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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Costa Rica Dolphins Sea Turtles Turtles 263

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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Costa Rica San Jose Birds Farming 264

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 5, 2022

In any case, screech-owls are birds of the Megascops genus, small nocturnal owls found in wooded habitats from southern Alaska to northern Argentina. Because it might also occur in southern Costa Rica. The Megascops from southern Costa Rica, this bird was at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge.

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Costa Rica Owls Panama Argentina 186

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 13, 2021

12 species of cuckoos are on the Costa Rica bird list. Tortuguero- one of many excellent birding areas in Costa Rica. I can’t say the same for the other especially tough cuckoo in Costa Rica, the one and only Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo (or RVG as I like to call it).

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Costa Rica Panama Cats Washington 249

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 24, 2022

December is not the ideal month for bird counts, at least not in Costa Rica. However, in Costa Rica, despite being wonderfully warm in December, the birding isn’t as straightforward as one might expect. One such event is the bird count at Arenal, a day typically replete with varying degrees of rain.

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Costa Rica Eagles Species Blackbirds 232

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 11, 2021

It takes a detour to reach Cano Negro Wildlife Refuge in Costa Rica but oh how the trip is worth it. Fortunately, the waters have long since subsided and I was able to make the trip this past weekend to participate in the Cano Negro Bird Count. Speaking of bird lists, our’s topped out at a crazy 171 species.

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Costa Rica Wildlife Tennessee Owls 210

10,000 Birds

JULY 24, 2021

“Gamebirds” to some, cool, cryptic understory birds to the birding people, grouse crouch protected as unfettered winds sway the top of the tall prairie grass. Then there are the ones that live in PA , the state bird, “the grouse” that a great many non-birders are aware of, my Uncle Fred was one of them.

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Costa Rica Chickens Pennsylvania Litter 264

10,000 Birds

JULY 18, 2020

In Costa Rica, our July birding news usually consists of interesting sightings during the mid-summer tours. These and other important birding related questions come to mind and during a normal July, I would be personally and actively helping answer them. Which tours saw the most roosting owls?

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Costa Rica Birds Thailand Family 202

10,000 Birds

JUNE 8, 2019

Growing up birding in Western New York was also a time when the old woods of the Niagara Gorge were punctuated with the songs of hidden Red-eyed and Warbling Vireos and the lazy notes of Eastern Wood-Pewees. ” During migration, I also see Eastern Wood-Pewees in Costa Rica. We had one in the Arenal area.

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Costa Rica Species Birds New York 195

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 3, 2019

“Target birds” The term can foster excitement but is easily contentious. Aren’t all birds worth watching? There’s nothing wrong with appreciating and watching every bird but there’s also nothing wrong about going to great efforts to see lifers only found in dreams.

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Costa Rica Panama Birds Eagles 201

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 7, 2019

Watching birds, birding, is inexorably tied to autonomous motivation. Maybe that’s why birders just might be obsessive about it or at least, very much into the hobby, the birding way of life. We get serious about quality optics and spend hours studying field guides about birds because we really really want to.

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Costa Rica Cooking Birds Chickens 194

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 18, 2020

And this doesn’t mean you are obsessed or a little bit too much into birds because keeping track of a year list actually comes with some side benefits. Yeah, many of us living the birding life do so anyways because we can’t help it. I strongly suggest the experience of sharing Turquoise-browed Motmots. Go birding!

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Costa Rica 2020 Morals Farming 255

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 26, 2017

I have just returned from Costa Rica, the country about which I knew very little, despite it coming under my radar all the way back in 1999 when the “Africa – Birds & Birding” magazine published some of John Graham’s experiences from his visit in 1993. Costa Rica, here I come! to great birding.

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Costa Rica San Jose Serbia Europe 171

10,000 Birds

MAY 9, 2020

Today, May 9th is when we would have been immersed in birds, likely from dusk to dawn. We would have been straining the ears to get lucky with the faint notes of at least one migrating Upland Sandpiper before getting down to business with a hectic focus on the many birds of a tropical dawn chorus. Migrant birds.

