Recently I made the last minute decision to jump on a 12 day Costa Rica birding trip. Three days later I flew to San Jose where I joined a group of 12 like minded souls from Scotland, Alaska, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Alberta and Ontario. Our guides for this trip were Benny Jacobs-Schwartz and James Lees. We were very fortunate to have two absolutely incredible guides that made this a spectacular trip. In all we observed 387 species over the twelve days, enabling myself to pick up 178 new lifers.
Our guides hard at work during a lunch break.
Hotel Quelitales and area, with a stop at La Selva Biological Station alongside the Sarapiqui River,
My own cabin on the mountainside at Hotel Quelitales
and our final stop lodging at the incredible Arenal Bird Observatory. At each stop we spent three nights lodging in very comfortable accommodations.
Also, each roadside lunch stop had bird feeders set up so the birding never really stopped. And, I spent the evenings either owling or herping. As you can image the frogs, toads and moths provided non stop entertainment. Sleep was at a minimum.
I should also mention that our driver/birder, Ricardo, was not only a great driver and birder but an all around great guy.
To start the trip, I had flown down a day early and stayed at our starting hotel near San Jose, Hotel Bougainvillea. This hotel has a very impressive, expansive property filled with many, many trees, shrubs and flowers. All conducive to attracting a variety of birds. In fact, we had over 40 species before we left the grounds the next morning.
Anyone who has birded in the rain forest will know photography can be very challenging at times however over the next few seeks I hope to explore some of the many birds we were able to observe on our trip. Today’s images were all taken with my iPhone.
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