinta de Sarapiqui. It was our last full day on Costa Rica's Caribbean slope, but further adventures awaited over the mountains on the Pacific coast.

And it is there that we shall meet my final choice for the Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica. 

  

Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica: #3 Resplendent Quetzal

For many, the Resplendent Quetzal Pharomachrus mocinno is the poster bird for Costa Rican eco-tourism, the undoubted number one. Clad in vivid, metallic green plumage with an unfeasibly long tail dangling below, the male quetzal is high on the tick list of tourists and birders alike. And it's a more dramatic bird than my dodgy photograph (above) might suggest, although the sight of this luminous male glimpsed through a gap in the foliage was an exciting moment. 

While Costa Rica may be the best place to see one, the Resplendent Quetzal occurs along the spine of Central America from the south of Mexico to western Panama. In Guatemala it has given its name to the national currency, the story being that in the days of Mayan civilisation its tail feathers were used as money. The quetzal is a bird of high elevation rainforests, generally found above 900m (3,000 feet). It can turn up in suitable forests all along Costa Rica's central mountain chain, including the well-known Monteverde reserve, but is perhaps best searched for in the south of the country - and where else but the Parque Nacional Los Quetzales?

Or nearby, at any rate. Our first quetzal encounter was in the neighbouring Dota Valley, an area that I introduced in my Collared Redstart blog (link here). We were walking on a trail across the valley from Miriam's Quetzals restaurant (a hopeful sign!), when our guide Pat O'Donnell (link to his website here) heard a quetzal calling - a sound with more than a hint of car alarm in it. Pat responded with an impressively accurate response and the bird moved slightly closer, allowing us to get a distant glimpse through the intervening leaves. I snapped a few record photographs before it flew: and with some misgivings, I've included one of these below. Bear in mind that this was the best of a bad bunch. It serves as a salutary reminder that birding in tropical forests can be difficult, and good views of birds can never be guaranteed. It makes it all the sweeter when it happens, of course.

Spot the quetzal! Terrible record photo of our first sighting.

Although we were pleased to see one, our first quetzal encounter was a bit underwhelming. That's the problem with building up expectations. However, there was better to come. While birding along the unsurfaced road that drops steeply down to Providencia (see the Collared Redstart blog), and within the national park this time, we heard several quetzals calling. As was usually the case, it was Pat who located the bird - another male - perched high in an oak tree on a slope below the road. The trees here were festooned with epiphytes (plants growing on other plants), with lichens, ferns and bromeliads adding to the vegetative clutter of the canopy. But we found a gap through the dense wall of foliage and here's a view (below) showing a bit more of the bird.

Resplendent Quetzal - PN Los Quetzales, Costa Rica

This picture gives a better idea of the length of the tail, although strictly it is the upper tail coverts that are elongated. What is less obvious is the bird's red belly, which provides a shocking contrast to the dominant green. To my eyes the head has a slightly reptilian look to it, perhaps belying the bird's ancestry, a trait that unites all five quetzal species. (This is especially evident in the Golden-headed Quetzal from South America, photographed in Ecuador back in 2014 (below), which lacks the crest that softens the outline of its Central American cousin.)

Golden-headed Quetzal - Angel Paz reserve, Ecuador (2014)

Quetzals are trogons, albeit unusual ones. Unlike motmots and toucans, which are confined to the Neotropics, the trogon family has a pan-tropical distribution. Although they have comparatively weak flight and poor dispersal abilities, trogos also pop up in Africa, the Americas and the Indo-Malay tropics, but not Australia. Quetzals, however, are uniquely restricted to the Neotropics. 

Research has been done on trogon phylogeny (essentially their family tree) based on DNA evidence, which suggests an American - and specifically Central American - origin to the family (Moyle, 2005; Dacosta and Klicka, 2008). This would require these somewhat non-mobile birds to have crossed the Atlantic at some point, possibly through North America and over a land bridge: a‘high latitude dispersal event’ as Moore puts it. Which begs the question as to whether suitable conditions have ever existed to enable this movement. Could some weird trans-Atlantic rafting have happened instead? It seems unlikely, but such journeys have probably occurred for some plant and reptile species. 

Despite its fame, the Resplendent Quetzal is a conservation concern, being classed as 'near threatened' by the IUCN. The main threat, as with so many species, is habitat loss, although this is less of a problem in Costa Rica's protected forests. Direct exploitation for its fabulous plumes may be decreasing, but a new concern has arisen from the range expansion of Keel-billed Toucans. The toucans compete for nest holes and can even prey on the nests of quetzals. Resolving the competing demands of two charismatic species can be a real headache for conservation land managers!