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Costa Rica Barn Owls Farming Owls 193

10,000 Birds

MAY 12, 2018

When it comes to initiatives that promote birding, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is hard to beat. Numerous projects take place that monitor bird populations and help educate people of all ages about birds. Those who did so on May 5th automatically became part of the biggest day of collective birding in 2018; Global Big Day !

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Costa Rica 2018 Colombia Collecting 155

10,000 Birds

JULY 21, 2018

Peer into the branches of the big trees and we might see the shapes of an Emerald Toucanet, tanagers, woodcreepers, and other birds doing their thing in the cloud forest life. Northern Emerald Toucanets in Costa Rica are sometimes considered a separate species known as the Blue-throated Toucanet.

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Costa Rica San Jose Birds Eagles 128

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 9, 2014

It rains a lot in Costa Rica. Yes, we do have a dry season but that only holds sway in certain parts of Costa Rica, and then there are those places that seem to be perpetually wet. Typical conditions when birding wet rainforest in Costa Rica.

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Costa Rica Birds Parrots Experience 205

10,000 Birds

MARCH 21, 2015

Birders head to Costa Rica to see stunners like Resplendent Quetzal , Three-wattled Bellbird , Orange-collared Manakin , fancy hummingbirds , tanagers, and literally hundreds of other birds. This bunch of possible Costa Rican crypto birds can be grouped into four main categories: (1). One of them quetzals.

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Costa Rica Species South America America 204

10,000 Birds

MARCH 3, 2018

They get you where it counts, right in the birding heart. Or, they are just lifers or birds rarely seen. Whatever the case, there are some serious quality birds lurking in the wetlands and woodlands of Cano Negro, Costa Rica. Cano Negro is one of Costa Rica’s two largest wetlands.

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Costa Rica Birds Chile Owls 100

10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2018

These are the summer months of the northern hemisphere and yet this time of year in Costa Rica is known as the “invierno”, Spanish for “winter” However, no matter how adapted I become to the local culture, I just can’t use that word in Costa Rica. Bird there now and it’s fine!

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Costa Rica Birds Parrots Species 131

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 28, 2015

In Costa Rica, although I did spend a memorable one years ago in the Osa Peninsula where flocks of parrots flew into the mangroves while we feasted on turkey, pie, and the works, we have no actual Wild Turkeys , nor an official Thanksgiving. Our final turkey is a much-wanted bird on many a birder’s target list.

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Costa Rica Turkey Ecuador Hunting 163

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 28, 2017

In Costa Rica, October is our May. Birds begin to filter down through this southern part of Central America by August but the biggest avian movement happens during the third and final weeks of October. Some of the Birding Club at Selva Bananito. or almost anything else, that’s the way the birding ball bounces.

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Costa Rica Birds Parrots Farming 149

10,000 Birds

MARCH 9, 2023

Here’s an example: born and bred in Europe, I do not know much about the tropics, especially the bird-rich New World tropics. Yes, I had local bird books, but only during my second tour of Costa Rica did I finally buy a mammal guide, and only after my trip to Colombian Amazon did I obtain a habitat guide.

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Costa Rica Cougars Mammals Madagascar 222

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 14, 2015

I started birding in what must have been 1978. Each new bird has been and still is a major personal achievement, another goal made, and always cause for unquestionable personal celebration. That’s how important the lifer experience is and I suspect most other birders who started out young feel the same.

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Costa Rica Birds Pennsylvania North America 150

10,000 Birds

JUNE 13, 2015

“Costa Rica borders two oceans. There are no pelagic trips” That ironic pseudo-haiku almost sums up pelagic birding in Costa Rica. However, since you might see shearwaters, storm-petrels, a jaeger, Sulids, and who knows what else, it does have birding mojo. The PMMP awaits. Galapagos Shearwaters.

