Tarcoles River Costa Rica

The 16th February 2020 saw Reagan and I on the Tarcoles River in Costa Rica. We were on the river at 9:30am which isn't bad for a tour off a cruise boat but perhaps a little late for the best birding. Most people were excited to see the crocodiles but it was the birds I was keen on of course.

Photography from a boat with a P900 is an exercise in frustration with a much higher rate of blurred images than normal. There is only so much that motion compensation can do with 2000mm of zoom and a slow focus system but I just went shutter crazy and took as many photos as I could. The boats were a sort of triple long BBQ barge so reasonably steady but we never really came to a stop.

My ebird record shows 32 species but not that many usable photos. There were scarlet macaws flying overhead but they didn't settle where I could get a photo.

The first two birds we saw didn't have their breeding plumage which is a shame because I would have liked to photograph the spots on the spotted sandpiper. The neotropic cormorant didn't have the white stripe behind the orange facial skin so could have been a juvenile.

Spotted Sandpiper

Neotropic Cormorant

The highlight of the trip was seeing a bunch of Egrets and Herons including the Tricolored Heron and the Little Blue Heron whose photos didn't make the cut.

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron

Great Egret

Snowy Egret

Green Heron

Green Heron

Boat-billed Heron

Bare-throated Tiger-Heron

The Roseate Spoonbill was hiding but the colour is still gorgeous.

Roseate Spoonbill

Roseate Spoonbill

A pair of Magnificent Frigate birds were posing on a perch which seemed a surprising place for them on the river but in truth we motored past the river mouth so they weren't that far from their usual coastal haunts. The predator is a Common Black Hawk.

Magnificent Frigatebird

Common Black Hawk

The small lizard is a Common Baslisk. You can tell it's a male by the head crest. It also has a crest on its back and long tail. Nicknamed the Jesus lizard, juvenile Basilisks can run over water up to 20m to escape predators. The Bigger lizard is a crocodile.

Common Basilisk Lizard

Crocodile

I don't know what sort of Bats are in the photo below. They are tiny and look just like lichen on the underside of a log.