Birding Websites

Official Sites:

The Official List of the Birds of Costa Rica (Spanish), downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet (w/English names included)

The Ornithology Association of Costa Rica (AOCR) (Spanish)

The AOCR Bird Alarm Facebook page (Spanish)

The official magazine (Zeledonia) of the AOCR (Spanish)

The Ornithologists' Union of Costa Rica (Spanish)

The World Bird Database for Costa Rica (including CoCo Island) - a taxonomy online

Sites about birding results:

Patrick's blog Costa Rica Living and Birding

Our BCCR Facebook page

San Vito Bird Club Birding in the Tropical Highlands  

Paul's blog Birds for Beer

eBird is a large site that stores international user sightings (including Costa Rica) and provides maps, charts, and graphs to display the data. It was created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society in 2002. In March 2012, citizen scientists reported more than 3.1 million bird observations across North America.

Here's a link to Christmas bird counts and other birding events in Costa Rica. (Spanish)

Reference books and guides:

The Birds of Costa Rica, A Field Guide, by Garrigues and Dean, is our primary bird book for field trips. Patrick advises new birders to, "Get the field guide and study it. It’s important to study the book to see which birds might occur in your area as well as places you plan on visiting, and to become familiar with birds before seeing them."

A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica, by Stiles and Skutch, "is also good but is more suited for reference, is rather big and bulky for the field, rather outdated, lacks range maps, and the illustrations are better in Garrigues and Dean," says Patrick.

All About Birds, by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is an all-around great guide.

Neotropical Birds, another site by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is more focused on our area.

Audubon Magazine, from the National Audubon Society, is a great guide for birds in the USA.

Xeno-canto is a great online resource for bird sounds from around the world.

Connie shared a Bird Watcher's Digest article on ways to get better at bird identification.

WhatBird.com is a great guide for birds in North America.

Activities of interest:

Thank you, Connie, for fledging the club's Facebook page. It looks great!

I and the Bird is a great general-purpose birding blog with content from all over the world.

The Bird Forum is a fun, international website with fora for everything related to birdwatching.

Birding Equipment:

Binoculars - Patrick says, "Get good binculars. Binoculars (or binos) are the main tool of our hobby. If you really want to see birds well, upgrade from the small 10 X 20 travel binos to quality binos that are 7 X 42 or 8 X 42. The first number refers to magnification and the second to the measurements of the lens. 7 or 8 magnification is enough to identify birds and the higher the second number, the more light enters the binoculars which helps you see much more on the bird. Also, if you can get them, waterproof and fogproof binos are ideal. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to find good binos in Costa Rica. Most of us buy good binos when outside of the country or have them ordered to a friend who then brings them to Costa Rica."

Thanks, Connie, for for sharing this article about using binos

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has an article out about Finding the Best Binoculars for Birding.

There's a new version out of the Costa Rica Bird Field Guide app available for the iPad. A version for Android is also anticipated.

Miscellenous tidbits:

Thank you, Carol, for sharing a video about a Bald Eagle getting a new beak.

Thanks to Lyn and Goldye for sharing a New York Times article called, "What do the birders know?".