From Kaleena Smith
I just returned last week from my first ever birding trip outside of the United States. I thought I would share some of the pics from our trip. We went to Costa Rica with a birding tour and also went a couple of days early on our own to spend some time at Paraiso Quetzal. I will share in two parts because I have so many photos to go through, and l saw 197 lifers that I photographed while there (more that I missed shots of).
If anybody has questions about planning a trip there, or where we saw a specific bird, please let me know. We really only saw a small part of Costa Rica, mainly the Talamanca Highlands and Rancho Naturalista with some field trips such as to Centro Mano, El Copal and Irazu Volcano and others as well as San Jose.
It’s amazing how many birds we saw in that relatively small area.
Yellow Headed Caracara,
aka Mexican Eagle(but actually a falcon)
Though not an owl, I got to see a few of
thesethe Crested Caracaras at the Carolina Raptor Center and they’re another very cool bird of prey. It eats carrion in addition to hunting and stealing from other raptors.that looks to be a yellow-headed caracara, and the caracara that is also called mexican eagle is the crested caracara
woah i just looked at where the Carolina Raptor Center is located and now i have to ask, how did it get there? the yellow-headed caracara (according to wikipedia) doesn’t live anywhere outside of south america, so that boy must’ve been pretty lost (or wikipedia is wrong)
Thank you, you are absolutely right. I went back to the source and it was an error on my part, they had it correct.
It was the Crested variety that I saw.
The CRC in North Carolina is an amazing place with a bunch of surprise animals. Looking through my pics to find the Caracara, I actually saw this was the first time I ran into a Spectacled Owl as well.
The Chaco Owl was the one I remember most because that’s the rarest owl I’ve seen in person. That’s from the area around Brazil/Argentina.
It looks like they have a zoo license, and that probably let them trade some unreleasable animals to other zoos for some exotic to us species.
Very cool place, I highly recommend it!
Again, appreciate the correction, I’m no expert, but I want to be as factual as possible!
Tropical Screech
Holy moly, that’s striking! What amazing markings.
Anon, this one should definitely go into next year’s contest.
Crested will be back again. It did very well, though not enough to get past the Snowy. It was funny as it was a first round knockout the previous year. There’s always surprises to be had in the OoTY!
Oh! I don’t remember seeing it before; maybe this is just a particularly striking picture.
I’ll keep looking for more. The Crested and Spectacled both had a burst of popularity and live in the same area, so I’ve been getting some decent pics of both.
OoTY 2025: Crested v Speccy
ಠᴗಠ
The White Faced Scops people are going to have something to say about that!
I’m trying to figure out my WFS propaganda strategy for the coming year, to ensure a win this time.
It shouldn’t take much, that owl sells itself! Such a great bird!
RrrrrrICO . . . Screechie
