10,000 Birds

JANUARY 7, 2023

Another year of birding in Costa Rica has come to an end, another one begins. I bet some tanager flocks will be in the cards; birding in Costa Rica tends to deliver. It’s 2023 already and I have already started this year of birding. With those birds, I already have some highlights for 2023.

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10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 18, 2023

If habitat is protected, they can also act as important pathways to fantastic places and can greatly facilitate connecting people with birds and biodiversity. In terms of birding, they more easily bring us to a vast variety of species, Costa Rica included. Two of the best are Paradise Road and the RECOPE Road.

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10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Birds of Belize by Steve N. Howell and Dale Dyer and Birds of Costa Rica by Dale Dyer and Steve N. An associated issue is that the Belize and Costa Rica guides share many of the same descriptions of species, written by Howell. Two books, two authors, two countries bursting with neotropical avian diversity.

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10,000 Birds

APRIL 16, 2022

The birding in Costa Rica is always golden but some days, you really do strike gold. Go birding in the humid, moss decorated forests of the Caribbean slope and the feathered nugget might take the form of a Bare-necked Umbrellabird. Focus on birds in the southern Pacific region and treasure might be a Turquoise Cotinga.

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10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 17, 2022

As far as countries go, Costa Rica is at the smaller end of the spectrum. We might have limited space but we make up for it with a massive amount of biodiversity including well over 900 bird species on the official Costa Rica bird list. However, the latest addition wasn’t any of these.

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10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 29, 2022

In the world of birding, we have our stars, the birds that lift our spirits and provoke oohs, aahs, and admiration. These are the birds that make us race to the nearest park, scan refuge headquarter trees with anxious eyes, and turn some of us into temporary paparazzi.

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10,000 Birds

APRIL 30, 2022

Birding can be a real challenge. For some, it can involve hiking into a furnace of a canyon to look for a small yellowish bird much easier to see in other countries. Birding can be spending the night on a boat in the Atlantic so you can wake up to White-faced Storm-Petrels and other pelagic treats. Keep Watching the Feeders.

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10,000 Birds

AUGUST 20, 2022

Having lived in Costa Rica for several years, I recall those glorious August days in the 80s and can say that yes, it is rather like August, all year long. Differences exist but August in Niagara is much closer to Costa Rica than a Niagara November. Go birding in Costa Rica in August and you will find shorebirds.

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10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 7, 2021

10,000 Birds is running a series of articles by and about tour guides, tour companies, eco-lodges, and other birding travel organizations. We want to help the birding tourism industry come back strong from the COVID pandemic. Birding Experiences is a Costa Rican company owned and run by enthusiastic birdwatchers from Costa Rica.

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10,000 Birds

MARCH 5, 2022

Despite what some outdated sources claim, the list of bird species reported for Costa Rica is much more than 860. The same can be said for Costa Rica’s first Red-breasted Merganser , a species first documented for the nation in 2020. Check out the crazy new bird for Costa Rica!

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Costa Rica Species Panama Geese 245

10,000 Birds

MARCH 19, 2022

Bird names say much about human perception, they can also give us insight into the people who invented names for official bird descriptions. Sunbittern also works because what else could that bizarre and ancient bird be called? Sunbittern also works because what else could that bizarre and ancient bird be called?

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10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 2, 2021

Birding in the Caribbean is about islands, beautiful beaches, extra special endemics, rum, and smiles. It could also be much more, maybe less, it all depends on how you want to rock an international birding trip. Go to Costa Rica and you will be looking at other birds but you can still get in some Caribbean slope birding.

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10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 15, 2020

On the birding side of life, winter birds were still around, there will still chances at finding some rare owl or getting binoculars on an undulating bunch of crossbills but mostly, I was tired of the cold and just counting the days until Spring. In Costa Rica, February is a different birding story. Great Curassow.

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10,000 Birds

AUGUST 15, 2020

In the era of digital cameras and social media, images of birds are easy to come by. Even photos of the rarest of birds can be found, even heart-wrenching images of bird species that are no longer with us. In Costa Rica, lately, I have been enjoying the class and elegance of bird poster art produced by CaraCara.

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Costa Rica Birds Species Woodpeckers 264

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

Indeed, you only live twice: your second life starts when you bird Costa Rica for the first time. And, yee-haw, this would be my second attempt at a second life: three weeks ago I was invited to bird Costa Rica! Do you ever manage to get ready for a birding trip in a calm and orderly fashion?

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10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 25, 2021

Winter birding can be fun, especially when you do it in a place with palms, parrots, and weather for wearing shorts. This is where the summer birds go, where those fall warblers went sometime after October. Similar to how this stream bird rolls at its summer home, in Costa Rica, this bird also frequents rushing forested waterways.

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

Back in March, back when the world realized that a pandemic was happening and that it was spreading with tenacious unconscious determination, Costa Rica closed its borders. Nevertheless, given the vital role that tourism plays in the local economy, Costa Rica stuck with plans to slowly reopen. The Birding.

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10,000 Birds

MARCH 27, 2021

That unwanted yet predictable final bit of killing cold weather was and is why most of the colorful insectivores, the true birds of summer, remained far to the south until May. Baltimore Oriole- one of the more common wintering birds in Costa Rica. More Birds are Singing.

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10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 15, 2022

Global Big Day has become an annual collective event in May that encourages thousands of people to watch birds on the same date. As far as promoting birding goes, the only thing better might be October Gobal Big Day ! In mountainous Costa Rica, that can translate to such disasters as flooding, landslides, and road closures.

