Costa Rica pelagic

When D mentioned pelagic birding to his regular birding buddy, the latter scoffed. “Esos pajaros no tienen nada de gracia,” he said, meaning he would much rather walk through the woods in search of colorful songbirds and delight in their dulcet tones than spend a day on a boat squinting to try to tell apart various fast-moving, drably-colored gulls. For D, on the other hand, an oceanic birding expedition held undeniable appeal, not least because it promised the opportunity to see birds he had never glimpsed before.

Organizing a pelagic outing is no simple undertaking. Hiring a boat for a day can be prohibitively expensive, not to mention that, living in San Jose, we are quite far from the coastal launching points of the small handful of pelagic tour operators D managed to find online. D wrote to one tour organizer, himself an avid birder, who recommended D find half-a-dozen others to share the boat rental. D cast around for potential pelagic partners in online birding forums without much luck until he got connected to a researcher at a local university who is in the midst of a marine bird observation project.

The researcher, also an avid birder (there is no shortage of avid birders in Costa Rica), shared a schedule of his planned pelagic outings and invited D along…which is how your humble narrator found himself at a highway bus stop on a Saturday afternoon, waiting for the university car to pick him up. The point of departure for this pelagic trip was Cabuya, at the tip of the Nicoya Peninsula; getting there proved half an adventure in and of itself. Traffic was horrific, and by the time D and his new friends reached the Puntarenas terminal, the ferry for which they had purchased tickets had long departed. Notwithstanding a few hiccups — the missed ferry, an evening without electricity on arrival — the following morning found D boarding a small sport fishing boat along with four other birding enthusiasts.

The first couple of hours on the water, D felt a bit out of his depths. Practically every bird he saw was new to him, which was great; that he was unfamiliar with all of these incredibly similar birds also meant D initially struggled to identify a lot of what he saw. Heading out with several experienced local birders was a tremendous help because D could focus on learning field marks without having to worry about identifying and keeping track of what he saw. The researcher recorded the group’s sightings, starting a new list every hour, in accordance with scientific protocol.

D could not have asked for a better introduction to pelagic birding. In a matter of hours, he netted a dozen lifers, including several spectacular species that had even his more experienced boat mates hopping with excitement. The group also saw three different dolphin species and dozens of turtles. The dolphins were a particular joy — both because seeing their huge pods was incredible and because the ocean birds followed the dolphins in large flocks. The day ended with a cherry on top, as the local birder who accompanied the group — the same tour organizer D had contacted originally — helped D find a cuckoo that had eluded him for two years.

The plan had been to make one outing and then head back to San Jose the following day but as the boat approached the shoreline, the researcher suggested another outing. D was all too happy to repeat the experience. The second pelagic voyage was considerably different than the first. For one, the group decided to head out into deeper ocean waters farther off shore to try for a handful of rarer species. Also, it rained. There weren’t as many bird sightings farther from land, but D did net four additional lifers. Also, the day ended with a massive mixed flock that was following a giant pod of spinner dolphins, which was a real treat. The spinners — the fourth different dolphin species D saw — put on quite the aerial show!

All told, the pelagic weekend proved an unqualified success. D saw 18 lifers over the course of two days — two on land and sixteen in the ocean — enough to push his lifetime total above 2,000!! Considering he is approaching 700 species in Costa Rica (682 and counting), there aren’t really any hotspots left where D could expect to add this many new birds to his life list in such a short period of time. Most places D visits these days produce one or two lifers, if any. The pelagic brought D several steps closer to his goal of hitting 700 Costa Rican species before our departure; he’ll need a solid dose of luck to reach this milestone over our remaining six weeks in country.

Pelagic photography is no joke. If photographing birds on land is challenging, it is triply so on the ocean, as the birds are almost always in flight and the boat is also in constant motion, rocking side to side with the waves even when the motor is cut. One can line up a perfect shot and still end up with a blurry blob or an image of the sky or of the empty sea. Most of the 3,000+ images D snapped are going to go straight into the trash bin, but there are definite diamonds in the rough as well. Here are a few early favorites.

Pictured from top to bottom: red-necked phalarope, brown booby, Parkinson’s petrel, white tern, Tahiti petrel, Galapagos shearwater, bridled tern, wedge-rumped storm-petrel. All but the first two were lifers, and even the first two were noteworthy, as this trip marked D’s first sightings of these birds in Costa Rica.