Route: San Jose - Liberia - Monteverde - Carara - San Gerardo - Tapanti - La Selva - Volcano Poas - San Jose.

13 Participants, bird guide (Mr Tuomas Seimola) from Finland + local guide and driver.

440 bird species seen, as well as a few mammals, lizards and amphibians to add to the count.

Trip route covered a variety of different biotypes of the area main intention being to observe as many bird species and habitats as possible in fortnight. The schedule was clever enough to stay two nights at each stop thus maximizing the time at field and minimizing the time consuming checking in/out at lodges and hotels.

Driving distances are relatively short in Costa Rica, even with varying road conditions the typical 'altitude change' will not take more than a couple of hours. You can very easily enjoy coastal tropical forest and mountain cloud forest in one birding day.

We were not facing any problems whatsoever, excluding one minor lt 5 richter earthquake and semi-humorous incident with a drunken/on drugs local at our Monteverde hotel bar! People are mainly extremely friendly and things are going smoothly indeed especially if you know a few phrases in Spain.

Our guides were finding and showing us a lot of bird species we most probably would have been missing by our own. Tuomas Seimola has long experience in guiding and birding in Neotropics, his skills on bird voices and field ability to make people see the target species proved invaluable time after time. It is very hard to skip the organized forest walk and stay at lodge photographing while you know that you are missing a handful or two of the better species by doing so, especially as you also know that your photography will suffer by not staying on your own.

Birding with a group is contradicting the very idea of bird photography: to get close to subject, spend time in nature and create your own vision out of it. On the other hand I could stay more on my own and would probably get much better pictures from more 'easier' birds in more favorable light, composition and distance. Life is full of choices..

With group you are maybe looking for space in narrow forest path for even to see the bird, light is no good at all and worst of all: you are spending much too little time to get any kind of intimacy into your work. Group moves on after the bird has been seen and that's it.

This was the first commercial birding trip I have ever participated. Anyway I was aware of proceedings before trip and tried to combine both bird watching and photography as I could. If anything, concentrating fully on both of those activities can feel like hard work sometimes and that is my main concern of how I will adjust my priorities in future. I saw 363 bird species and photographed more than 115 species, and felt it after bringing around my gear same time trying to concentrate on difficult to find birds around us. Too much in too little time?

Tripod proved to be useful as light was not good most of times, also combined focal length of 500mm and 1.4 extender was preferable. In most situations I'm sure Costa Rican birds are easier to photograph than European birds, but I seldom felt 700mm focal length would have been too long. If for any reason, bare 500/4 was sometimes used to get more light at bigger aperture.

I had Canon 5D as a backup camera with 50/2.5 Macro lens attached all trip. As you can guess from bird activities it was used quite infrequently, mainly to document habitats and occasional landscapes. I have also played with the idea to bring 28/1.8 lens to use it on 1DMKIII for other photography, but anyway I prefer to have backup camera body with me so 5D + 50/2.5 combination was selected.

Tripod, long shutter speed, ISO between 800-1600, full aperture, IS and even mirror lockup were all useful to get sharp pictures. Static and perching bird can often be photographed with very slow shutter speed if tripod is in use.

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I have tried to slim down my hand luggage for years, not an easy task with 500/4L and need for backup body. This time I stayed at 10kg with 1DMKIII, 5D, 500/4L, 50/2.5, binoculars and a few other gadgets in my new Lowepro Minitrekker AW. I have now chosen to use Minitrekker instead of Phototrekker AW when flying as it is smaller and lighter, thus reducing the possibility to get forced to check in my back bag at airline counter!

Tripod, backup normal lens EF 50/1.8 II and some other things are going into checked in Samsonite, in case my luggage will get lost I should have all the really necessary stuff in my back bag and pockets. ..yeah tripod is bordering really necessary in my situation, admitted :)

I have read a lot of stories how 1DMKIII autofocus is unreliable with some manufacturing errors. Fortunately those problems were not surfacing in this trip, I could get acceptable pictures in much more demanding situations than in my previous Turkey trip with Canon 30D attached to 500/4L.