Keel-billed Toucan - competing with the Resplendent Quetzal for nest sites

Right - two more birds to go. What could possibly beat the Resplendent Quetzal? Wait and see.

References:

BirdLife International. 2023. Pharomachrus mocinno. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2023: e.T22682727A221577625. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2023-1.RLTS.T22682727A221577625.en.

DaCosta, J.M. and Klicka, J. (2008). ‘The Great American Interchange in birds: a phylogenetic perspective with the genus Trogon.’  Molecular Ecology, 17(5), pp.1328-1343.

Moyle, R.G. (2005). ‘Phylogeny and biogeographical history of Trogoniformes, a pantropical bird order.’  Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 84(4), pp.725-738.

  

Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica: #4 White-collared Manakin

Manakins are some of the most characterful birds of the Neotropics, so to exclude them from my Top Ten list would be unforgivable. There are a few Costa Rican species to choose from, but I'm going for the White-collared Manakin Manacus candei, which is a real charmer. These small, fruit-eating birds (there's a photo of one grappling with a seed below) are found in lower level tropical forests below 900 metres (3,000 feet) altitude. Within Costa Rica, they are restricted to the lowlands and foothills on the Caribbean side of the central mountain chain, being "replaced" in the southern Pacific lowlands by the Orange-collared Manakin. The two species were previously grouped together, despite clear differences in the male plumage (the clue's in their names!). However, while the Orange-collared Manakin is endemic to Costa Rica and western Panama, its White-collared cousin has a more extensive distribution, and is found up the Central American isthmus as far as Mexico. 

White-collared Manakin getting to grips with a rainforest seed or fruit.

All of the photos in this blog post are of a male bird. Within the family as a whole, which contains some fifty species, the males are the showy ones with a dazzling range of colours - yellows, reds, blues, oranges and more. Females are generally more subdued, with a palette of dull greens and browns.  As a result, identifying female manakins of different species can be tricky. Such a colour discepancy between the sexes (the technical term is sexual dichromatism) provides a hint aboout their respective life strategies: males display to attact females and mate, but do very little else, while it is the females that make the nest, incubate the eggs and feed the young. No comment!

Mind you, the males put a lot of effort into enticing a mate. The White-collared Manakin has a neat courtship dance which we were able to observe easily at Tirimbina biological reserve (website link here) because the male concerned was displaying next to the main entrance path. His stage was an area of forest floor, which he had partially cleared, dotted with a number of conspicuous vertical stems. Perching on a low branch, he made a loud buzzing sound followed by dramatic pops or snaps like the sound of a breaking twig. These are produced by vibrating the wings; making mechanical noises in addition to their vocalisations is a key manakin trait. (Have a look at this video showing the extraordinary display and sound of Ecuador's Club-winged Manakin, for example.)

Every now and again our male would fly sideways to sit at the base of another stem and repeat the process, sometimes zipping back and forth rapidly between perches. The following two pictures were an attempt to capture some manakin movement.

White-collared Manakin - ready for launch

White-collared Manakin - airborne

(Apologies for the quality of the second image. The light was poor and the bird moved fast.) 

We watched entranced, as the busy male buzzed from side to side. It wasn't obvious whether his efforts were being appreciated, although we had seen a female earlier nearby - an olive-green bird with vibrant orange legs - so her presence may have prompted the show. But the females can sometimes be hard to spot during the courtship process until they make their selection. 

The White-collared Manakin's dance is spectacular, and worthy of being filmed - something that didn't occur to me at the time (but we had more birds to find of course!). However, there are a number of examples available online - such as this short YouTube video by Arnon Dattner from another forest reserve in Costa Rica. Enjoy, with the sound on.

I have watched manakins displaying in other Neotropical forests, including the closely-related White-bearded Manakin at the Asa Wright reserve on Trinidad.  In that case, a number of manakins had gathered at the lek site, although they weren't particularly mobile. ("Lek" is a name given to both the place where males come to display and the displaying process itself.) But at Tirimbina, our White-collared Manakin male seemed to have the stage to himself. I'm hoping that his efforts weren't in vain.

It's good to know that neither White-collared Manakins nor their Orange-collared cousins are considered to be threatened, being classed as "least concern" by the IUCN, even though - as with many other bird species - their overall numbers are decreasing. Habitat protection is the key to their survival, and the future of both species within Costa Rica is likely to remain secure if places like Tirimbina continue to thrive. Of course that raises the thorny issue of how to balance the benefits of eco-tourism, which gives such reserves an economic justification, against the contribution of long-distance flights to climate change. But that's a discussion for another time.

