Birds of Costa Rica

This new field guide covers some of the most popular birding locations in Central America. Costa Rica has been a firm favourite with UK birders for decades. It offers easy access to birding sites and has direct flights from London to San José. It has a large bird list, and in an average year around 850 species are recorded. Costa Rica supports eight endemic bird species (although three of them are only on the rarely visited Cocos island, some 330 miles away by boat).

The taxonomy in this book follows the IOC except for oceanic species, where Steve Howell has adopted the classification that he used in his recent photo guide, Oceanic Birds of the World. You may already have Birds of Central America, which was published by Princeton in 2018. That is a hefty book weighing 1.4 kg while this new book weighs, are 900 g.

Dale Dyer’s colour illustrations from the original Central America book are repeated here. The text from Steve Howell is new and covers all you need to know about plumage, sounds and status. The rarest vagrants have not been included, but are listed in appendices. Colour distribution maps show where the species are mostly seen and are colour-coded to indicate those that are resident or winter/summer migrants. The text and maps are on the left page facing the colour plates with around five species per spread.

There are chapters explaining the habitats available and the typical birds that can be seen. Costa Rica has benefitted from a number of species splits in recent years, and potentially there are many more to come. Two obvious examples are the Clapper Rail and the Nutting’s Flycatcher, which are both likely to be different species. This is a particular study area for Steve Howell and Dale Dyer, and in an appendix, they outline the potential splits to look out for.

If you have not been to Costa Rica yet, then you’ve missed out on a great destination. You can easily book a trip from a tour operator or arrange a private guide. This book will be a great asset.