Costa Rica top 30 (image heavy)

[keith1200rs]

Finally finished sorting out the photos from a recent trip to Costa Rica. Here are a few of the best. Most with E-M10 mk II and Panasonic 50-200 f2.8/4 but also a few with other lenses. I would have used my E-M5 mk II if that hadn't failed but that is another story. Very pleased with the Panasonic lens.

Scenic view - not sure exactly where (at a guess, between La Paz waterfall and San Miguel):

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Broad-billed Motmot

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Eyelash Pitviper (deadly, I think. Long lens a good idea)

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Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth

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Boat-billed Heron (love the beak)

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Little Blue Heron (juveniles are white - confusing!)

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Green Basilisk (male) - also called Jesus Christ Lizard as it runs across the water

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Anhinga meaning Snake Bird, I think, as it swims with the body submerged so only the neck and head show. Also called the piano bird due to the marking on the back

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Cattle Egret

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Great Potoo - well camouflaged - looks like a lump of tree bark

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Common Tody-flycatcher - starting building its nest just outside our room on the last day of our stay in one of the hotels

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Arenal volcano (I think)

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Silver-throated Tanager

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Ruddy-capped Nightingale-Thrush

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Toro Waterfall

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Orange Bellied Trogan

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Green-crowned Brilliant

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Coppery-headed Emerald

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Rufous-collared Sparrow

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Plane coming in to land at Puerto Jimenez airstrip

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[keith1200rs]

The final 10 images:
View from bedroom at sunset at Osa Peninsular

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Probably a striped Basilisk female

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Great Currasow (female) - male is black with a yellow lump above the beak but the female is nicer looking

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Mantled Howler Monkey - you can see the distinctive white testicles of the male on the left!

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Jumping Spider - 4 pairs of eyes

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unknown spider - quite large, on a night walk

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Red-eyed Tree Frog

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Fruit Bat - don't know exactly which species

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Agouti

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Green Iguana

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[mumu]

Great stuff. Was that Resplendent Quetzal a juvenile? Also, where was that Great Potoo? We saw one at Arenal but the guide said it was very unusual for it to be there since they usually frequent lower elevations.

 

[keith1200rs]

No Resplendent Quetzal in the photos. Second photo is a Broad-billed Motmot - is that the one you mean? Near the lake at Arenal. The Great Potoo was on the Cano Negro river trip. The guide spotted it in a tree so stopped the boat and we got off to try to photograph it. It wasn't easy - high up a tree and against the light and lots of obstructions in the way of a clear shot. +3.5 stops exposure compensation on that shot. Sometimes I was using +5 stops.

 

[mumu]

No Resplendent Quetzal in the photos. Second photo is a Broad-billed Motmot - is that the one you mean? Near the lake at Arenal.

No, I'm referring to the photo right after the one of the waterfall.

The Great Potoo was on the Cano Negro river trip. The guide spotted it in a tree so stopped the boat and we got off to try to photograph it.

Yeah, we saw a Great Potoo there in 2016. It was hanging out where we got off the boat so it was in broad daylight but back then my longest lens was my 35-100/2.8.

 

[keith1200rs]

Ah - Orange Bellied Trogan. Near the Toro Waterfall. I am quite pleased with the shot as it was raining and we were in the cloud (and my camera wasn't waterproof). It took a little processing to get it to look half decent.

 

[mumu]

Ah - Orange Bellied Trogan. Near the Toro Waterfall. I am quite pleased with the shot as it was raining and we were in the cloud (and my camera wasn't waterproof). It took a little processing to get it to look half decent.

Aah, I see. Thanks. Clearly I'm not a real birder. ;-)

 

[keith1200rs]

Aah, I see. Thanks. Clearly I'm not a real birder. ;-)

I used the Merlin app on my phone to help - it works really well. We have the Costa Rica bird book but there are nearly 1000 birds in it!

 

[Harvey Melvin Richards]

Beautiful photos. That is a lot of different and colorful wildlife.

 

[mumu]

I used the Merlin app on my phone to help - it works really well. We have the Costa Rica bird book but there are nearly 1000 birds in it!

Yes, I've been using it to label the birds in my post-vacation video. But clearly I didn't use it in my post. ;-)

 

[Always]

Good stuff. I like the green lizard, it looks so cool.

 

[zzffnn]

Great set! Thank you for sharing @keith1200rs .

Did you use a flash and/or a diopter lens over your P50-200, for that pale spider photo (right beneath monkeys' photo) and those hummingbird photos?

 

[keith1200rs]

Great set! Thank you for sharing @keith1200rs .

Did you use a flash and/or a diopter lens over your P50-200, for that pale spider photo (right beneath monkeys' photo) and those hummingbird photos?

Thanks for the complement. I guess you cannot see the EXIF data. The tiny pale spider was with the Olympus 30mm Macro, 1/60s handheld ISO 1600, no flash. Even so it is a crop - it was tiny and only half filled the frame.

I used flash with the 50-200 for the tree frog. While I had my 30mm with me the working distance of the 50-200 was better because you couldn't necessarily get very close to a lot of subjects. Flash used is the FL-300R mounted on the camera. Nothing very sophisticated but works surprisingly well even if you don't have chance to set it up as a remote flash and side light the subject (my preferred way with macro when using flash.)

 

[keith1200rs]

Thanks to @barry13 for making this a featured thread.

 

[Keeth101]

Lovely shots ... all of them.

Such a shame there is no information as to what we are looking at for those of us who have never been and are unlikely to observe these beautiful creatures.

 

[keith1200rs]

Lovely shots ... all of them.

Such a shame there is no information as to what we are looking at for those of us who have never been and are unlikely to observe these beautiful creatures.

@Keeth101 Sorry about that. I have worked out how to edit the original post (I couldn't find a way before) so I will add them ASAP.

 

[Keeth101]

Thanks, Keith.

We would love to visit Costa Rica but, owing to various personal/health problems, we could only go there on a package holiday and Tui in their 'wisdom' only go direct from London, not Manchester so that's another problem for us. We would be limited as to walking etc as well, so that's another problem too. Nowt in life is easy is it

 

[keith1200rs]

@Keeth101 we flew KLM from Leeds-Bradford via Amsterdam, but we had the holiday organised for us - it wasn't a standard package. You can arrange to have very little walking if you like. The boat trip at Cano Negro was particularly good. If you have a trip organised for you then you can make sure you spend your time doing what you want. For example, we didn't want to spend much time in the cloud forest and my wife doesn't like heights so the zip-lining and suspended canopy walkways were omitted!

 

[Keeth101]

Thanks for the info, Keith. Hopefully we can get there in the not too distant future before health etc. makes long haul too much of a problem.

Thanks also for adding the info to the pictures. Makes looking at them so much more interesting when we know what they are. Cheers.

 

[keith1200rs]

Thanks for the info, Keith. Hopefully we can get there in the not too distant future before health etc. makes long haul too much of a problem.

We have started doing a similar thing - doing some long-haul trips before some problem prevents it. Japan last year, Costa Rica this year. Not sure about next year - I have't decided yet.