I’d always heard that Costa Rica was a wonderful place to visit – and everyone was right. We saw so much, and yet we saw so little. We experienced friendly people who are very proud of their Country.

I’d never done much in the way of bird photography, let alone rain forest photography.  For better or worse, I didn’t take the time to do a lot of research, and came back humbled in some respects.  Lessons learned and thoughts on the experience will be a blog post – if I can help someone to make their memories better, it’s the least I can do.

We had a fantastic guide for our group whose knowledge and enthusiasm for his Country and the birds was infectious. I have a new interest and perspective in bird photography as a result of this trip.

Click here to view the gallery.

As many of these images are crops from full zoom images, they’re not going to make huge prints. I envision these images in small prints in a group on a wall – hence, they’ve all be cropped to square format.

With the exception of a few images from an iPhone 7+, all images used a Tamron 18-400mm all-in-one zoom. The driving force behind this lens was to not be in a rain forest or on a boat changing lenses, or to be caught with the wrong lens on the camera. I purchased my 18-400 from Powell Camera after extensive research and deliberation (the lens and the process will be the subject of another blog post).

Identifying the birds and captioning the images took quite a while (bits of time over two-plus months to be exact). I used the following resources to assist: Bird Guide provided for our great excursion on the Tarcoles River by Jungle Crocodile Safari, Costa Rica Birding Tours, All About Birds, and Audobon. Where I wasn’t sure about the identification, there’s a question mark in the caption. Comments and corrections are welcome.

Contact Misty Travel if you’re intersted in a Costa Rica experience of your own.

Enjoy!