Black Guan

This turkey-sized wild bird is found only in the highlands of Costa Rica and Western Panama. My Black Guan Gallery has other photos from the highlands of Monteverde, Costa Rica. This guan is also a relative of the more widely spread Crested Guan and Great Curassow (links to my galleries also) found in the foothills and lowlands of all Central America and northern South America. And in the same general family of the almost pest bird in my neighborhood, the Gray-headed Chachalaca, a smaller, chicken-sized bird.

There is also a Highland Guan which I saw only once in Nicaragua. They all live north of Costa Rica. All guans are arboreal as well as feeding on the ground. I have heard Ticos call guans “turkeys” more as an English slang name or loose translation of the Spanish name “Pava.” In Spanish, the first three guans I listed above with galleries are Pava Negra, Pava Crestada and Pavón Grande with my neighborhood Chachalaca in Spanish called Chachalaca Cabecigris . Birding in Costa Rica – Pura vida!

In San Gerardo de Dota I saw Black Guans only from a distance while waiting for the Quetzales. 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

See my big BIRDS Gallery including other countries or . . .

This trip’s Hotel Savegre BIRDS Gallery (23 species)

🙂

Tapanti Birds

Click an image to see it larger.
Black Guan
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica

Adult Gray Hawk 
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica
First Sighting for Me in Costa Rica (1 in Nicaragua)
Juvenile Gray Hawk 
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica
Female Collared Trogon 
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica
First Sighting for Me
Male Collared Trogon 
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica
First Sighting for Me

Chestnut-headed Oropendola in Poro Tree
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica
Slaty Spinetail

Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica
First Sighting for Me

Red-faced Spinetail
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica
First Sighting for Me
Common Chlorospingus 
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica
First Sighting for Me

Clay-colored Thrush or Yiqüirro 
The National Bird of Costa Rica
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica
First Sighting for Me  (only Southern in the past)
Dusky-capped Flycatcher
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica

Brown Jay
Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica

Passerini Tanagers, Male & 2 Females

Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica

“The sharp thrill of seeing them reminded me of childhood happiness, gifts under the Christmas tree, perhaps, a kind of euphoria we adults manage to shut out most of the time. This is why I bird-watch, to recapture what it’s like to live in this moment, right now.” 



¡Pura Vida!


My photo gallery BIRDS

This exact same set of birds in my TRIPS photo gallery:  Tapanti Birds

Or see all of my Orosi Trip photos in the TRIP Gallery: 2018-February 6-10–Orosi/Tapanti