Right - just three birds to go. What will be in the top three? And which bird merits the number one spot?

Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica: #5 Bare-shanked Screech Owl

So far my Top Ten has featured birds from families that are only found in the Americas - a toucan, tinamou, hummingbird, motmot and New World warbler. To be fair, such families are the main targets for any birder coming to Costa Rica from Europe. But Costa Rica contains many birds that are a lot more familiar. Some species are identical to their European counterparts (until the taxonomy "splitters" get to them, at any rate), including Osprey, Barn Swallow and Sand Martin (Bank Swallow), while some widespread families have many more Costa Rican representatives than you find in the UK. (Not that this is very difficult, of course.) For example, there are around 16 species of woodpecker in Costa Rica and a similar number of owls. 

And it's the owls that I'm focusing on here. There's a particular thrill that comes from finding an owl. Maybe it's the chance to get a glimpse of a creature from the mysterious night-time world. (I'm a moth recorder, so this could be personal bias.) Or perhaps it's the forward-facing eyes into which we can read very human expressions. Owls have traditionally been considered to be intelligent: Athena, the Greek god of wisdom, was often portrayed with a small owl - probably the Little Owl which bears the scientific name Athene noctua. In practice, I doubt whether they are cleverer than any other raptor.

Either way, owls are very much sought after by birders and we were no exception. Our guide, Pat O'Donnell (website here) wanted to show us as many as he could. Spotlighting had already brought us a Black-and-White Owl in the rainforest at Pocosol, a Pacific Screech-Owl outside the northern town of Los Chiles and a Central American Pygmy-Owl in the Sarapiqui area, while a Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl put in a daylight appearance in the lowlands of the north Pacific coast. We even came across two Barn Owls: some lists class this as a separate species (American or Western Barn Owl Tyto furcata) to the Eurasian Barn Owl, but the split is not recognised by the HBW/Birdlife Checklist.

But for me, the best owl encounter of the trip was with the magnificent Bare-shanked Screech Owl pictured at the start of this blog post. We saw it on the slopes of Volcan Irazu at around 2,900 metres (9,500 feet or so) altitude. The summit of the volcano, which remains active, is higher still - 3,432 metres (11,260 feet) to be exact - and we had already travelled up into the mist to peer at Timberline Wren and Volcano Junco through the gloom. We didn't get into the National Park though, as a gate and fence bars entry to all but pre-booked visitors, which seems unecessarily unfriendly; try doing that in the English Lake District! In any event, the gate was unstaffed and firmly closed at the early hour of our arrival.

Instead, we drove some distance down the road and walked a lower trail at Nochebuena, where for a small fee you can explore an area of farmland dotted with trees and small wooded areas. Pat had visited here before, and knew that a wooded gully at the edge of the farm was a possible place for the screech-owl. And it didn't take much calling before the bird flew in, first to a thicket in front of us, giving intermittent glimpses, and then right over our heads and into a tree where it sat glaring out of the gloom with fixed intensity.

Bare-shanked Screech Owl - near Irazu, Costa Rica

Bare-shanked is one of the larger screech-owls, and its range only extends across Costa Rica, Panama and a small slice of NW Colombia. Found at higher levels (above 900m or 3,000 feet as far as the timberline), it favours woodland edge habitats rather than continuous closed forest. Its prey is a variety of small mammals and large insects. Identification was not difficult: Bare-shanked is the only Costa Rican screech-owl found in forests this high up the volcano, although in other parts of its range it can  overlap with Pacific Screech-owl. In such areas, Bare-shanked can be distinguished by its rufous-brown facial disc (not light brown), and the absence of a black facial border (which is found in Pacific Screech-owl). To my eyes, Bare-shanked Screech-owl also has a more severe expression, but maybe I am excessively anthropomorphising!

Unfortunately, our trail walk at Nochebuena was cut short by a downpour of biblical proportions, one of the few times on the trip when the weather significantly impacted our birdwatching experience. When doing the planning I had been apprehensive about visiting Costa Rica in October, as this is still strictly part of the rainy season. Maybe we were lucky, but we seemed to dodge many of the worst showers, with the benefit that most of the places that we visited were largely (or entirely) devoid of other visitors. Anyway, on this particular morning the rain looked to be well set in, so we cut our losses and dived into a nearby restaurant (the Sueños del Irazú) for a highly acceptable late breakast, before making out way down the volcano and on to Alajuela. The owl encounter had made my day!

