Osa Peninsula Chronicles

Hello!! My name is Jo Garrett and I’m a television producer based in Madison, Wisconsin. I am also a BIG-TIME Osa admirer since I had the pleasure of traveling there to shoot a documentary called, “Our Birds.” We produced the documentary for Wisconsin Public Television and you can view it at this link: http://wpt.org/ourbirds/ The [...]

The Osa Peninsula is one of the most biodiverse places in the world.  In terms of trees, it is calculated that more than 700 species are found in this relatively small area of land. Although much of Osa’s forests are still intact, the last two decades have seen increasing deforestation as a result of selective [...]

Of all the hummingbird species, the coquette males that are most highly adorned with ornate feathers that are there to likely help in territorial defense and enhance species recognition.  The White-crested Coquette (Lophornis adorabilis) is the only coquette found here on the Osa Peninsula and is regionally endemic to south western Costa Rica and Western [...]

So how do birds survive in a tropical rainforest when it rains a lot?  Let me be clearer; when it rains nearly every day for 2 weeks straight?  The rainy season here in Costa Rica lasts from May to November increasing in the amount of rainfall as the season progresses.  October and November are notorious [...]

This week as promised I am bringing you the Turquoise Cotinga (Cotinga ridgwayi).  This is definitely one of those species of bird that makes you go “WOW” when you see it.  This is also one of Costa Rica’s most sensitive species to loss of forest habitat.  BirdLife International has this Cotinga species listed as Vulnerable [...]

Not only does the White-whiskered Puffbird (Malacoptila panamensis) rank pretty high on the cuteness scale, it is also an interesting species from an ecological perspective.  Puffbirds are most closely related to jacamars, toucans and woodpeckers.  They are primarily insect and arthropod eaters and are considered to be flycatching birds along with tyrant flycatchers, and nunbirds.  [...]