by David Dister
April 2019
Early this year, I was able to make a trip to Costa Rica with a local guide. Costa Rica is roughly the size of West Virginia and yet has a list of 920 bird species. The country is situated between two oceans and includes various tropical eco-zones from coastal lowlands to high-altitude mountains. For most of the country, the winter season is relatively dry, though the Pacific Ocean coast is much drier than the Caribbean coast. And though my Spanish is not great, Costa Rica is among the best in Central America for bilingual citizens and field guides. My 12-day birding tour was led by Johan Fernandez. I was one of just five birders on the tour.
Ecotourism ranks as the number one industry in Costa Rica, with birding tours and various other adventures and seaside retreats as popular options. I was hoping to add 100 to 150 bird species to my life list, and this tour exceeded my expectations with about 175 “lifers.” While open habitat birds were usually seen by all, tropical forest birds were generally much more difficult to locate, and the use of a green laser pointer used by the guide to one side of the target bird proved to be a great aid.
In addition to life birds, there were at least 75 species that I had seen previously in the United States. These included Neotropical migrants in the Great Lakes (Baltimore Oriole, Tennessee Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Broad-winged Hawk), boreal or temperate long-distance migrants (Black-bellied Plover, Ruddy Turnstone, and Spotted Sandpiper), and local subtropical birds often seen in southern Florida, Texas, or Arizona. Among the 920 total bird species were 49 diverse species of hummingbirds, and I was fortunate to see 22 of these flying jewels.
Such an awesome birding adventure strengthened my concern for the protection of birds and their critical habitats across all continents, whether migrants or locally restricted endemics.