José 'Cope' Pérez

José Alberto Pérez, known throughout the Costa Rican birding world simply as 'Cope,' is a self-taught naturalist, wildlife artist, and guide based in La Unión de Guápiles on the northern Caribbean slope, just outside Braulio Carrillo National Park. He has converted his family home and a former tilapia farm into a private reserve known as Donde Cope, with hummingbird feeders, a fruit feeding station, photography blinds, and trails into surrounding forest. Donde Cope has become one of the most reliable Caribbean-lowland sites in the country for daytime owls (notably Spectacled and Crested Owls), specialty hummingbirds such as the White-tipped Sicklebill, and the roosting Honduran White Bats. Cope guides personally on his own property and is widely sub-contracted by larger Costa Rica tour operators as a stop on Caribbean-slope itineraries.