 

Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica: #6 Collared Redstart

 

While toucans, hummingbirds, motmots and the like grab all of the attention, most of the birds that people actually see in Costa Rica, and the rest of the Neotropics, will be from the vast order of Passerines - the perching birds. Of these, there are several dominant groups and families that are unique to the Americas, including tyrant flycatchers, antbirds, ovenbirds, tanagers and New World warblers. The Collared Redstart Myioborus torquatus, also known as the Collared Whitestart (I'll come back to this), belongs to the last of these families. But it is perhaps not a typical warbler.

In the USA, I've found warbler identification challenging - to say the least. Travelling in fall makes matters worse; a lot of species look very similar. And it's not just me, I'm pleased to say - see this handy identification guide from McGill University, for example. I was always aware that many of these birds are seasonal migrants, heading down to the Central and South America in the winter months. But until my visit to Costa Rica in October 2024 I had no idea of the scale of such movements. The Costa Rican rainforests seemed to be teeming with arrivals from the north. Tennessee, Chestnut-sided and Wilson's Warblers seemed to have the biggest numbers. It turns out that over three quarters of Costa Rica's warbler species are North American migrants. Most will stay for the winter, but a few like the Canada Warbler are simply passing through. 

Not so the Collared Redstart, which is one of the much smaller group of Costa Rican resident warblers. Like the Talamanca Hummingbird (previously featured here), it is a range-restricted species that is only found in the mountains of Costa Rica and western Panama. Like the hummingbird it avoids the lower levels, with a minimum elevation of around 1,500 metres, although our first encounter was at higher altitude in the forests of southern Costa Rica's Dota Valley (below). We had come across a mixed flock passing through the trees, one of the most exciting - and frustrating - experiences in Neotropical birdwatching. Suddenly there is activity everywhere, and you don't quite know where to look. There are glimpses of birds moving through the vegetation, and nothing seems to stay still long enough to allow a decent view, let alone a photograph. A Collared Redstart flitted past me at that moment, showing its bright yellow colours nicely in flight. But then it was gone. Fortunately (as you will have guessed from the images in this blog post) we were able to get a better look at another later that day.  

Rainforest - Dota Valley, Costa Rica

The Dota Valley is well-trodden birding territory, but our guide (the indefatigable Pat O'Donnell - website here) knew of a quieter spot nearby. This is the largely unsurfaced road that leaves the Pan-American Highway and winds down a neighbouring valley towards Providencia. The road passes through an area of mature forest in the Parque Nacional Los Quetzales. Another bird is clearly the main attraction here of course - but will it appear in my Top Ten? Wait and see!

Anyway, after a tortilla-heavy stop for lunch from a roadside cafe, we started to look for birds, part-walking and part-driving down through the forest. The road wasn't quite as steep as the signs suggested, though:

Check your brakes!

The time just after lunch can be quiet for birds, and today was no exception. But a few clouds rolled in, and this respite from the strong sunshine prompted some avian activity. Movement in the roadside bushes turned out to be a Lesser Goldfinch, followed (joy of joys) by a Collared Redstart that - this time - was happier to remain in one place, giving great views of its yellow face and neat chestnut cap.

Collared Redstart - Parque Nacional Los Quetzales, Costa Rica

Although it's a gem of bird, the name is misleading. It is no relation of the Old World redstarts, which are in a different family. Anyway, Old Word redstarts have red tails - which is where the name comes from. "Start" comes from the Old English steort, meaning tail or rump. Our bird here has a black tail with white outer feathers. "Whitestart" is therefore more accurate, as can be seen from the above photos, but it still seems a poor way to name such a distinctive bird where the tail colour is one of its less obvious features. So I have stuck with Collared Redstart in this account, as it is the name that most Costa Rican birders, as well as eBird, use.

(I'm assuming that the name arrived through the American Redstart, also a New World warbler, which does have red on its tail. But that species looks quite different to the Collared Redstart - and indeed the Slate-throated Redstart, another New World warbler found in Costa Rica - and occupies a separate genus. So it doesn't quite make sense.)  

At least there is no dispute that it has a collar, seen nicely in my final image:

Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica: #7 Blue-diademed Motmot

Everybody likes a motmot. Brightly coloured, with distinctive racquet-shaped tails, motmots are easily recognisable birds. It helps that they are ambush hunters that can perch out in the open to get a better view of potential prey, which may be an unfortunate passing butterfly or small reptile. While motmots can sit in the same place for several hours, they can also be tempted out by an offer of free food and often visit fruit feeding stations set up by cafes and hotels - which in turn lure in birders and wildlife photographers. 

