Suggested equipment for birding in Costa Rica
The short version is binoculars you trust, a field guide, and the checklist. The longer version is below, because a birder who has never been to the tropics usually packs too much glass and too little rain cover. This page is the birding kit. The clothes, the boots and the rain layer are on our packing list.
Binoculars
This is the one piece of kit to get right. Most of a birding day here is binoculars: the feeders at breakfast, the canopy from a trail, a trogon sitting still in the shade. The forest is dark under the canopy and the mornings start before the light is good, so bring a pair you know and can use without thinking.
If you are travelling with someone who does not bird, a second pair makes their day better too. A client of ours who stayed at Tortuguero wrote that bringing binoculars "really added to this great experience!"
The scope: let the guide carry it
Every guide we book has a scope. You do not need to fly with your own unless you want to. On a guided morning the guide finds the bird, sets the scope on it, and you look. That is how the canopy birds at Selva Verde and the quetzal in the oak forest are usually seen well.
If you do bring your own, tell us on the form so we plan the transfers around it.
Camera and lenses
Bring what you will actually carry. Birding days here are long, the air is humid, and the best light is early, so a camera you can lift all day beats a bigger one you leave in the room.
For photographers we built a trip of its own: nine nights at two lodges where the birds come to you, the feeders on the balcony at Rancho Naturalista and the forest pools where the Snowcap bathes in the late afternoon, then the highland feeders and the Resplendent Quetzal at San Gerardo de Dota. Four nights at each means a day of bad light costs you nothing.
Three things we tell every photographer:
- Rain cover. A rain sleeve and a dry bag for Rancho Naturalista, where it is wet in every month.
- Tell us what you shoot with. We pass it to the lodges and the guides before you arrive.
- Think about the light. Dawn in the Highlands is cold and slow to warm; the foothill pools are at their best late in the day.
A field guide, on paper or on your phone
Look at the plates on the plane. Half of finding a bird is knowing what you are looking for. One warning: names change. The official list now has Northern Emerald-Toucanet where an older book says Emerald Toucanet, and Lesson's Motmot where it says Blue-crowned Motmot. Same birds, newer names.
Apps and sound
Load your apps before you fly, because the forest has no signal. Apps with sound help most, since you hear most birds here before you see them. Learn ten calls before you come: the bellbird, the oropendola, the toucan, and seven of your own choosing.
Every one of our hotspot pages links to that place on eBird, so you can see what other birders have recorded there before you go.
The checklist and the guide, from our own site
The checklist. All 944 species on the official list of the Asociación Ornitológica de Costa Rica, in the list's own order, with a box to tick and room for the date and the place. 37 pages, and it prints clean on a home printer. Print it, fold it, bring it.
Our birding guide. Our short guide to birding Costa Rica: the ten birds people cross an ocean for, where we find them, the trip shapes our birders ask for most, and the lodges we use.
What you do not need to bring
The scope, the local knowledge and the 5am driver are what you book us for. Every trip has a local birding guide for the mornings that matter, the person who birds that place every week, and a private driver who leaves when you say.
Tell us what is on your list, and what you are bringing to see it.
A few minutes on the form, and one of our Costa Rica specialists comes back to you personally with a first itinerary, with the guided mornings booked where they count.