On every trip to the wilds of Costa Rica, we can count on amazing bird and wildlife photography, along with plenty of new surprises. Even our first foray into the verdant Caribbean lowlands made it clear this adventure wouldn’t disappoint.
Weather is nearly always a factor in our photographic destinations, and rain helps make Costa Rica the tropical photographic paradise it is. One excellent aspect of this trip is that nearly all the locations we plan to photograph take this into account, and many of the sites we can photograph are covered areas, where birds and wildlife go about their daily lives, with the added atmosphere of the wet conditions enhancing our photography. With great day-to-day planning for this trip and the added benefit of working with one of Costa Rica’s most knowledgeable guides, we can adjust our schedule at any time to take advantage of changing conditions.
Biological diversity drives this photographic destination, and starting in the lowland forest is a great way to introduce ourselves and our cameras to the wildlife wonders and all this tropical location offers. Here, we would get our first opportunity to photograph the colorful birds that call this forest home. The diversity of tanagers, parrots, and orioles was the first to catch our eye, but we also had some quality time with the larger, more raucous scarlet and great green macaws. When not photographing birds, our attention might have been drawn to the arrival of a small troop of howler monkeys that forage around our lodging. This would be our first and best location to explore the area’s trails in search of poison dart frogs and the charismatic, red-eyed tree frog, which calls this forest home.
Our second destination would take us deeper into the lowland forest to encounter a wide array of birds and wildlife. Here, keel-billed toucans were a highly sought-after subject, along with collared aracaris and seemingly ever-present great curassows. Each day of our visit offered the chance to photograph some of the smaller forest birds, like shiny red-legged and green honey creepers. As a great hummingbird location, we took full advantage of it for our first real shoot with these amazing jewels. Continuing to capitalize on the rich tropical diversity, we set aside a morning to photograph the prestigious king vultures from a hide, resulting in a variety of close-up, in-flight, and action shots of these magnificent birds.
From here, we moved to higher elevations and into a different array of wildlife and photography. We stayed in comfortable lodging near a wetland, where wading birds such as northern jacanas and boat-billed herons were nesting, and we added more of Costa Rica’s bird life to our galleries. We also settled in for a night of nectar-feeding bat photography deeper in the lodge’s forest. Two nights here seemed just enough, and we were off to the anticipated higher elevations of the cloud forest.
The cloud forest, as it often does, welcomed us with misty conditions and cooler temperatures. For the next two days, resplendent quetzals would be our focus. With these birds well into the nesting season and busy foraging through the forest to feed hungry nestlings, we concentrated our time near an active nest cavity to photograph the parents arriving and departing with food for the hungry chicks. Our time here was rewarded with multiple opportunities not only to photograph the active birds coming and going, but also to catch the parents taking a brief rest on a convenient mossy perch near our photographic location.
When not staking out the quetzal nest, we found plenty of hummingbirds along with other tropical cloud forest residents to keep our cameras trained on.
At our final stop on our photo safari, we descended slightly into one of Central America’s most pristine river valleys. From one of the area’s best bird-feeding stations, we had one of the best opportunities to spot a few more of Costa Rica’s bird species. More colorful tanagers, such as the silver-throated, flame-colored, and blue-gray, offered multiple angles and behaviors to photograph. All the while, hummingbird species like the white-throated mountain gem, the Talamanca, the lesser violet-eared, and the volcano hummingbird constantly competed for our attention.
Costa Rica offers an ideal location for consistent, world-class photography of diverse birds and wildlife, with new surprises along the photographic journey. In addition to the exceptional quality of the locations we photographed, from the Caribbean lowlands to the cloud forest, we had friendly and courteous staff along the way. This tour remains one of our most photographically productive safaris. Along with the diversity of nature, the range of photographs to be made includes birds in flight, colorful bird portraits, and detailed photographs of some of Costa Rica’s tropical herpetological creatures.
