Costa Rica Wildlife

Costa Rica’s tourism industry prides itself on its wildlife: crocodiles, sea turtles, parrots and iguanas. But monkeys are the undisputed stars of the show. This is the most ubiquitous monkey, the capuchin, which we saw at least once every day. This one was making a break for it across the lawn in front of Ylang Ylang.

The Cauchins who slept in a tree near our dome would leave every morning at sunrise and return just before sunset. Every evening we would come back from the beach in time to watch them jump from tree to tree, scamper along branches, sometimes drop onto our roof to see if we were giving away bananas (we weren’t) and then usually settle in small clusters of two or three about 100 ft up in a nearby tree. I thought of it as our own private monkey show.

The capuchins were fun to watch because they were energetic, agile, and at times cheeky, but the howler monkeys made a sound that has to be heard to be believed. I hope to have a video of the howlers up soon. (Update: howler video is up.)

When I wasn’t watching the monkeys, my second favorite pastime was watching the pelicans fishing just off shore. They would sweep backwards and forwards along the beach for about an hour at a time, gliding, circling and finally diving for the fish. Even with a pair of binoculars it was a little difficult to tell what their success rate was, but I figured it was somewhere in the region of 50/50.

Other birds we saw included royal terns, zone-tailed hawks and, in a nearby nature reserve, a crested caracara and some beautiful blue-crowned motmots. The star of the bird show, though they were so high up my photos are not even worth uploading, was a group of five Scarlet McCaws, probably the most beautiful birds I have ever seen in the wild.

Then there are the animals that seemed exotic at first and soon turned out to be such frequent visitors to our dome that they became as normal as banana pancakes for breakfast. This was our resident agouti, who would stop by two or three times a day to crunch noisily on fruit and seeds.

And you don’t have to walk far in Costa Rica to see an iguana.

Related:
Montezuma Holiday (EiNY)
The View From My Hammock (EiNY)