Yellow-billed Cotinga

How to find it

Look high: it is most often seen in the tops of mangroves, so scan along estuaries such as the Sierpe and Rincón rivers. A guided Sierpe mangrove boat outing is the usual way visitors meet it, and Drake Bay mangrove tours list it as a target species. It also visits treetops in clearings close to the forest. Check fruiting trees, since it often visits them. At Carara it can show up at fruiting trees along the park trails, though birders are told not to expect it there.

How to recognise it

The male is almost all white, with a pale grey wash on the crown and a bright yellow bill. A large part of the bill is yellow, so that is the mark to confirm first.

His legs are blackish, and he is about 21 cm long.

The female looks quite different. She has a dark ash-grey crown and forehead, black wings and tail, and a pale grey throat and breast.

Only the male is white, so keep that in mind when you scan the treetops.

Behaviour and diet

Its diet is mainly fruit, so fruiting trees are worth checking. It is usually seen alone or sometimes in pairs.

On the Osa Peninsula, radio-tagged birds used mangroves for courtship display, insect feeding, shelter from bad weather and night roosts during the breeding months. The first known nest was found about 10 m up in a mangrove tree.

Birds often fly in loose, scattered groups over mangroves, where they fly actively. One birding writer describes a butterfly-like flight.

Where it lives

It uses mangroves for nesting, feeding and roosting, and it also feeds in lowland evergreen forest. Across its range it occurs in extensive mangroves, humid lowland forest and nearby scrub with scattered trees, up to about 760 m elevation.

In Costa Rica, recent work shows it depends on the edge where intact mangrove meets lowland forest. Birds were also seen displaying and feeding well inland, away from the coast, including in primary forest on the Osa Peninsula.

It stays in the upper part of mangroves and in tall trees of nearby forest.

When to see it

It is a resident species, so it is present year-round on the Pacific slope. The breeding months run from roughly December to June, when birds use mangroves for courtship display.

Similar birds

The male looks much like the white male Snowy Cotinga, which is much more common. The Yellow-billed has a yellow bill and a slightly greyer crown, while the Snowy has a bluish-grey bill. Overlap is unlikely: the Snowy prefers tall forest and forest edge in the Caribbean lowlands, while the Yellow-billed lives on the Pacific side and needs rainforest next to mangroves.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

The Costa Rican Spanish name is Cotinga Piquiamarillo, and in Panama it is called Cotinga Piquiamarilla. A BirdWatching magazine feature calls it the "mangrove ghost" and describes how a group of birders helped create a sanctuary for it on the Osa.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list marks it R-END, a resident endemic, and the IUCN lists it as Endangered with a small and shrinking population.

Photography tips

Expect movement in the open, since birds often fly in loose, scattered groups over mangroves, and plan for flight views. Radio-tagged birds at Rincón stayed in the same mangrove plot at night, and in the non-breeding months, July to November, they did not leave the Rincón mangroves.