Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica: #1 Scarlet Macaw

The Scarlet Macaw Ara macao was an easy choice to crown my Top Ten Birds of Costa Rica. Large and extravagently coloured, their appearance on first sight is so striking as to challenge your perceptions of a wild bird - a real wake-up moment. Perhaps it's because we are so used to seeing Scarlet Macaws in captivity, or perched on some fictional pirate's shoulder, that it comes as a jolt to see them to see them flying around and interacting with each other like, well, any other bird. And let me say at the outset that they are neither bashful nor retiring when doing that. If they are in the vicinity then you will know about it.

Although widely distributed across the Amazon basin, Venezuela and Colombia, Scarlet Macaws have a more patchy presence in Central America. They are classed as being of 'least concern' in global conservation terms, but their numbers are declining nevertheless and the IUCN suggests that they are possibly extinct within areas of their former range in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaraugua and Honduras. The last of these is potentially embarrassing, as they are the national bird. Capture for the pet trade remains a serious threat, as well as the more common problems of habitat loss and degradation. Within Costa Rica, my well-thumbed bird guide (Garrigues & Dean) highlights only three small areas of the country where they are likely to be found, all on the Pacific coast.

This was a worry. If the range of the species is so restricted, would we manage to track them down? But our guide Pat O'Donnell was quietly confident. And with good reason: they proved almost ridiculously easy to find. As I later discovered, Costa Rica is one of the best places in the Neotropics for Scarlet Macaw sightings - as the map of global records highlights (see GBIF).

Scarlet Macaw habitat - Beach Almond trees at Tarcoles

The small seaside village of Tarcoles lies almost mid-way along the main road down Costa Rica's Pacific coast. The nearby Tarcoles River signals the boundary between two of the country's major habitat zones, the dry north Pacific lowlands and the more humid lands to the south. The road bridge over the river is also the best place in the country to spot American Crocodiles, but that's one for another blog post. Driving south across the river, Pat turned off the main road and headed for the beach (Playa de Tarcoles). We pulled up on a rough gravelled parking area (photo above) flanked by a grove of Beach Almonds Terminalia catappa. This tree is a non-native species from India. It might not be an actual almond, but it is hugely favoured by Scarlet Macaws.  

We could hear their raucous calls as soon as we stepped out of the vehicle. A couple of birds flew north in a flash of colour, but the sounds were still coming so we set off to investigate. And there on the outside of the deep green foliage of a neraby tree I had my first proper sighting:

First sighting of a Scarlet Macaw - Tarcoles, Costa Rica

For such a colourful bird, Scarlet Macaws can blend into the canopy of a Beach Almond tree surprisingly well. There turned out to be two birds in this tree, and they both kept moving. Getting a good view of them both needed some patience ...

Scarlet Macaws blending in

... which finally paid off:

The two birds appeared to be a pair. At first sight, there is little obvious difference between male and female Scarlet Macaws, but these two stuck close together, paying each other plenty of attention in between detours to seek out the tree's fruits. There was much mutal preening - and more. It was difficult to tell whether they were trying to mate or having a fight - but then that's long standing relationships for you I guess.

Scarlet Macaws getting friendly

I found myself wondering why Scarlet Macaws are so insanely colourful; even within the notably gaudy parrot family the colour mix and brilliance of their plumage looks excessive. There are some useful pointers in a 2020 paper by Luisana Carballo and colleagues (see references below: link to paper here). This suggests that larger parrots living in warmer enviornments are the most colourful (Scarlet Macaws certainly tick both of those boxes), and that mutal mate choice and and social selection may be more powerful evolutionary factors than maintaining crypsis (i.e. camouflage). Getting the right mate is particularly important in long-lived species that sustain a pair bond over many years, especially when resources are scarce, such as the larger cavities that these big birds need to nest in. Bright colours may be seen to signal a stronger and fitter individual, and as both males and females are both being choosy, both sexes are therefore vibrantly coloured. Or that's the theory, at any rate.

But it sounds like it's on the right lines. As shown in some of my photos, just because Scarlet Macaws are brightly coloured, it doesn't follow that they are always conspicuous. The red, yellow and blue combination can act to break up the macaw's overall shape (an idea called "disruptive colouration"), possibly confusing potential predators when several are in flight together. And perhaps counter-intuitively this colour pattern can also make the birds harder to make out within the canopy of an evergreen forest tree, which is a mix of light, shade and various colours as these photos show.

And as always, the science merely adds to the wonder of meeting one of the world's top birds - a true wildlife highlight on which to end this short blog series. (Although there will be more from Costa Rica to come, I think.)

References

BirdLife International (2022). Ara macao. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022: e.T22685563A163778999. [online] https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2022-2.RLTS.T22685563A163778999.en. 

Carballo, L., Delhey, K., Valcu, M. and Kempenaers, B. (2020). Body size and climate as predictors of plumage colouration and sexual dichromatism in parrots. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 33(11), pp.1543-1557.

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.