best of 2023: Costa Rica birds

With 2023 in the rearview, our travels taking us out of Costa Rica for the beginning of 2024, and no more than six months remaining on our assignment to San Jose, this feels like an opportune time to review last year’s triumphs and set new targets for our remaining time in Costa Rica. After observing nearly 600 different bird species in Costa Rica over the course of the year, it’s tough to narrow the list down to just a small handful of highlights, but it’s a fun exercise, so we’ll try.

Elegant trogon: There are nine trogon species in Costa Rica. D saw all of them this year. The elegant trogon, which he saw during our road trip around Guanacaste, completed the set — not just for this year, but also for D’s lifetime.

Rufous motmot: D nearly collected the full set of Costa Rica’s motmots, seeing five of the country’s six species in 2023. The keel-billed, which he has only glimpsed once ever, eluded him this year. On the other hand, D had several up-close encounters with the rufous motmot this year after seeing one for the first time ever in February. The most spectacular of Costa Rica’s motmot species, this was also the final motmot D had been missing on his Costa Rica bingo card.

Yellow-eared toucanet: Finding the yellow-eared toucanet on a visit to Braulio Carrillo National Park in March made D literally jump for joy. He had dipped on this bird multiple times, both before and after this visit. This remains the only time D has seen this retiring toucan — one of Costa Rica’s six toucan species, all of which D saw this year.

Great jacamar: The jacamars are the closest thing in this hemisphere to bee-eaters, which were among our favorite birds when we lived in Africa. The rufous-tailed jacamar is quite common. The great jacamar, on the other hand, can only be observed in a very limited range in Costa Rica. D tracked all the way to the Veragua Rainforest to see one for his birthday this year.

Golden-browed chlorophonia: A spectacularly patterned bird. It wasn’t particularly difficult to find once we knew where to look, but we did plan an overnight stay at the Paraiso Quetzal Lodge just so D could look for it. Since that first sighting, D has found chlorophonias several other times on various hikes, but the birds always stayed high up in dense canopy in poor light. That first sighting stands out both because the chlorophonia was a lifer and because it posed so beautifully.

Three-wattled bellbird: D saw six of Costa Rica’s eight cotinga species this year; several were lifers and almost all were difficult to find. All were memorable, and the barenecked umbrellabird deserves an honorable mention here because of how rarely this bird allows itself to be glimpsed. As this year’s umbrellabird was not D’s first, however, the bellbird gets the nod for most memorable cotinga of the year, not least because of its utterly bizarre song.

Ocellated Antbird: Costa Rica boasts some thirty different ant birds (antshrikes, antvireos, antwrens, antbirds, antthrushes, and antpittas). D is still missing half a dozen for his life list. The ocellated antbird was easily the most colorful of these various species D saw this year, and his first sighting of this bird in February remains his only one to date.

With 131 lifers seen in Costa Rica this year, there are plenty of other honorable mentions. There was the aplomado falcon D barely managed to photograph in Guanacaste — the first confirmed record in that location in over a year; a Cabanis’s ground-sparrow, one of Costa Rica’s few true endemics, which D tracked down in a small coffee plantation outside Paraiso; a painted bunting, a sharpbill, and a pair of white-fronted nunbirds; a pair of black-faced antthrushes and several different antipitta species D managed to photograph for the first time; nine different owl species, which are always a treat; several incredibly furtive quail species; and an ornate-hawk eagle D caught in a flyby in the forest of Montserrat…just to name a few. It was truly a spectacular year.

After living in San Jose for a little more than two years, D has recorded 634 different bird species in Costa Rica — by far the most he’s seen in any single country. There are 171 species remaining that have been recorded in Costa Rica but which D has never seen. If one expands the list to include birds D has seen elsewhere but not in Costa Rica, the number of potential targets for next year grows to 289. Pelagic birds would be an obvious place to start. D has yet to go on a pelagic cruise, meaning he has seen exactly zero of the dozens of petrels, shearwaters, and other ocean birds that have been reported in Costa Rican waters. We’ve also spent very little time in the southernmost part of the country, which boasts a number of species that are reported with regularity there and can’t be seen elsewhere in the country. D is planning to start his 2024 quest there once we return to Costa Rica from our travels with S’s family.

Pictured from top to bottom, all birds seen in Costa Rica in 2023: crested caracara, elegant trogon, rufous motmot, yellow-eared toucanet, great jacamar, golden-browed chlorophonia, three-wattled bellbird, ocellated antbird, fiery-throated hummingbird, crested owls.