Custom Packages to Costa Rica Since 2004. Licensed by the Costa Rican Tourism Board (ICT). Over 1,200 five-star reviews on TripAdvisor and Google.
Who we are
My Costa Rica has been building custom Costa Rica trips from San José since 2004, over 25,000 travellers so far, and birders have always been a part of that. This site is for them.
We are not a tour company with a fixed departure date and a bus. We are a destination management company based in Costa Rica. We contract directly with the lodges, the drivers and the guides, no intermediaries, so your trip is built by people who live here and looked after by our own team while you travel.
Tell us what is on your list. We will tell you honestly where to go for it, which lodge to sleep at so the birding starts from the balcony, and how many nights each stop really needs.
Most of our birding clients are the same kind of traveller: retired or close to it, working through a life list, and very clear about what they want. A trip like that fails on logistics, not on the birds. A 5am start needs a driver who is actually there at 5am. A quetzal tour needs to be booked with the guide who knows this season's fruiting trees, not the one with space. A lodge that reads well online may be an hour of bad road from the forest it promises.
That is what we do all day. Twenty-two years of it, around 900 properties we know first hand, and a reservations and concierge team in San José holding every booking.
I say this a lot and I think it is true: the planning is the easy half. The hard part is what our team does while you are here, and we are on call 24/7 for it.
The five birding zones of Costa Rica
Costa Rica is small enough to drive across in a day and varied enough that the birds change every hour of that drive. We work it as five zones. Each one below has its own page, with the lodges we use there and the parks worth your mornings.
The cloud forest and the high oak forest down the spine of the country, from the Talamanca ridge to the volcanoes. This is the Resplendent Quetzal's home, and San Gerardo de Dota is where we send people who have crossed an ocean to see one: the valley is in the book "Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die" and the guides there work the wild avocado trees the quetzals feed on. Fiery-throated Hummingbird, Black Guan and Emerald Toucanet come with the same mornings. Lodges we use: Trogon Lodge and Savegre Lodge in San Gerardo de Dota, Paraíso Quetzal Lodge up on the ridge, and Quelitales for Tapantí.
The wet slope above Turrialba, where the Talamanca mountains drop toward the Caribbean. One lodge made this zone famous: Rancho Naturalista, with hummingbird feeders on the balcony at dawn and forest pools where the Snowcap comes to bathe in the late afternoon. The Rio Tuis valley below it is the most reliable place in the country for the Lanceolated Monklet, and the higher ground at Cerro Silencio brings tanager flocks and both hawk-eagles. Lodges we use: Rancho Naturalista and Casa Turire.
The biggest zone and the wettest, from the Arenal volcano and the wetlands at Caño Negro across Sarapiquí to the Tortuguero canals and the south Caribbean coast. Great Green Macaw, Great Potoo, Sunbittern and Keel-billed Toucan country, and in autumn the Keköldi ridge near Cahuita is one of the best places on earth to watch raptors migrate. Tortuguero is birded by boat, which suits a lot of our clients who have had enough of trails. Lodges we use: Arenal Observatory Lodge, next to Arenal Volcano National Park, Selva Verde Lodge in Sarapiquí, Laguna del Lagarto at Boca Tapada, and Selva Bananito on the south Caribbean coast.
The dry side. Guanacaste and the Nicoya Peninsula, tropical dry forest and the wetlands of Palo Verde along the Tempisque River. The birding here is open and easy on the legs, and it is where you see the species that do not reach the wet side: Turquoise-browed Motmot, Long-tailed Manakin, White-throated Magpie-Jay, Double-striped Thick-knee, and Jabiru, Roseate Spoonbill and Wood Stork on the water. Lodges we use: Rancho Humo Estancia on its own reserve at Palo Verde, and Tango Mar on the Nicoya coast for the end of the trip.
From the Tárcoles River south to the Osa Peninsula. Carara National Park, where the dry forest meets the wet, is the surest place in the country for Scarlet Macaws, and the mangrove boat on the Tárcoles adds the water birds. Further south, the Osa and Golfo Dulce are the wildest forest we sell: Fiery-billed Aracari, Ornate Hawk-Eagle, Riverside Wren. Lodges we use: Cerro Lodge and Macaw Lodge at Carara, Cristal Ballena and La Cusinga on Bahía Ballena, Hacienda Barú at Dominical, and Esquinas Rainforest Lodge at Piedras Blancas.
