Travel: Panama & Costa Rica Day 13: Palo Verde Boat Tour
After leaving Monteverde, we stayed in Tamarindo for a few days. Tamarindo is a coastal beach town. My complexion and the beach are enemies and while researching Costa Rica prior to the trip I'd read that Palo Verde is an amazing place to see birds. During some downtime on the cruise I'd booked a boat safari* on the Tempisque River, which borders Palo Verde National Park.
The River was about a 90 minute drive from Tamarindo. Other recommendations I saw suggested just renting a car and going to Palo Verde on your own. Given the poor road conditions in Costa Rica we weren't really eager to drive on our own.
Our tour group was just 10 people. During the drive the tour guide talked about the culture of the areas that we drove through. He also talked with us about Palo Verde as one of the few remaining neotropical dry forests, and us such its an important habitat.
When we arrived, we had to wait a short time to get on a boat.
Once on the boat we had both our tour guide and the boat driver working to spot animals. Our guide had a green laser pointer, while the boat driver used a mirror to reflect the sun on the birds we should be looking at. The tour was fantastic.
Without further ado, here are the photos!
When browsing the Merlin App for the birds in Palo Verde, I saw this Boat-billed Heron and really hoped to see them. I was incredibly excited when we found these two in the trees. I love their giant bills and blue caps are very cool.
The Brazilian Long-nosed Bats were on the underside of a branch. They are incredibly camouflaged here, but if you look closely especially at the photo on the right you can see their little bat ears!
This is a Black-Crowned Night Heron. I love its red eyes!
We also saw a Yellow-crowned Night Heron.
We met a troupe of Capuchin Monkeys. One of them came down on to the front of the boat to check us out, and then got very offended at us smiling and seemed ready to murder us all. Our tour guide asked us to stop smiling and then made some sounds and hand motions to encourage it to leave.
We disturbed this American Crocodile by drifting into a tree near it. It then started to move toward us. Look closely at this photo - its lower teeth are coming up through what seem to be its nostrils. So creepy. We got away, and unlike the monkeys it did not decide to board our boat.
This is a Green Heron. I really liked the photo of it flying even though its a bit out of focus. It had a bit of a mohawk while in flight.
We saw several iguanas on the shore of the river.
This Green Kingfisher did a little turn so I could see its face and tail! So kind of it to pose this way.
There were Great Kiskadees around as well.
We also spotted many Social Flycatchers. They look so much like the Great Kiskadee, but have a slightly smaller back and they don't have a reddish wing like the Kiskadee.
These are all photos of Little Blue Herons. The one on the bottom right is a juvenile so it isn't yet blue.
This is also a Little Blue heron just perched on a branch.
The Green Kingfisher was actually sharing a branch with a juvenile Little Blue Heron.
This is a Snowy Egret. It was a bit hard to distinguish the from the juvenile Little Blue Heron during the trip. But the Little Blue has a gray beak while the snowy has a darker beak. The Egret also has more yellow around its eyes.
A Snowy Egret wandered toward a juvenile American Crocodile. No one was injured while we were there.
The Mangrove Swallows were abundant. Like all Swallows they flew quickly and erratically trying to catch insects, so getting photos was quite hard.
We saw two different Common Nighthawks. These birds blend so well into the branches, so they were quite a challenge to find and focus on.
A Spotted Sandpiper in its winter plumage (in the summer they have spots on their belly).
There were a couple of Bare-throated Tiger Herons.
These White Ibis were near the Boat-billed Herons just higher up in the trees. Look at the striking blue eye next to the red beak.
The Woodstorks were flying overhead. I actually thought that they landed and were the White Ibis that we saw in the trees above. Only when sorting through the photos did I realize I'd had two different types of birds.
I'd strongly recommend visiting Palo Verde National Park and taking the boat tour if you happen to be there in March. I'm not sure about other times of year, but the wildlife was very abundant and the guides were knowledgeable.