Herons, storks, ibises and marsh birds in Costa Rica: all 51 species, and where to see them

Costa Rica's official list has 51 herons, storks, ibises and marsh birds, spread over nine families: 20 herons, egrets and bitterns, 17 rails, crakes and gallinules, 6 ibises and spoonbills, 3 storks, and one each for the Sunbittern, the Limpkin, the Sungrebe, the Sandhill Crane and the American Flamingo. The Jabiru is the one people ask for: up to 140 cm, the tallest flying bird in Central or South America, with a bill as long as 35 cm and wings 2.3 to 2.8 m across.

None of the 51 is a regional endemic, so the draw here is size, colour and the way we watch them. Twenty-six are plain residents, and six are accidental, recorded once or very few times: the Sandhill Crane, American Flamingo, Maguari Stork, Bare-faced Ibis, Whistling Heron and Striated Heron.

We watch most of them from a boat. On the Tempisque at Palo Verde the Jabiru stands with the Wood Stork, the Roseate Spoonbill and the Bare-throated Tiger-Heron, and December to April is the easy time to be there. Caño Negro is 9,960 hectares of wetland near the Nicaraguan border with more than 350 species recorded, and the boat there is how we find the Agami Heron. The Boat-billed Heron rests in the Tárcoles mangroves by day and works the Tortuguero canals after dark. And the Sunbittern, folded, is a quiet pattern of black, grey and brown on a river edge; spread, its wings show eyespots in red, yellow and black.