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Costa Rica Birds Dolphins Rescue 157

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 4, 2017

I reside in Costa Rica, the country is roughly the same size as West Virginia, but I rarely make it to some parts of this birdy nation. Six hours isn’t that bad, though, and if you stick to the coastal route, it’s even better, so I should try and make it down that way more often, especially because the birding is wonderful.

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Costa Rica West Virginia Birds Panama 100

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 13, 2014

Eddy Rabbitt sang about loving a rainy night but in Costa Rica, hummingbirds love a rainy day. Despite spending my fair share of soggy birding days in the tropics, I hadn’t realized just how much hummingbirds do love the rain until a recent experience at the Catarata del Toro , central Costa Rica.

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Costa Rica Bears Shelters Experience 157

10,000 Birds

MARCH 7, 2015

Yes, the time had come to see how many of Costa Rica’s hummingbird species we could find, and we had two days to work with. This oh so awesome endeavor was apparently somewhat inspired by a blog post I had written that toyed with the idea of doing a hummingbird big day in Costa Rica.

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Costa Rica San Jose Species Owls 197

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 17, 2018

Many birds sing local dialects, and human languages are dynamic, they can’t help but change, evolve over time. Mike and Corey of 10000 Birds fame can probably attest to it because they bore witness to some of the birdiness up around Arenal a few years ago. That might not sound like much but trust me, in Costa Rica, this is major.

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Costa Rica Owls Eagles Birds 117

10,000 Birds

APRIL 15, 2017

Shortly after arrival, I saw a bird that had me yelling for Robert to come down from his room in the Casa Marbella and look in the scope. That or Albuquerque… Yeah, we were pretty happy to see a bird often referred to as a “rat with wings” (by non-birders of course) because it doesn’t usually vacation in Costa Rica.

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Costa Rica Albuquerque Eagles Panama 100

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 18, 2021

In common with so many other volcanoes, Poas also houses farms, people, and forests full of birds. Eastern Meadowlarks, cowbirds, grackles , and a few other birds are at peace with the cows but for most birds on Poas, the forest is where life is living large. Just like it sounds, birding in place is watching birds from one spot.

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Costa Rica Birds Cows Hunters 253

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 27, 2018

Lacking the benefit of heated shelters, birds must heed that warning or perish. This is why the Yellow Warblers and Baltimore Orioles of summer don’t linger to experience October 31st, and even late fall migrants like kinglets and sparrows move to slightly warmer regions. Surviving on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.

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Costa Rica Bats Birds Falcons 152

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

Birds can be enjoyed in a wide variety of ways. Those of us who chase rare birds for our counties, states, or other human-made geographical distinctions watch birds for more reasons than the twitch. Personally, I enjoy birds in every way. After a bird rich morning at Cope’s.

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Costa Rica Species San Jose Birds 175

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 21, 2018

Our trip to Costa Rica has come to an end, and sadly, it ended with one of the best weeks of birding in the entire year. There is no way this week could have been as excellent as it was without a huge amount of help from the Costa Rica Birders and their “network”.

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Costa Rica San Jose Chinchillas Family 177

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 26, 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. This also makes the Arenal Observatory Lodge an ideal location for wildlife observation in Costa Rica.

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Costa Rica Reptiles Research Industry 152

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 23, 2011

Costa Rica enjoys an international reputation as an iconic birding location, bursting with epic Neotropical species and breathtaking natural attractions. Understandably, certain lodges have, over the years, come to be associated with the Costa Rican birding circuit.

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Costa Rica San Jose Sanctuary Protection 168

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 25, 2019

Though Corey arrived in Costa Rica Saturday afternoon he’s spent more time on the beach than he’s spent looking for birds. Nonetheless, birds have found him, like the White-throated Magpie-Jays that insisted on sharing his breakfast. What was your best bird of the weekend? How about you? How about you?

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2019 Costa Rica Bald Eagle New York 122