Costa Rica II Trip Report - the following is a summary of our 2019 - 2024 trips.

One of the challenges in Costa Rica, one of the most well-developed countries in Latin America for nature-based tourism, is deciding where to travel.  Just about every corner of the country has a national park, a private reserve, or an eco-lodge where one can enjoy the great variety of species and habitats found in this rich part of Central America.  As most folks who have traveled with me know, a big part of my trip-leading style is to set up routes that require as little driving as possible while optimizing our field time and exposure to as many different habitats and species as possible, all while staying in nice and interesting places with good wildlife right outside your door.

After having led ten trips south of San Jose on a Pacific Lowlands - Chiriqui Highlands - Caribbean Foothills route, and after having become more enamored of the great infrastructure, excellent wildlife, and wonderful people of Costa Rica, I knew it was time to set up another trip.  The Caribbean Lowlands, conveniently located just to the north of San Jose, offer a compact route with great lodges, superb forest, high biodiversity, and easy travel.  While there is some overlap with my other Costa Rica trip, there is more than enough new habitat and species in this very different part of the country.

As always, we start at the lovely Hotel Bougainvillea, my home base in Costa Rica.  The exceptional service as well as the lush garden, where we've seen over 50 species of birds (a small fraction of the 300 species ebird list), are always a big hit.  From here we head over the continental divide to Braulio Carrillo National Park, one of Costa Rica's largest national parks at 118,000 acres.  This ecological gem serves not only as a critical watershed for much of the country, but also as a refuge for a large percentage of the Costa Rica's wildlife.  Primates, large cats, Baird's tapir, and countless other species make their homes among the towering trees, thick lianas, and numerous epiphytes of the pristine forest.  Several easily accessed trails allow us to experience this habitat which once covered probably over half of the country.  Like most rainforests, birding here can be challenging.  Waiting for a mixed flock, hoping to cross paths with an army ant swarm, and trying to see understory skulkers takes some patience, but the rewards are worth it.  And of course there are all sorts of interesting plants, insects, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, each with their own unique story.

The bird list here is long, and well over 300 species have been recorded within the towering forest here.  Among the visits I've made, we've seen some great birds and have had good luck encountering mixed flocks.  Tawny-crested tanagers, which often travel in groups, sometimes form the nucleus for mixed flocks and we've found streak-crowned antvireo, checker-throated stipplethroat (antwren), black-and-yellow tanager, emerald tanager, black-faced grosbeak, blue-black grosbeak, buff-fronted foliage-gleaner, plain xenops, spotted woodcreeper, rufous mourner, and others traveling with them.  There is a nice suite of manakins in the park and we've seen white-ruffed, white-collared, and red-capped. 

This is the neoptropics, which means that there are many under story skulkers.  In Braulio Carrillo, we've seen a good selection of these, including white-breasted wood-wren, stripe-breasted wren, and streak-chested antpitta.  Army ant swarms, though they occur every day in lowland rainforest, don't always occur where you're walking, so serendipity is the rule.  We've had a little luck in the park and have come across some interesting assemblages of species including spotted, bicolored, and chestnut-backed antbirds, great tinamou, black-headed nightingale-thrush, and buff-rumped warbler following the swarms.

In the canopy we've found some of the larger birds of the area.  Mealy and white-crowned parrots are fairly common (though not easy to see from the forest floor), squirrel cuckoos are bounding through the branches, and trogons sit quietly while on the lookout for food.  While northern black-throated trogon is fairly common in the Caribbean lowlands, one of the rare prizes at Braulio Carrillo is the lattice-tailed trogon, a regional endemic found only in Costa Rica and far western Panama.  And then there are the toucans, those colorful crowd-pleasers found only in the neotropics.  Keel-billed and yellow-throated toucans are fairly common, but, like the trogons, there is an uncommon prize here, the yellow-eared toucanet, yet another regional endemic with a range similar to that of the lattice-tailed trogon.  Though both the trogon and the toucanet are uncommon, we've had some luck and seen them both well here.  And Geoffrey's spider and white-fronted capuchin monkeys as well as northern tamandua have been bonus critters.

From Braulio Carrillo, we head a short ways to one of Costa Rica’s newest wildlife “hotspots”.  Jose Perez, also known as “Cope”, is an accomplished wildlife artist who has a small gallery and a fabulous feeder set-up at his house.  In addition to hummingbird and banana feeders (both of which attract a lot of eye candy - orange-chinned parakeet, pale-vented pigeon, scarlet-rumped tanager, chestnut-headed oropendula, red-legged honeycreeper, bronze-tailed plumeleteer, and long-billed and stripe-throated hermits), we’ve also seen helmeted basilisk, brown-throated three-toed sloth, black river turtle, white-tipped sicklebill, spectacled and crested owls, Central american pygmy-owl, blue-headed parrot, great potoo, and Honduran white bat......and we haven't even reached our first lodge yet !