Every zone page lists the parks, the lodges and the birds in more detail. Most of our birding trips combine two or three zones in ten to twelve nights; the five together is a different trip, and we have built that too.
Birding hotspots in Costa Rica
Inside the five zones are the places themselves: the valleys, parks, reserves and river boats where our birding mornings happen. Each has its own page with the birds to look for, getting there, when to go and the lodges we use nearby. Six to start with:
The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, founded in 1972: the bellbird and the quetzal with a guide, the lodge whose trails walk into it, and our trips there.
125 acres of Caribbean foothill forest above Turrialba with a bird list over 450: the Snowcap at the pools, the feeders, the trails and how to get there.
Dry forest, mangrove and wetland on the Tempisque River: Jabiru, storks and spoonbills from the boat, the Mangrove Hummingbird with luck, and our lodge.
Ten birds people cross an ocean for and where we actually find them, ten things that make the birding better, what a trip here looks like in nights and bases, and the questions birders ask us most. Written by our team in San José, nine pages, yours to keep.
The form takes a few minutes. Dates if you have them, how many of you, what you most want to see, and how hard you want to work for it. If you would rather talk, call: Juan and the team in San José answer the phone in English.
2. We build it by hand.
One of our Costa Rica specialists comes back with a first itinerary: the zones in the right order, the lodges, the guides, the drive times as they really are. That first version is just a place to start, and we revise it with you until it is exactly right.
3. You travel, we hold it.
One of our people meets you at the airport with your welcome package and documents. A private driver moves you between zones on your schedule, which for birders usually means early. Our reservations team holds every booking, and our concierge desk in San José is on call 24/7 while you are in the country.
Every trip is a custom quote. Hotels, private transfers, guided birding tours and the airport welcome are built into one price for the trip.
The package themes below are the shapes our birding clients ask for most, and every one of them began as a trip we built for someone. They are starting points, not fixed departures: the dates, the lodges and the pace are yours.
The bird most people cross the ocean for is the Resplendent Quetzal, and we can usually put you in front of one. But the list goes a long way past it. Six toucans, from the Keel-billed to the Yellow-eared Toucanet. Hummingbirds by the dozen, the Violet Sabrewing at the big end and the Snowcap at the small. Scarlet and Great Green Macaws. Trogons, tanagers, honeycreepers, the Three-wattled Bellbird you hear long before you see, and the Clay-colored Thrush, plain brown and the national bird, because its song opens the rainy season.
The official list stands at 944 species, on the June 2026 update of the Costa Rican Ornithological Association's list.
Our birds page has the families, the signature species of each zone and a checklist you can take with you. Resident birds are here all year; the northern migrants pass through from August to December and again from January to May, and we plan around both.
The checklist: all 944 species on the official list, in the list's own order, with a box to tick and room for the date and the place. It prints clean on a home printer. Print it, fold it, bring it.
I first came to Costa Rica in 1999 as a study-abroad student at the University of Costa Rica, with a paper map and the public bus, and I never really left. In December 2004 I opened My Costa Rica because people kept asking me how to see the country properly. Twenty-two years later the company is a licensed Costa Rican destination management company with its office in San Pedro, San José, a second one in Boulder, Colorado, and a team here that has built trips for over 25,000 travellers.
Lorena Guillén, our Vice President, runs the operation. Our reservations desk holds the bookings, our concierge team answers the phone while you are in the country, and our guides are the local birders who know their valley.
We have birded this country as backpackers and we have stayed in its best lodges. I do not know anyone who knows it better, and I am honest about the things we do not do: we do not run fixed-date group tours, and we do not book a single hotel night on its own. We build the whole trip.
Pura Vida, Jason Bateman, Costa Rica Specialist and founder
Tell us what you want to see. We will build the trip around it.
A few minutes on the form, and one of our Costa Rica specialists comes back to you personally with a first itinerary. No fixed dates, no bus, no obligation.