The Blue-diademed Motmot, known locally as Lesson's Motmot, is the most common and visible Costa Rican motmot, although it is absent from the Caribbean foothills and lowlands in the north and east of the country. Being widespread in the Central Valley, Costa Rica's main population centre as well as being the start and finish of almost all birding trips, it should have been no trouble to locate on our recent trip. But we arrived at San Jose airport in total darkness, and left the Central Valley before light the following morning, so it wasn't until we returned almost two weeks later that we were able to 'bag' the motmot.

And it wasn't difficult to find. Our hotel (Villa San Ignacio, Alajuela - website here) has extensive grounds that include a small remnant of the rainforest that originally covered this part of the Central Valley. A trail gives access to guests, and it was while walking along this that we spotted the motmot perched high in a tree. As I was about to press the camera shutter the bird flew: don't you just hate it when birds do that? It's almost as if they have a 'sixth sense' that knows when a lens is pointing their way. Fortunately, we were able to catch up with another at the hotel's feeding station nearby.

Blue-diademed (or Lesson's) Motmot - Villa San Ignacio, Alajuela

As well as their sensational colour scheme, the feature that really distinguish most motmots is the weird tail. Two central feathers grow longer than the rest; the bird then preens away the middle sections to leave the feather-heads in place. These swing back and forth while the bird is perching, the racquet-tips emphasising the movements. This display does not appear to have a courtship function - even though both sexes of motmots do it - but is more likely to act as a way of deterring predators, the idea being that the motmot is showing that it knows that a predator is there and suggesting to the predator that an attack would not be worth its while. Well, that's the theory anyway, according to Murphy (2006). (A link to the abstract is here but the main article sits behind a paywall.) 

Like a couple of the other birds in my Top Ten, the Blue-diademed Motmot has attracted the attention of the taxonomists. When I first travelled to the Neotropics in 1999, a species known as the Blue-crowned Motmot extended over much of Central and South America - including the islands of Trindad and Tobago which I was then visiting. This has now been split into a number of new species, each with a more restricted distribution. Our Blue-diademed Motmot is one of these, found in Central America between western Panama and eastern Mexico. Heading south, it is replaced by the Whooping Motmot (which sounds fun) in Colombia and western Ecuador (the Choco region). Going down into South America you find another two similar-looking species - the Highland Motmot along the Andes mountain chain and the Amazonian Motmot on the eastern side of the Andes. Trinidad and Tobago now has its own motmot - the Trinidad Motmot - which looks very much like its Blue-diademed cousin, but means that I get an extra motmot "tick".

The key point is that none of this taxonomic wrangling alters the fact that motmots are simply stunning birds. And there are more to consider. Costa Rica contains another five species, one of which was a serious contender for my Top Ten list - the Turquoise-browed Motmot (below).

Turquoise-browed Motmot - Punta Morales, Costa Rica

You might reasonably argue that there is little difference between a 'blue diadem' and a 'turquoise brow'. But if you see the bird in good light, the flash of colour above the eye of the Turquoise-browed Motmot is really something special. It seems to almost shine with its own illumation. Turquoise-browed Motmots have a lighter body colour - somewhere between buff and a dull orange - and longer bare tail shafts than Blue-diademed (compare the photos above). Within Costa Rica, they are only found in the drier forests of the north Pacific lowlands, although their global range extends north through Nicaragua to Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. We caught up with the one pictured above near the coastal salt pans of Punta Morales, a place teeming with waders, terns, skimmers and other waterbirds. Not many birders come this way - but they certainly should. Finding places like this was one of the many advantages of having a locally-based guide, in our case the excellent Patrick O'Donnell - link to his website here.

But in the end, I decided to stick with the Blue-diademed Motmot for my list. It's a stunning bird that is easily seen and will likely feature on the camera rolls of even non-birdy visitors to Costa Rica. If that can draw more people into the magic that is Neotropical birdwatching then it's surely a good thing.

 

Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica: #8 Talamanca Hummingbird

 

Hummingbirds light up the forests of the Neotropics. Costa Rica boasts around 50 species, and we saw most of these (38 to be exact) on our trip. Choosing a favourite is a near impossible task.

But the Talamanca Hummingbird Eugenes spectabilis is a good call. It's very much a range-restricted species, being only found in the mountains of Costa Rica and Western Panama (the Cordillera de Talamanca) above 2,000 metres altitude. It is a species that visiting birders will want to track down. Although not rare, you need to travel to find it.

