As we were returning in August from our latest trip to Costa Rica, the inevitable question arose as always.  What was the “best” bird of the trip, which then took us back to the prequel, What is our favorite bird in Costa Rica?  For two kids in a candy store, which is exactly how we’ve always felt on our now multiple trips to Costa Rica, this is a tough question, and it got me to thinking about how we rate and celebrate people, places, and things in all the various walks of our lives.

Flipping through a Costa Rica (or any of the tropics) field guide, any serious birder will initially gravitate either to the unfamiliar and unexpected forms of well known families or to the plethora and variety of unknown families.  The first category includes things like tall crests on raptors, outrageous bill shapes on hummingbirds, and tremendous size differences in woodpeckers.  The second category encompasses a whole suite of colorful parrots highlighted by the two macaws, the toucan family called the “quintessential Neotropical birds,” and a page of manakins, small frugivorous woodland species whose males look like they were colored by little people with a big supply of Easter egg dye.

We’ve seen the two much sought wattled specialties, bellbird and umbrellabird, we’ve encountered all of the striking motmots with their spectacular, racquet-shaped tails, and we’ve watched multiple Resplendent Quetzals feeding in the same tree.  One guide book calls the male quetzal “unique,” but that gives short shrift to a bird that no string of adjectives can adequately describe and which many tropical birders immediately declare their favorite.

The inevitable question referred to in the first paragraph was posed this year by our long time Costa Rica Gateway guide, Steven Easley, himself as indescribable as the male Resplendent Quetzal.  Steven is an American living in Costa Rica, married to a Costa Rican beauty, fluent in Spanish, fluent in people, well traveled on four continents, opinionated but the furthest thing from arrogant, and he knows intimately the habitats, plumages, calls, and songs of every last one of the upwards to 900 Costa Rican birds.  Yes, we’d highly recommend Costa Rica Gateway and Steven Easley

When Steven asked the question, I thought long and hard about all the potential answers.  What I came up with was this.  The exotic birds, and isn’t “different” the truest synonym for “exotic,” the different shapes and the heretofore unseen and unrealized families, are the initial hook, but birding in the tropics is really about color.  Color in all its unimagined combinations and hues, both bright and subtle, is the most memorable takeaway and all the more eye popping when worn, not by exotics forms, but by the familiar, making the familiar seem exotic.  True for people.  True for life experiences.

That decided, I’d like to submit the tanager family as my Costa Rica favorites.  The shape is very familiar, but the colors are spectacular, the combinations stunningly diverse.  Diversity, the preferred spice of everyday life and everything in life.