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There are four species of squirrels in Costa Rica but the largest population nation-wide is this Variegated Squirrel, Sciurus variegatoides (Ardilla Centroamericana en español) with the names linked to my photo gallery with shots from nation-wide. I think they are like squirrels everywhere, very hyperactive! 🙂 And though I have seen a solid black one and a mostly red one, most are variegated like this one in my garden.
As Christmas nears, it seems nice to see doves in the garden! 🙂 And this is my most regular or most seen dove, the White-winged Dove (my gallery link).
One of the late hangers-on in the late butterfly season is this Polydamas Swallowtail (my gallery link) and I’m sorry I let the camera focus on the flower more than the butterfly! 🙂
In November this attractive leaf just popped up in my garden as what I figured was a “weed,” and thus I pulled it up, after photographing with my cell phone, and threw it away. Then I ran this leaf photo through iNaturalist and discovered that it is (was) a Marigold Pepper, Piper marginatum (iNaturallist link). Just another one of the many nature surprises I keep finding in my garden and all over Costa Rica! 🙂 What I read about this is that there are no “peppers” or fruit, but rather people use the leaves for seasoning and extracting a flavorful oil. Hmmmm, maybe I should have kept this “weed!” 🙂
See more such beauties in my Leaves & Nature Things GALLERY.
¡Pura Vida!
One of our two woodpeckers with the “Woody Woodpecker” hair is the Lineated Woodpecker, Dryocopus lineatus, (my gallery link) “Carpintero Lineado” en español, with the Pale-billed Woodpecker being the other big hairdo woodpecker (his whole head is red!). 🙂 This one sensed that my Cecropia Tree is dying and landed first on the trunk then went straight to a dead limb looking for insects to eat. Because of their “pecking/eating” they tend to stay longer in a tree, making them sometimes easier to photograph than other birds, though the overcast afternoon was poor light that day with a glary white sky. 🙁 Here are two shots from this past Monday. See the gallery for more from all over Costa Rica. He is found only in Central & South America, with North America’s most similar bird being the Pileated Woodpecker (linked to my gallery of one seen on Nashville’s Stones River Greenway).
Is back in Costa Rica from “up north” and no longer called just “Yellow Warbler” as in the past but has a new official name of Northern Yellow Warbler – Setophaga aestiva (linked to my gallery) and what is used by eBird and iNaturalist. Some older books still say just Yellow Warbler and the Princeton Field Guide says American Yellow Warbler. I’m not sure which names are harder to keep up with, Birds or Butterflies! 🙂 They seem to both be changing frequently. This particular bird showed up on December 1 in my Cecropia Tree. Here’s two shots of him/her . . .
The closest I’ve been able to get to an identification so far on iNaturalist is “Subfamily Coreinae Insect.” Then quickly after posting it, someone more knowledgeable narrowed it down to “Piezogaster Genus” (iNaturalist link) which is closer to a species name which hopefully someone will be able to provide there. Here’s two shots from the floor of my terrace from different angles (front & back) . . .
This very common butterfly is the one I keep seeing as many of the others are no longer around. There are much better photos in my gallery: Banded Peacock, Anartia fatima.
¡Pura Vida!
Hoping you will have a happy December as I expect mine to be. I will be slowing down with only 3 doctor appointments! 🙂 My health is doing well with mostly the wonderful public health system here in Costa Rica, an ultra sound scan every 6 months showing me cancer free, a monthly nurse visit to my house, checking on me and data on my CPAP machine, and just a month ago I got new hearing aids compliments of the Cost Rica Social Security! Life is good in Costa Rica! 🙂
Continue reading “Merry Christmas!”
Some of you may remember that back in 2017 I started a collection of handmade “Artisan Birds,” mainly from artists in Costa Rica, but a few from other Central American countries and ended up with 2 from countries outside Central America. The collection has not grown much since the first two years or so, but I finally I now have a better tree on which to display them.
And you can see all of my “Artisan Birds” collection with labels of where they are each from in my photo gallery: My Artisan Birds Tree
The first year (2017) was the best display tree, a dead tree branch with lots of branches and I never found another like that. Last year I finally bought an artificial green bush or shrub which I kept most of the year in my living room with or without the artisan birds, but never liked it and the artificial limbs were too weak and droopy and earlier this month it went to the garbage man. And I vowed to find a better one this year!
Well, last week I found this all white artificial small tree with little tiny lights and decided that was it! But again, the limbs were too weak and droopy to handle the small weight of my tiny ornaments! (See the BEFORE & AFTER pictures below.) Grrrrr! BUT, “where there’s a will there’s a way!” I figured out how they made it with a real little tree trunk and wires going up and out for limbs, “they” just used too thin or flimsy wires. I thought, “why couldn’t they have used stiffer (heavier) wires?” Then I realized that if I could tell them how they “should” have done it, I could just do it myself! And I did! 🙂
I went to the main hardware store here in Atenas (La Ferretería Vargas & Hijos) and bought some heavier or stiffer wire (12.5 m roll) for a fraction of what the 3 rolls of white electrical tape (cinta blanca) cost and two days later I have totally “rewired” my little Christmas tree with the new heavy wire held to the older thinner wires with lots of white electrical tape wrapped around every centimeter of every limb and the trunk! A LOT OF WORK! But, ta daa! I now have a new tree that is strong enough to hold the artisan birds! 🙂 Here are two pairs of “Before & After” photos to show you what I accomplished . . .
Continue reading “My Christmas Tree Adventure”