Formerly called the Magnificent Hummingbird (more on this below), the large and long-billed Talamanca Hummingbird is certainly magnificent in appearance. Like many hummingbirds, the colours are not formed by pigments, but are instead created by the diffraction of light through structures in the feathers. This means that the birds can look very different with a change in viewing conditions. Beautiful though the images in bird guides may be, they can never do it full justice. The photograph at the start of this blog of a perched male Talamanca Hummingbird shows two of its main identification features - the white spot behind the eye and the iridescent turquoise throat. But it is missing a third key feature. To see it, look at what happened when the same bird turned to face the camera:

Talamanca Hummingbird - showing violet crown and turquoise throat

The crown that appeared matt black in the first image now reveals a sensational purple shine. A definite "wow" moment. But this flash of colour can vanish as quickly as it appears. Hummingbird photography requires time and patience, and doesn't easily into a birdwatching trip where you want to see  as much as you can. (Which is my way of saying that these photos could be better!)

Field identification of hummingbirds is surprisingly difficult. If you're not used to them (and even though I've now seen 90 species worldwide, I can hardly claim to be a regular hummingbird watcher) it takes some time to get used to their habits. Hummers move extremely quickly, with an annoying habit of darting out of sight as soon as bincoculars or cameras are focused on them. Your best bet is to wait for them to perch, ideally on a branch or twig. Even where feeders are present - and these are very often the best places to find hummingbirds - the birds will not spend long in any one place. And the resulting photographs never look quite as natural: see the image below of a female Talamanca Hummingbird - less striking than the male, and with a smaller white spot behind the eye.

Female Talamanca Hummingbird at a feeder

I took this picture with an iPhone, which shows another big advantage of visiting places with hummingbird feeders - you can get really close to the birds. All of the pictures in this blog post were taken at a place that is well known to Costa Rican and visiting birders alike - Miriam's Quetzals in the Dota Valley (website here). This friendly cafe is perched high on a forested slope, with hummingbird feeders and an outside viewing deck. Miriam owns cabins further down the road, where we spent a snug night surrounded by the forest. There is other accommodation here too: unlike many places that we visited, the Dota Valley is certainly on the tourist map.

Miriam's Quetzals cafe

I've already mentioned the "lumping" and "splitting" that can complicate the naming of birds. (See my post on the Blue-throated Toucanet here). The Talamanca Hummingbird is a good example. It results from splitting the Magnificent Hummingbird Eugenes fulgens into two species. It was decided by the powers that be that the Talamanca Hummingbird differed sufficiently in respect of the colours of its back, crown and throat. The other species, found further north in Central America and the southern USA, is known either as Rivoli's or Magnificent Hummingbird. Both new species are now recognised by various international bodies, including an update to the HBW/Birdlife Checklist (which I base my own world bird list on)  and the IUCN - a global nature conservation organisation. I should add that the IUCN rates the Talamanca Hummingbird of being as "least concern" in conservation terms, partly reflecting the protection provided by Costa Rica's mountain forest reserves. Long may it continue.

Will this be the only hummingbird in my Top Ten? Possibly not ...

Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica: #9 Great Tinamou

 

Great Tinamou - Tirimbina, Costa Rica

The Great Tinamou Tinamus major is a direct opposite to the first bird in this series - the Blue-throated Toucanet (blog post here). Tinamous are reclusive, rather than conspicuous, and their colours are muted instead of showy. While the Blue-throated Toucanet is restricted to a small area of Central America, the Great Tinamou ranges across much of the Neotropics - see the GBIF distribution map here. So, why is it on my list?

Well - while tinamous are relatively common birds, this doesn't mean that they are easy to see. Several years ago, I spent two weeks exploring the forests of Ecuador without even a glimpse, even though we heard a few calling away in the undergrowth. 

So a close encounter with a Great Tinamou in Costa Rica's Tirimbina rainforest reserve was one of the highlights of my trip. And the circumstances of that encounter will be very familiar to anyone who has birded the rainforests of the Neotropics.

We had come across a swarm of army ants moving through the forest. For most forest invertebrates, these swarms are lethal. Anything in their path gets despatched swiftly, and they'll even have a go at a human who is inadvertently standing in their path. The ants aren't just on the ground; they also climb onto low and medium height bushes and trees, passing through the rainforest at multiple levels. Potential prey has to get out of the way quickly, and the swarm's movement is accompanied by the sound of a gentle pattering, like rain. This is the sound of bugs and other insects dropping onto the forest floor in a bid to escape a grisly fate. It rarely works: more ants will be down there waiting for them. 

