Sources & photo credits

About this guide

A growing, species-first field guide to the wildlife of Costa Rica: mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. This edition lists about 1,650 species, about 1,440 of them with photographs. Species descriptions are still being written.

How the species list was built

Mammals come from the Mammal Diversity Database, whose ranges include Costa Rica. Birds, reptiles and amphibians come from GBIF occurrence records in Costa Rica (retrieved October 2026) matched to the Clements/eBird and Catalogue of Life checklists: birds with at least 20 records, reptiles and amphibians with at least 5. Species with fewer records, which can be vagrants, escapes or misidentifications, are held back until they have been checked by hand. Recently renamed or split species may be missing or listed under an old name until the lists are updated. Common names follow the same lists, then the other Wildlife of Everywhere guides, then Wikipedia; many frogs, lizards and snakes have no English name yet, so their scientific name is shown.

Why there is no conservation status

This guide shows only national Red List categories, never global IUCN ones. Costa Rica's national assessments are not yet included, so no status label is shown yet.

Reference sources

• Mammal Diversity Database: mammal names and ranges (CC BY 4.0)
• Clements/eBird taxonomy: bird names and taxonomy
• Catalogue of Life: reptile and amphibian taxonomy (CC BY 4.0)
• GBIF – Costa Rica: occurrence records used to build the lists

Planning a visit

Many parks need permits, guides or boat transport, some can only be reached by boat or small plane, and roads and rivers change with the wet and dry seasons. Check with the park or your operator before you travel rather than relying on the details here.

Wildlife sightings are never guaranteed. The species listed for each place are what is realistically possible there, not what you should expect on a given day.

Your plans and sightings

Your trip plan and sightings are saved in this browser, on this device only. We never see them. Clearing your browser data will clear them too, so download the PDF if you want a copy to keep. Email buttons open a draft in your mail app; nothing is sent until you send it.

Species descriptions

Species accounts are our own paraphrased summaries of published, openly accessible sources, mainly Wikipedia species accounts, and for snakes and other reptiles also The Reptile Database (reptile-database.reptarium.cz), with national checklists and Red Lists where cited. Each account names its source in brackets. Some are general to the species and are not specific to this country; a short entry means the sources said little, not that we left something out. We use no IUCN Red List data.

Photo credits

Photographs come from iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA licences, or were taken by the Wildlife of Everywhere team. Each one keeps its photographer's name, licence and a link to the original.

Photographs are chosen to show the species clearly, so many were taken elsewhere in its range rather than in Costa Rica. Tap the i on any photograph to see who took it. The full list is below.

View all photo credits