2/17/26 - Birding in Costa Rica Day 1

We got up very early this morning for our birding tour with a private guide, Jason. Conrad went to the coffee shop to pick up our to go breakfasts and we then met Jason at the entrance to the hotel. We headed out of San Jose while it was still dark to visit from national parks outside of San Jose. We stopped for breakfast on our way.

We hiked through a heavily wooded area in a national park for what seemed like a long time. Jason was focussed on very small birds through his scope and we really wanted to take pictures on my camera and let Conrad see pictures through his binoculars. With the humidity and heat we were worried that the tour wouldn't work out as we had hoped, but we had better viewing to come. These are the few birds that I was able to get pictures of in the parks.

After spending a good bit of time in wooded areas, Jason took us to a Crocodile River tour, and that turned out to be excellent for viewing lots of interesting birds. We parked in a small parking area and walked down to a set of docks where we loaded onto a boat that had lots of seats but the passengers were only us and one other small group so we had lots of room. The people who ran the tour were nice. They stopped a number of times to feed the crocodiles, and they had names for all of them, but they also stopped when we saw interesting birds and made a point to take us to the places where we could see different species.

Once we finished the crocodile cruise we headed to a nearby residential area where Jason was looking for Motmots but we didn't find them. We did find some other interesting birds though.

We had a long ride back to the hotel from where we were birding but it was a really fun day and we really liked Jason and the places that he took us. We have another day with him tomorrow, starting with looking for the Resplendent Quetzel which we are looking forward to.