Category: Nature

We visited the Orchid Garden in Santa Elena. They offer guided tours in both English and Spanish, which we highly recommend.

When you think of orchids, you probably think about these cultivated varieties that you can buy. However, our talented guide, a biologist from Venezuela who has resettled here in Costa Rica, showed us how varied wild orchids are!

The key to identifying an orchid in the wild is to look for their repeated structure, shown here.

And orchids can be really tiny! Many of them here in Costa Rica hide on the undersides of leaves to stay protected from wind and rain. Without our guide, we would have missed seeing most of these tiny beauties!

But perhaps the coolest thing we saw there was a bright green iridescent bee that was pollinating one of the orchids. Our guide told us that many orchids only have one kind of insect as a pollinator, and that the develop really specific strategies that use specific colors and scents to lure the pollinators in.

So if you’re looking for something to do in Santa Elena, check out the Orchid Garden. But be sure to go on the guided tour!

Earlier this month we made it to the beach at long last! Many people come to Costa Rica primarily for the beaches, but it took us six months! Our impetus to finally travel to the coast was the visit of my god-daughter and her mother, who has been my dear friend for over 25 years now. They live in a very hot part of El Salvador and we knew they’d find the mountains of Monteverde cold, so we wanted to go someplace warmer for a few days.

We chose to go to Playa Agujas, a small and largely undeveloped beach, which is about two hours outside of San José, about 20 km north of the well-known tourist beach of Jaco. We found a couple cabins we could rent at a small local hotel, where Sophie enjoyed the pool.

We were able to walk through the woods to another small beach known as Playa Bochinche. “Bochinche” means a “commotion” and apparently the beach received this name after neighbors had a loud argument there. In reality, it is a very calm beach, with almost no waves.

On Sunday, there were many Costa Rican families there: some had been camping, others were grilling food or fishing. On Monday, the place was deserted other than one or two resident fishermen.

While there we saw several scarlet macaws – the first time for all of us seeing them in the wild. It was really impressive to see them soar across the sky! And while I thought their bright red plumage would make them easy to spot, they were actually quite well camouflaged in the leaves of the beach almond tree (almendro de la playa, Terminalia catappa), many of which turn red at this time of year!

We went for an evening walk along the beach and climbed some big rocks while the tide was out.

We explored tide pools and saw lots of little crabs scuttling along the rocks. A snowy egret flew in to check them out as well and I was captivated by the way the white of the bird’s feathers echoed the white dress of someone posing for wedding photos on the shore.

We also saw an absolutely gorgeous sunset. Watching the sun go down is almost a national past-time here and it is always amazing to me that you can actually see the sun move! It descended across the ocean between two narrow bands of clouds, sending out glowing colors across the sky and water. But just as it was about to disappear, a container ship sailed across the view, blocking the last moment when the sun dipped below the horizon. We joked afterwards that commerce had stolen the sunset!

It was a wonderful visit and I’m so glad we finally made it to the beach!

Everyone knows that there are lots of amazing birds in Costa Rica. But despite taking many of hikes with our binoculars, we have seen the most spectacular birds at our house! Let me introduce you to some of them here!

Wilson’s Warbler

This bird migrates and has a huge range! They spend the summers as far north as Alaska and the Northeastern U.S. and spend the winter in Mexico and Central America, as far south as Panama. I’ve seen both male and female warblers in the hedge outside our kitchen window, often while I am washing dishes!

Montezuma Oropendola

This bird has a really unique call that makes it stand out from the other birds. You always know when one is nearby. For several days this month we had one visiting the woods behind our house. One morning, I saw him in the nispero tree in our front yard. There are epiphytes (air plants) growing on the branches of the tree and he was either eating bugs or drinking water that was caught in the leaves of the plants. We wish he would come to visit again!

Summer Tanager

I happened to look up from my computer and glanced out the window when my eye was caught by this beautiful flash of red. At first I thought I was looking at a cardinal, but the little pointy hat that cardinals have was missing. It turns out this is another migratory bird that spends summers in the southern U.S. and winters in Central and South America, as far south as Brazil.

Great Kiskadee

These birds are everywhere, and often perch on the power lines. With their bright yellow bellies they are easy to spot, except when they sit on the nispero tree when it has ripe fruit on it – because they are exactly the same shade of yellow!

Blue-Capped Motmot

This handsome fellow is harder to spot because he likes to hang out in shady trees. We have often seen one on our walk to Sophie’s school, and in the trees at the bottom of our driveway.

Interestingly, I had become very familiar with it’s cousin, the Turquoise Browed Motmot when I lived in El Salvador. This is the national bird of both El Salvador and Nicaragua, though it is known by different names: torogoz (in El Salvador) and guardabarranco (in Nicaragua).

White-Fronted Parrots

Despite their name, these birds are mostly bright emerald green. When they fly, you can see beautiful red patches on their wings. But they are mostly noticeable for the noise they make when the get together in flocks of up to 30 birds. One day at Meeting for Worship at Sophie’s school, a flock of them held their own meeting in a tree behind the school – let’s just say it wasn’t very quiet!

Keel-Billed Toucan

You may know these from the front of a cereal box, but they are actually a real bird that is quite common here in Monteverde! We have seen several of these from a distance but Pat saw one up close in the nispero tree in our front yard and managed to make this video!

Sun Bittern

In October as we were leaving for an early morning trip we spotted a Sun Bittern out in our driveway displaying its beautiful wing pattern. It was facing off with an agouti who had all its rump hair standing on end, a trick they use to try to look bigger and more threatening. I think the Sun Bittern won this battle though!

And more!

There are other more common birds like sparrows, grackles (zanates), brown jays, chachalacas, and guan that we see all the time.

But by far the most frequent birds we see are hummingbirds. They love the Porterweed hedge around our house and we see them zipping around the flowers there every time we look outside! We have seen several different species, but because they are so small and move so fast, I am not confident in any of our identifications.

During my school break in October our family traveled to La Fortuna, a town near the Arenal Volcano.

To get there, we took a bus from Monteverde down to the edge of Lake Arenal, and then took a boat across the lake. From there we got our first views of the Arenal Volcano! How impressive!

The Arenal Volcano is a young volcano, meaning it is less than 7,500 years old. It was most recently active from 1968 to 2010.

We went for a hike at the National Park at the foot of the volcano. It is illegal to hike to the top of the volcano because of dangerous gases and venemous snakes!

We hiked out to the viewing point where you can see magma (an old lava flow from an eruption in 1992). From here you can also look down and see Lake Arenal.

On our hike up to the lava flow, we saw a lot of cool animals and plants, including these bugs that my dad took pictures of.

We heard a really strange sounding bird call, and it turned out to be a Montezuma Oropendola which we sadly didn’t get a photo of. But then, we spotted a couple toucans in the trees! Another hiker (a retired nature guide) told us they were yellow-breasted toucans, the largest species in Costa Rica.

We also saw many different flowers and berries, often quite small and hidden pops of color along the trail!

If you ever come to Costa Rica, don’t miss seeing Lake Arenal and the Volcano! We highly recommend a trip to the National Park, and maybe you’ll have better luck than we did seeing the peak of the volcano emerge from the clouds!

Check out Sophie’s special report on our favorite local critter, the agouti!