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!