21 January 2026: Day 3, La Ensenada boat tour among the mangroves + cart ride on the grounds — Road Scholar Birding in Northern Costa Rica: Tanagers to Toucans

Outside my window this morning at La Ensenada Lodge I can see the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Nicoya. The coast is lined with a mangrove forest, rich in biodiversity, that we will visit today by boat.

In the U.S. a similar coastal boat trip would explore a salt marsh but those grasslands of the temperate coasts are replaced by mangrove forests in the tropics.

Mangroves cannot survive where it’s cold as you can see on the map. Salt marshes (green) are outside the tropics, mangrove forests (orange) are within.

Like the salt marsh the mangrove forest’s stilt-like roots are in the tidal zone. There they slow the force of the water, allow suspended material to settle around the roots, and protect the coast from erosion.

Here we will see birds with “mangrove” in their names: the mangrove hummingbird (Chrysuronia boucardi) and the AOU newly split mangrove warbler (Setophaga petechia).

We will also see the bare-throated tiger heron (Tigrisoma mexicanum), named for the bare skin on his throat that he puffs out during courtship.

This 5 minute video was recorded at Lake Nicaragua, north of Costa Rica. The low rhythmic sounds on the recording are heron-speak.

They sound like this.