Army Ant column - Tirimbina rainforest reserve

The chance to pick up an easy meal is what attracts a suite of birds - known as ant-followers - to these swarms. The Neotropics contain a wide range of these. But to correct a common misconception, these antbirds, antshrikes and their companions are not seeking to feed on the ants themselves. It is those displaced insects that draw them in. At Tirimbina, the Great Tinamou was one of a number of birds following the ant swarm, the others being Plain-breasted and Northern Barred Woodcreepers, Spotted and Ocellated Antbirds, an Olive-backed Quail-Dove (itself a star sighting) and a pair of Black-throated Trogons (female pictured below). Find an ant swarm and you will find the birds! A Central American Agouti briefly showed up as well, although it may just have been wondering what all of the fuss was about.

Black-throated Trogon - another ant-follower at Tirimbina 

Amidst all of this, it was a happy moment when a lone Great Tinamou emerged hesitatingly onto the trail behind us. Our guide Pat O'Donnell had heard it calling, but we weren't sure whether we would get a view. However, the tinamou wasn't at all unnerved by our presence, indeed, it started walking towards us rather than making a hasty exit. While obviously wary of possible threats, it seemed to be both confident and very much at home in its environment. We stood completely still - I think that I was holding my breath - while its large eyes sized us up. And then it stalked away, melting back into the trail-side vegetation. Magical!

Tinamous are unusual birds. Although looking like grouse and similar gamebirds, their are more closely related to the ratites, the group that includes Ostriches and Rheas. Like Ostriches, the males incubate eggs and look after young chicks in their early days. But unlike those families, tinamous can fly, albeit not very well. They can't run particularly fast either, so their defensive strategy relies upon camouflage. This explains why birders find them so hard to see. Unfortunately, a cyptic lifestyle hasn't prevented tinamous from being a target for hunters. As such, your best chance of seeing one is in a protected forest. Which brings me back to Costa Rica in general, and Tirimbina in particular.

Tirimbina Rainforest Reserve - bridge over the Sarapiqui River

As you'll see from these blog posts, Costa Rica has an enviable network of protected forests. Some, like Pocosol from my last post, are high in the hills, with challenging 4WD access tracks. But Tirimbina rainforest reserve (website here) is easily accessible, with a car park located on a main road (route 126), a lodge and good facilities for day visitors like ourselves. A massive Black Witch Moth Ascalapha odorata in the men's toilets was an added bonus.

Black Witch Moth - Tirimbina toilets

It helps that most of the forest at Tirimbina is separated from the settled area by the Sarapiqui River, although this means that you do have to cross a slightly unnerving bridge. It's worth pausing while you do that, by the way; there are great views of the river, and the only Fasciated Tiger Heron of our trip was standing just downstream.   

Fasciated Tiger-Heron - Tirimbina

And it wasn't only birds. As well as the agouti, we saw two of Costa Rica's four species of primates from the forest's trails. First, a troop of Mantled Howler Monkeys, one of whom came down for a closer look ...

Mantled Howler Monkey - Tirimbina

... and, second, our only meeting with Central American Spider Monkeys, although these remained high in the canopy and didn't give such close views:

Central American Spider Monkey - Tirimbina 

That wasn't the end of Tirimbina's wildlife interest, and (no spoilers) we may well return here for a later blog in this series. But for me, the Great Tinamou encounter was a moment that will linger long in the memory. So I'll leave you with a photo of it giving us one last look before it exiting stage right.

Departing Great Tinamou

 

Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica: #10 Blue-throated Toucanet

 

Blue-throated Toucanet

Costa Rica is a fabulous birding destination. Returning from a recent trip (October 2024), I have been overwhelmed by the scale and variety of the birdlife of this small Central American country. With a trip total of over 470 species, and far too many photographs, there is a lot to process. So I have decided to focus down on some of the highlights - specifically, my Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica.

Inevitably, this is a personal choice. I've adopted three general themes: birds with a story to tell, birds that are range-restricted and, most importantly, birds that have the elusive 'wow factor'. Not all of the ten birds will tick all of these boxes, but - hey - it's my list, so I can make the rules!

But before I get going I must give a huge shout out to Patrick O'Donnell, who guided us around the country for a couple of weeks, taking us to some sites that will be very familiar to visiting birders, and a few that won't be. Apart from being very patient, Pat is an absolute authority on where to find birds in Costa Rica - in fact, he literally wrote the book! He has written his own blog about our trip (link here). You can buy his book here.