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10,000 Birds

JANUARY 8, 2022

In the meantime, 2022 also represents another year to celebrate and enjoy birds. After the fireworks end, I listen for that first bird of the night, count the first species calling at the break of dawn. It’s urbanized up in these here parts but thanksfully, close enough to green space for birds to persist. Not this year.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 14, 2022

The macaws of the sandpiper clan, these long-billed, long-legged, loud calling birds are large and in charge. In Costa Rica, we enjoy healthy numbers of Whimbrels , a few annual wintering Long-billed Curlews that choose to lord over the flats of the Gulf of Nicoya, and good numbers of an equally impressive prairie bird, the Marbled Godwit.

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10,000 Birds

APRIL 11, 2020

In Costa Rica, official, enforced quarantine hasn’t happened yet. At the moment, thanks to the government getting serious about this darn thing earlier rather than later, the number of new cases per day in Costa Rica has been very much linear in nature. That said, they aren’t. Rufous-naped Wren.

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10,000 Birds

JULY 9, 2022

Costa Rica is more than cloud forest with mega worthy quetzals, more than rainforest with fancy Keel-billed Toucans and luscious Green Honeycreepers. They are places where we invest most of our birding time and rightly so; mature tropical forests are where we find the highest number of species. We bird them while we can.

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10,000 Birds

JUNE 25, 2022

Most of the usual birds seem present, a frog or two call from a small wetland, and a few other expected animals are there too. We would marvel over cheery flocks of green and bright yellow Carolina Parakeets and then we would see them decline until there were just two, maybe one lonely bird, and then we would witness their forever absence.

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10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 26, 2020

It was when I searched for migrant birds on gorgeous days of September, usually near the Niagara Gorge, sometimes while fishing for salmon in the powerful green waters. After moving to Costa Rica in 2007, my fall migration took on a different approach. In Costa Rica, they become another sort of animal.

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10,000 Birds

MARCH 13, 2021

In the birding realm, any quetzal is a little piece of heaven. This mega trogon truly does look like something out of your wildest birding dreams. That is one seriously crazy looking bird! Even better, this site near San Ramon, Costa Rica is almost too accessible.

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

Blue flanks, black chest, yellow head… I am in the birders’ heaven called Rancho Naturalista Lodge in Costa Rica and am observing my first Golden-hooded Tanager of the trip. Within 140 ac / 60 ha of Rancho Naturalista’s Reserve, there are 500 bird species – or 55% of the nation’s total! But I am talking birds only!

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10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 15, 2022

and I am taking my observation-sofa position next to a glass wall, overlooking bird feeders in the misty cloudforests of the Cordillera de Talamanca. I met Serge five years ago, when he invited me to a mad bird race all the way from the Caribbean to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. It is 6.40

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10,000 Birds

APRIL 24, 2021

“That bird! That bird, chase it! Shearwaters scattered at our approach and the wind howled in our ears but it couldn’t dampen Wilfredo’s focus, nor his vocal insistence to “follow those birds”! As the prop motor revved and ocean spray flew by, I wondered, “Which birds”?

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 23, 2019

It’s part of modern birding. Make a bird list for anywhere, anytime and on a hand held device! Note birds the old fashioned way (that would be writing on paper) and submit those observations back at the homestead or wherever you have a connection. Going birding in Hawaii? Don’t have a connection? No problem!

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10,000 Birds

JULY 10, 2021

Without looking through polished sets of coated glass, birds can be itty-bitty specks and flying objects that hint at the colors hidden therein. Bring the binos up to the eyes, work the focus, and if the bird is nice enough to still be there, life can take on new meaning. This one is a Lesser Violetear from Costa Rica.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 28, 2022

Today, along with teams in a few other parts of Costa Rica and elsewhere, I will be birding for a cause, watching birds to help one that only lives in Costa Rica, the Cabanis’s Ground-Sparrow. The Cabanis’s Ground-Sparrow is a bird in trouble. Carman, and Luis Sandoval.

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10,000 Birds

AUGUST 7, 2021

The adult males sport that look; a bird created with crayons and an imaginative mind. The female isn’t quite so unreal but is still a cool little bird in her own right. She also makes a mark with her small size, one of the smallest birds in Costa Rica. A Garden Planted for Birds.

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10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 16, 2021

Another October Big Day has come and gone and thus made its way into the sacred birding archives. Similar to 2020, more than 32,000 people participated, 78,000 checklists were submitted, and more than 7,200 bird species were identified. Nothing like getting as many people to bird at the same time as possible and see what they find!

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10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 10, 2020

On the northern birding calendar, October is a time for sparrows, cool weather, and tired fall leaves. In Costa Rica, the tenth month is when birds pass through in droves. but there are other birds, many stopping to stay, many others moving to South America. In Costa Rica, a lot of those birds fly right overhead.

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10,000 Birds

JANUARY 2, 2021

In the birding realm, it means a new year list, beginning the year with winter birds, and planning trips for the next 12 months. Tennessee Warbler is one of my winter birds. Time is relative but the first day of the first month of a brand new year also acts as a good moment for making birding resolutions. See More Birds.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 22, 2021

Birding in Costa Rica wouldn’t be complete without a fine cup of coffee (or two). Smooth, tasty, and rejuvenating, the beans grown in the volcanic soils of Costa Rica make some wonderful boost juice. Venturing further into the forest, we did a bit of birding on a trail that leads to a waterfall.

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