My birding year was totally dominated by celebrating somehow reaching three score years and ten with 19 days of full on birding in wonderful Costa Rica. To be honest, without Costa Rica it would have been a really duff year with UK birding being poor compared to the last few years. Even Shetland in October, which I forewent for Costa Rica in November, was comparatively slow compared to previous fantastic years. The additions to my UK list were the lowest they have been since I started keeping records with just eight lifers taking me on to a UK bird list of 430 birds. Somewhat strangely, four of these eight new lifers occurred in the traditionally slow months of January and December. Here are my eight new 2025 UK ticks · White-billed Diver · Booted Eagle · Song Sparrow · Montagu’s H...
Rufous Motmot For these two days of our adventure we were based at Selva Verde lodge where the bird feeders delivered the avian smorgasbord of delights that we had rapidly become accustomed to. Our prebreakfast visit to the feeders produced perhaps the best views we had of Toucan on the whole trip with Yellow Throated and Keel-billed making multiple visits to the feeders. We were all amused by their comical habit of slowly rotating their heads from side to side when they landed. We speculated that their enormous bill, evolved for cracking hard fruit, meant that they could only do a visual safety check before feeding by rotating their head! Tanagers and Honeycreepers were ever present feeding on the soft fruit provided by the staff. Black-cheeked Woodpeckers also gave wonderful views as they came into feed on the bountiful goodies on offer. Keel-billed Tocan Yellow-throated Toucan ...