Toucans are high on the wish-list of even non-birding tourists visiting Costa Rica. Two species are widespread across the country and easily seen - Yellow-throated Toucan Ramphastos ambiguus and Keel-billed Toucan Ramphastos sulfuratus (both pictured below). Of the two, Keel-billed Toucan is both the most visually striking, and the more range-restricted - being limited to Central America and northern Colombia. It is absent from Costa Rica's southern Pacific lowlands. Yellow-throated Toucan has a wider distribution, extending south into Peru; I've previously seen the species in Ecuador. You won't find it on Costa Rica's north Pacific coast, though. It is also called Black-mandibled Toucan in the essential 'Birds of Costa Rica' by Richard Garrigues and Robert Dean, even though the bill is more of a chestnut colour than black.

Yellow-throated Toucan 

Keel-billed Toucan

However, I have chosen a rather more localised - and arguably more spectacular - species for my Top Ten. The Blue-throated Toucanet is a bird of Costa Rica's uplands, specifically the middle elevations between around 700m and 2400m. Our first encounter with the species (photo below) was at Pocosol Biological Station, which sits in protected primary rainforest (the Bosque Eterno de los Niños, or Children's Eternal Rainforest - its purchase was funded by global childrens' donations) to the east of the more popular Monteverde area. This was a good chance to see the species in an entirely natural setting. Pocosol sits at an elevation of around 720m above sea level and is located at the end of a long, and at times challenging, access track. 4WD is probably recommended, but it's worth the effort.

First sighting of Blue-throated Toucanet at Pocosol, Costa Rica

Pocosol Biological Station

Rainforest birding can be frustrating: birds are often mobile and elusive. We got a good example of this at Pocosol, where I was able to get a brief glance of a pair of Yellow-eared Toucanets, a rare species of mature middle elevation forests. They passed by quickly before I could deploy the camera, and never reappeared. So they don't make my Top Ten, even though they are a sought-after prize for birders.

Fortunately, Blue-throated Toucanets are more obliging. As well as mature rainforests, they can be found in less pristine environments, such as secondary growth (where the some or all of the original forest has been removed, but trees have regrown) and mature gardens. They are very partial to fruit, and will regularly appear at feeding stations in appropriate locations. This is excellent news for birdwatcher and photographer alike, allowing their stunning combination of emerald and blue plumage, yellow and black bill and red vent (not visible in my images) to be fully appreciated.

The photo below and the image at the start of this blog post were both taken at the Cinchona cafe (Soda y Mirador Cinchona) which lies on route 126 which crosses the mountains between San Jose and San Miguel. Although appearing unprepossessing from the road (see photo), it is certainly worth a visit. The toucanet had already beaten us to it, and was lording it over the other species on the fruit feeder.

Blue-throated Toucanet - Cinchona cafe, Costa Rica

The Soda y Mirador Cinchona 

The soda is a well-known birding stop, with an informal name (the Colibri Cafe) that hints at its most popular attractions - hummingbirds. At the back of the restaurant a balcony overlooks several feeders, as well as a spectacular waterfall (when the clouds lift). Our short stop for drinks and snacks, produced a marvellous six hummingbird species (Brown Violetear Colibri delphinae, Green-crowned Brilliant, Coppery-headed Emerald, Violet Sabrewing, Green Hermit and White-bellied Mountain-gem) as well as other delights such as Red-headed and Prong-billed Barbets. You'll have to wait and see if any of these appear on my Top Ten! 

Blue-throated Toucanets also turned up at another well-known birding cafe/restaurant that we visited later on our trip - Myriam's Quetzals, sited in the beautiful Dota Valley in the south of the country. I will be returning to that area in a future post in this series ... 

The Toucan family (Ramphastidae) has attracted much attention from avian taxonomists, and as such a number of species names have been subject to change. In this account I've used the terminology of the HBW/Birdlife Checklist, the latest version of which can be downloaded here, and have described the species as the Blue-throated Toucanet Aulacorhynchus caeruleogularis, which is restricted to Costa Rica and Panama, with a slight incursion into western Colombia. It is classed as 'least concern' in the IUCN Red List. However, eBird does not recognise Blue-throated as a distinct species, preferring to identify it as a race of the Northern Emerald Toucanet Aulacorhynchus prasinus along with two white-throated races found from Mexico to Nicaragua. (The HBW/Birdlife Checklist gives these both full species status, naming them Emerald Toucanet A. prasinus and Wagler's Toucanet A. wagleri). It's not ideal, and I for one would welcome a unified list of all of the world's birds. But humans are humans, and universal agreement is probably an unachievable goal. And taxonomic quibbles shouldn't distract us from appreciating these simply stunning birds.

Right - that's the first spot taken in my Top Ten. What will come next? Watch this space!