6

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Imagine a relatively small chunk of land wedged into a tropical isthmus connecting two large continental

reservoirs of bird diversity; a chunk fronting two major oceans and dissected by high mountain ranges

and active volcanoes; a chunk exposed to the effects of major glaciations that caused sea level to rise and

fall, separating and isolating the surrounding landmasses to create environments conducive to speciation.

And then call it Costa Rica. Over 900 species of birds (in about 87 families) have been recorded in Costa

Rica, with a land area of about 51,000 km², smaller than many US states. The avian riches of the country

range from brilliant Scarlet Macaws in verdant lowland rainforests to tiny Volcano Hummingbirds on

windswept high mountain tops.

Birding visitors to Costa Rica have been well served by the seminal guide co-authored by former long-

term residents Gary Stiles and Alexander Skutch (1989), a guide built upon many years of exploring the

country, combined with a summary of the literature, notably the pioneering work on avian distribution

by Paul Slud (1964). More recently, an updated handy field guide by Richard Garrigues and Robert Dean

(2007, 2014) has helped many more visitors appreciate the birdlife of Costa Rica; and Costa Rican species

are treated in Birds of Central America (Vallely & Dyer 2018), the plates from which form the basis for

the present work. We are fortunate to have had such a wealth of prior literature to build upon, and we

thank all those involved in earlier works. While this book is laid out as a field guide to help people identify

birds in the field, it also serves as an updated compendium of the remarkable avian biodiversity of Costa

Rica. In terms of labor division, Dyer painted all of the plates, and Howell had primary responsibility

for the text.

As part of the mammoth task of illustrating the birds of Central America, Dyer visited Costa Rica and

other Central American countries annually during 2007–2016. Howell first visited Costa Rica in 1986,

as part of a five-year odyssey traveling and birding throughout Mexico and Central America; he visited

several more times through the mid-1990s, including leading tours to most parts of the country, and

started revisiting in the 2010s, after becoming distracted in the interim by the birds of Mexico and Chile.

Between us and our many months of field work in Costa Rica and neighboring regions, we have gained

field experience with all but a handful of the species included.

Fieldwork is only part of the equation, however, and a book such as this is the product of many people.

In particular, for their long-term support of our work we thank the personnel at the Department of

Ornithology of the American Museum of Natural History, especially Paul Sweet, Bentley Bird, Peter

Capainolo, and curators Joel Cracraft, Brian Tilston Smith, and George Barrowclough; the personnel at

WINGS, especially Greg Greene, Matt Brooks, and Will Russell; and all at the Palomarin Field Station

of Point Blue (formerly PRBO), especially Diana Humple, Mark Dettling, Megan Elrod, and Renée

Cormier.

Our taxonomic research was aided greatly by the herculean effort of the Handbook of the Birds of the

World team in producing their illustrated checklists, including numerous vocal analyses by Peter Boesman;

and the work of the North American Classification Committee and South American Classification

Committee of the American Ornithological Society, and the International Ornithologists’ Union in

maintaining their checklists and providing references. The sound archives of the Macaulay Library at

the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (www.macaulaylibrary.org) and Xeno-canto (www.xeno-canto.org) are

fantastic resources that also helped immeasurably with our work, and we thank the many recordists who

have uploaded useful recordings to these platforms.

For help with questions concerning the status and distribution of Costa Rican birds, and for help in

the field, we thank Rosa Argueda S., Harry Barnard, Dick Cannings, Rafael Campos, Enrique Gómez,

Keith Hansen, Richard C. Hoyer, Patrick O’Donnell, José Alberto Perez A. (CopeArte), Simon Perkins,

Peter Pyle, Henry Sandi Amador, Fabrice Schmitt, and especially Luke Seitz and James R. Zook. Others

who helped in various ways were J. Van Remsen, Michael L. P. Retter, and especially Dennis Jongsomjit

of Point Blue, who created the base maps used for the introduction and for the species range maps.

The book benefited from review by James R. Zook and Tom Johnson, and any remaining errors are

our responsibility. Last, but far from least, we thank the remarkable Robert Kirk and team at Princeton

University Press; admirably diligent copy editor Annie Gottlieb; and David Price-Goodfellow and team

at D & N Publishing, for their care in bringing Birds of Costa Rica to fruition.