Costa Rica 2026 (1/5): Overview and Hotel Bougainvillea
Emilee and I are back home from a big birding trip to Costa Rica. We had a great trip where we saw a ton of cool birds. We did not have any travel disasters and I am in the process of going through all of my pictures. We spent a few days each at three locations, one in each of Costa Rica’s main bioregions (Rancho Naturalista on the Atlantic Slope, Bosque de Paz in the Central Highlands, and the Tarcoles Birding Hotel on the Pacific Slope). This sampler-platter approach served us well on our first trip to the tropics on our 2023 honeymoon to Belize and we employed a similar strategy here to have a broader experience base to determine what we like (and perhaps don’t) in the future. Diversification - my dad is an economics teacher!
Big smiles for arriving in San Jose
Costa Rica stood out as being far enough from Belize that we could expect a significant amount of new bird species, while still being two short flights away. In planning the trip, we used a mix of old- and new-school tools. We got our hands on a copy of a copy of Barrett Lawson’s 2009 A Bird-Finding Guide to Costa Rica, Dyer and Howell’s 2023 Birds of Costa Rica, and Fodor’s Essential Costa Rica. I did my usual Excel spreadsheet of travel logistics and used eBird bar charts and Target Species to figure out what birds to expect at different locations. I like to look at what the various birding tour companies do when they go somewhere: where they stay, their trip lists, etc. One thing I noticed was that most of the tours to Costa Rica spent their first night at the Hotel Bougainvillea just North of San Jose (the capital) and close to the airport. A particular highlight was that many of these groups reported Mottled Owl, often with photos of a bird roosting in a bamboo stand. That seemed like a good way to start the trip - maybe we would even find this bamboo stand with the roosting owl!
Our flights out were smooth. Emilee’s dad dropped us off at the Durango Airport on Friday morning (thanks Brad!). We had a tight connection in Dallas but our gates were only about 100 yards apart, and we even had time to get bagel sandwiches to go for our second flight to San Jose that was also uneventful. When we arrived it was raining, which was not unexpected given it was the rainy season and the general forecast called for rain most every day. I was a bit shocked at the traffic - it took us around a half hour to drive a fairly short distance to go pick up our rental car. Once behind the wheel, it took me another 40 minutes or so to make it the 7 miles to the Hotel Bougainvillea! I had been advised to navigate Costa Rica using the app Waze and we were taking all kinds of turns from one line of cars to another, with a solid trickle of mopeds and motorcycles filtering through on the center line. A very different type of driving than I am used to in sleepy Cortez!
The Hotel Bougainvillea! This was the view from our balcony looking back towards San Jose. The hotel had beautiful and extensive gardens behind the hotel - 10 acres! We got out to bird the grounds before dinner and try to find the bamboo grove with the Mottled Owl.
Note the umbrella in hand! We picked these up before our trip and that ended up being a great call.
Birding our first evening, we encountered some cool birds right away. Chief among them, a pair of Lesson’s Motmots. I put my camera together and was excited to take some photos but I noticed pretty quickly that I would need to do some adjusting to the low light conditions. In the Southwest, ‘low light photography’ is something of a theoretical exercise. Not the case here: I shot this picture wide open (f/4) at 1/1000 of a second, which resulted in my camera choosing an auto-ISO value of 80,000. Oops! Lightroom’s “Denoise” feature can do a lot (applied at 50% in the right photo) but it was clear I was going to have to make some adjustments - namely shoot with slower shutter speeds than I do at home.
Our best find that evening was a White-eared Ground-Sparrow. We got a close look at its dark head with white ear patch as it moved through the trees. This would end up being our only observation of this species!
We located the bamboo stand but could not find the Mottled Owl. We went back out at night to see if it would be vocalizing without success. However, we ran into a member of the grounds crew who directed us to some cool frogs! On the left here is a type of Leopard Frog, and on the right is a Blue-sided Treefrog.
The next morning we were back out on the grounds when they opened at 6 and had a great time seeing everything in a bit better light and getting great looks at all kinds of birds.
The Rufous-Collared Sparrow is the common sparrow of the central highlands of Costa Rica. What a stunner!
This Variegated Squirrel was also very charismatic
Red-billed Pigeon also made a strong impression. Very handsome! Regal, even
And I was thrilled to find the Mottled Owl sitting in his bamboo stand!
From there it was on to Rancho Naturalista! I will post more of our trip in a series as time allows. Thanks for reading, and Pura Vida!