Selva Verde lodge has been attracting nature-based tourists for decades, and for good reason.  While it has very attractive grounds, an excellent restaurant with good feeders off the porch, very good service, and nice rooms, the surrounding tracts of owland rainforest and its location along the banks of the Rio Sarapiqui make it an ideal spot for seeing, enjoying, and learning about the biological richness of the area.  During our time here, we enjoy the lodges trails which pass through rainforest, river edge, and a nice tract of floodplain forest.  We also visit the nearby Tirimbina Reserve which has a stand of pristine rainforest and an excellent trail system.  In the area's rainforests, we've found American pygmy-kingfisher, olive-backed euphonia, chestnut-backed antbird, bright-rumped attila, olive-backed quail-dove, crested owl, white-collared and red-capped manakins, cocoa, plain brown, and streak-headed woodcreepers, fasciated antshrike, collared aracari, keel-billed and yellow-throated toucans, rufous mourner, snowy cotinga, the uncommon white-fronted nunbird, and at least one hundred other species.  Along the Rio Sarapiqui and its edges, we've enjoyed fasciated and bare-throated tiger-herons, mangrove swallow, Amazon and ringed kingfishers, buff-rumped warbler, gray-capped flycatcher, yellow-billed cacique, bay wren, shining honeycreeper, golden-hooded tanager, cinnamon becard, gray-chested dove, scaly-breasted hummingbird, piratic flycatcher, and lots more.  The Selva Verde area is also rich in psittacines, and we've seen an amazing nine species here, including great green and scarlet macaws, brown-hooded and white-crowned parrots, and crimson-fronted parakeet.   

While at Selva Verde we spend a little time in edge habitat and visit a nearby side road where the open country attracts a different suite of species.  Here canebrake wren, black-headed saltator, thick-billed seed-finch, streak-headed woodcreeper, Morelet's seedeater, crimson-collared tanager, black-cowled oriole, gray and roadside hawks, Montezuma oropendula, and others are found.  The open views here have also allowed us to scan the treetops and find the snowy cotinga, a striking endemic found only on the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica and far western Panama.

Other wildlife we've found in the Selva Verde area includes white-lined sac-winged bat, long-nosed bat, vampire bat, Cen

One of the rare highlights of our visit to this area was finding a pair of king vultures and seeing them mate.  Like me, you're probably wondered why king vultures (especially compared to other New World vultures) have such spectacularly colored heads as well as that striking black and white plumage.  While both social and sexual selection may be at work, our observation seemed to highlight the sexual selection part.  On a large horizontal branch, the two birds faced each other with wings fully spread and their multi-colored heads drooped downward where they stood out in all their glory against the white of their breasts.  Certainly an irresistible sight.  The birds slowly swayed back and forth for perhaps five minutes before doing the deed.

From Selva Verde we head northwest to the Cano Negro area.  Along with Palo Verde National Park on the Pacific slope, this is one of only two large seasonal wetlands in Costa Rica.  Being that the area is relatively flat and has warm weather and quite a bit of water, it's perfect for agriculture, and much of the area has been converted to sugar cane, pineapples (Costa Rica is now one of the world's largest producers), and cattle pasture.  Fortunately there are still rivers, seasonal ponds, oxbow lakes, and patches of forest that provide good habitat for all sorts of species, a good handful of which are found nowhere else in the country.  We get our first taste of the wetland richness at Medio Queso, a small village about an hour east Cano Negro, where we do a boat trip.  Later in Cano Negro we do a similar boat trip on the Rio Frio.  The boat trips in the Cano Negro area are similar to those in many lowland neotropical locations, particularly in terms of the great light, peaceful ambiance, and avian richness.  There's always a bunch of familiar faces, like Amazon, ringed, green, and American pygmy kingfishers, black-bellied whistling ducks, anhinga, northern jacana, the common waders like little blue heron and great egret, and some passerines like tropical kingbird and seedeaters.  But each trip is unique and has its specialties, and in Cano Negro, some of the special birds we've seen include pinnated and least bitterns, sungrebe, Nicaraguan grackle, black-collared hawk, russet-naped wood-rail, yellow-breasted crake, green ibis, jabiru, wood stork, lesser yellow-headed vulture, slaty spinetail, gray-crowed yellowthroat, and Nicaraguan seed-finch. 

In the small village, we stay at the simple but comfortable Cano Negro Natural Lodge.  Cano Negro is a small town with scattered trees, patches of forest, seasonal ponds, and the Rio Frio.  The stands of forest, combined with the “edge effect” around the lodge and around town, make it a rich area for birds and wildlife.  During our time here, we’ve enjoyed seeing collared aracari, gray-headed chachalaca, gray-headed dove (often a shy and difficult bird to see, but not so much here), mistletoe and yellow tyrannulets, crimson-fronted parakeet, red-lored parrot, olive-crowned yellowthroat, golden-winged warbler, white-winged becard, spot-breasted wren, golden-hooded tanager, northern tropical pewee, red-lored parrot, blue-throated goldentail, olivaceous piculet, blue ground-dove, pale-billed woodpecker, great antshrike, northern bentbill, canebrake wren, slaty-tailed and black-headed trogons, black-striped sparrow, black-cheeked woodpecker, Pacific screech-owl, great potoo, black-crowned tityra, and more.  It's a rich place, and with a little luck, it's not unusual to see as many as 100 species in a day.  

