Top 15 Wildlife Experiences in Costa Rica

Costa Rica is home to an incredible 14 species of turtle, eight living in freshwater and six that glide gracefully through the warm waters of the country’s Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Four of the marine dwellers – leatherbacks, green turtles, hawksbills, and Loggerheads – can be encountered from the shores of Tortuguero National Park.

If you are lucky enough to have a close-up experience of a swimming turtle, so masterfully content in its underwater environment, seeing the slow and ungainly effort required of them to dig holes before laying up to 100 eggs is a complete contrast. Nurtured under warm, golden sands for a few months, thousands of plucky hatchlings then make their perilous journey through the surf to the tranquil clear waters that will be their home.

As secretive and furtive as your moggy at home, though with better stealth and camouflage within their lush tropical habitat, each of the six species of wild cat in Costa Rica is extremely challenging to encounter. You’ll see footprints and camera-trap footage: tempters that will have you peering through the thick undergrowth to catch a glimpse of a cat’s hypnotic eyes.

The apex predator in Costa Rica’s forests is the spotted and leopard-like jaguar, the Western Hemisphere’s largest cat. Also large and impressive is the yellow-coated Costa Rican puma, with ocelots being the largest of the small species. For its quirky short-legged weasel-like appearance, however, the one we have our eyes peeled for is the extraordinary jaguarundi.

Attractively impressive, richly colourful, magnificent and radiantly splendid: such are the descriptions that can be summed up by the word ‘resplendent’. When you spot the resplendent quetzal in full shimmering plumage, complete with its enormous emerald tail, you’ll be eager to use the new addition to your vocabulary as frequently as possible.

That’s easier than you may think, because this bird is the iconic symbol of Central America, an exotic region of lustrous colours and staggering beauty. Everywhere you look during a wildlife holiday in Costa Rica is resplendent, including the typical habitat of the quetzal. You’ll find them in the misty cloud forest alive with orchids, bromeliads, vines, towering tree ferns and the wild avocado trees that they love to feed from.

Sociable, characterful, gregarious, strikingly beautiful, yet with a hint of the ridiculous, toucans are the kind of bird that no one can fail to love. Their exaggerated proportions and vibrant colours make them appear to be almost animated and imaginary, and yet their undeniable reality is proven by groups of them in most places that visitors venture to around Costa Rica.

There are, in fact, six species of toucans around the country, with the largest being the chestnut-mandibled version, and the smallest two officially being classed as ‘toucanets’. The strangest and most lovable is, in our opinion, the yellow-eared toucanet. All toucans are forest-dwelling, nesting in hollow trunks excavated by woodpeckers and thriving on fruit using their enormous beaks. They are often up in the canopy but aren’t timid and can easily be coaxed onto feeders.

For such a strikingly colourful bird, it may seem odd that Macaws are usually heard long before being seen. Their loud and raucous calls can carry for miles. When they turn up, however, there’s no mistaking them. The scarlet macaw, dominated by a red as bright as a fire engine, with sunshine yellow, royal blue, a bit of green and white to complement the mix, is about as unsubtle as Dame Edna’s wardrobe.

Great green macaws may be somewhat more sophisticated in their colour pallet and tonal range, but they make up for it by being the world’s largest parrot. Though the two are never seen together, one inhabiting the Caribbean side of Costa Rica and the other the Pacific, they are highly sociable within their own species. They roost and feed in noisy flocks and typically mate for a life that can span longer than 50 years. If you are watching them in the trees, look out for their unique toe structures that allow them to navigate, sometimes pirouetting, through the branches.

There’s something enthralling to any young explorer, including the kid in all of us adults, in following the tracks of an animal. Thanks to its three-toed symmetry, one of the most recognisable tracks in Costa Rica is that of Baird’s tapir, an animal whose fascinating body shape puts it high on the bucket list of any wildlife detective.

This cousin of the elephant has a short fleshy trunk derived from its nose and upper lip with which it pulls leaves, fruit and shoots into its mouth. Having a nose on a stalk, the sense of smell of a tapir is top-notch, so trackers need to be aware of the wind direction. If you ever get close to one, their poor eyesight may mean that they carry on foraging while being completely unaware of your presence.

With a name like a superhero, the Blue Morpho is a butterfly that lives up to its billing as rather extraordinary. It’s wingspan of 15cm makes it one of the largest in the Americas, and its iridescent blue colouration makes it unmissably beautiful when it doesn’t want to use its other superpower: invisibility. Those enormous wings, when closed, reveal their dull brown underside, making the butterfly so camouflaged that it’s almost impossible to see.

Blue morphos are just one of dozens of weird and wonderful butterflies in Costa Rica, which include the zebra longwing, the postman butterfly, the glasswing butterfly and the scarce bamboo page. Our other favourite insect in Costa Rica is the leafcutter ant. Nests of these persistent landscapers are surrounded by noticeable areas of defoliated forest understorey.

To us, ants and termites are a nuisance but if you have a long snout and an even longer tongue, they are lunch. In fact, they are also breakfast and dinner. Welcome to the world of the anteater, of which there are three species in Costa Rica. The most commonly seen is the mid-sized, often arboreal, northern tamandua.

What most travellers wish to encounter, however, is the two-metre-long giant anteater, a hulking beast that conforms exactly to what an anteater should look like. Connoisseurs and lovers of all things exceptionally cute will be even keener to find the tiny and very rare and nocturnal silky anteater. Once you see a picture of one of those guys, you’ll fall in love.