Other wildlife we've seen around Cano Negro includes variegated squirrel, Geoffrey's spider monkey, mantled howler monkey, emerald basilisk, and spectacled caiman.

Our final lodge is the luxurious Arenal Observatory Lodge, a well-known site at the base of Volcan Arenal.  While this small (5300 ft.) and young (about 7500 years) volcano has had a turbulent past - with significant eruptions in 1968, 1975, and from the mid 80s to the late 90s - it has been quiet for about a decade with only occasional plumes of smoke emerging from the summit.  It provides a striking backdrop for the nice patches of rainforest found around the lodge.  This area is a popular birding spot and has a long species list.  The rather manicured grounds have a pretty good edge effect, with a colony of Montezuma oropendulas, gray-capped and piratic flycatchers, white-crowned parrot, long-tailed tyrant, black-striped sparrow, masked and black-crowned tityras, brown jay, variable seedeater, black-cowled oriole, white-nosed coati, variegated squirrel, and more.  The planted verbenas attract a nice variety of hummingbirds including blue-throated goldentail, violet-headed hummingbird, black-crested coquette, bronze-tailed plumeleteer, and brown violetear.  And the fruit feeders, located right in front of an expansive view of the volcano, can be very busy with green and red-legged honeycreepers, buff-throated saltator, black-cheeked woodpecker, scarlet-thighed dacnis, Montezuma and chestnut-headed oropendulas, emerald and golden-hooded tanagers, blue-gray and palm tanagers, collared aracari, and yellow-throated euphonia.

While it's always nice to have the easy viewing on the edges, it's in the forest where many of the avian gems are found, and the trails at Arenal, while not extensive, offer good access to excellent rainforest and many of the forest-based species.  Here we've had good luck with antbirds and have had great views of dull-mantled antbird (they're downright common here), bicolored, spotted, and ocellated antbirds, dusky antbird, white-flanked and slaty antwrens, russet antshrike, and streak-crowned antvireo.  This is also a good area for thicket antpitta, and we've had very good views of this elusive species.  Busy mixed flocks have included buff-throated foliage-gleaner, ochre-bellied and slaty-capped flycatchers, spotted woodcreeper, smoky-brown and golden-olive woodpeckers, sulphur-rumped flycatcher, tawny-capped euphonia, white-throated shrike-tanager, golden-crowned warbler, and Carmiol's tanager.  The understory and thicket skulkers include a lot of wrens (song, nightingale, bay, and black-throated), tawny-faced gnatwren, black-headed nightingale-thrush, Kentucky warbler, and orange-billed sparrow.  Other avian highlights have been black-faced solitaire and olive-streaked flycatcher (two of the few Chiriqui Highland endemics possible on this route), an ornate hawk-eagle perched close up and in the open for 20 minutes, many red-capped manakins, the graceful foraging flights of swallow-tailed kites, a day-roosting great potoo, and many great curassows and crested guans around the lodge.  At night Brazilian rabbits come out to forage, and, at a small pond in the forest, you can find red-eyed tree frogs, brilliant forest frogs, and their main predator, the northern cat-eyed snake.

On our return to the Hotel Bougainvillea on our last day, we have a few more treats in store.  First we make a stop at a small side road in foothill rainforest.  The Virgen del Socorro Road passes through some edge and second growth forest, then drops down to a scenic river where more mature rainforest takes over.  Though we've covered a lot of ground and seen a lot of wildlife at this point in the trip, there are, amazingly, quite a few things found in this area that we've yet to see.  Some of the "new for the trip" birds are barred hawk, white hawk, Zeledon's antbird, slate-throated redstart, sooty-faced finch, tufted flycatcher, torrent tyrannulet, and American dipper.  Just up the road a few minutes is the Soda y Mirador Cinchona, a nice restaurant with great hummingbird and fruit feeders as well as a terrific view of one of the areas many waterfalls.  While the fruit feeders attract common species such as clay-colored thrush, blue-gray and palm tanagers, silver-throated tanager, and buff-throated saltator, the less common specialties are the blue-throated race of northern emerald toucanet, red-headed barbet, and prong-billed barbet (another Chiriqui Highland endemic).  Their hummingbird feeders attract coppery-headed emerald (one of only two species endemic to Costa Rica), violet sabrewing, green thorntail, and green-crowned brilliant.  Around the grounds, a few understory skulkers we've seen include white-naped brushfinch, chestnut-capped brushfinch, and buff-fronted quail-dove.  Not a bad way to end the trip.

Costa Rica's popularity as a nature-based travel destination is well deserved.  It's tremendous biodiversity, commitment to conservation, good infrastructure, and wonderful people make for memorable and wildlife-rich trips.  I'm very excited to be adding this new route to my trip schedule !! 

Last updated: April 18, 2024.