I’ve been walking that route with only my cell phone as a camera and the other day missed a beautiful Squirrel Cuckoo bird in a tree that my big camera would have caught. Thus yesterday morning I went with my big camera and no cuckoo! But I did get rough shots of these four. The feature photo is a Great-tailed Grackle and the other 3 are labeled in the slideshow. It is not as good a place for birds as up the hill from my house, but I tried! 🙂
On yesterday morning’s walk this was one of the few birds seen and the only one that really interested me, a Fiery-billed Aracari, maybe a young adult or older juvenile because he seemed smaller than many of the others I’ve seen. This one was just 3 doors up from my house and solo which is unusual. I’ve had them on my terrace only once and they are known as a Pacific coast only bird, though Atenas is just an hour drive from that coast. The very similar Collared Aracari is considered an Atlantic Coast or Caribbean-side bird and he too comes into the Central Valley sometimes. Read more about this one on the e-Bird Fiery-billed Aracari page. And/or see my Fiery-billed Aracari Gallery with the best shots made on my terrace the one time they came. This bird is in the toucan family (a smaller cousin) and almost exclusively found in Costa Rica with a few in Panama along the Costa Rica border, also on the Pacific side only.
Fiery-billed Aracari, a Toucan found exclusively in Costa Rica.
“What I saw was just one eye In the dawn as I was going: A bird can carry all the sky In that little button glowing.
Never in my life I went So deep into the firmament.”
With no city ordinances against having chickens in your yard, you might be awakened at sunrise anywhere in Atenas by the “cock-a-doo·dle-doo” of a rooster. Yet most roosters have been shy of my camera while this chicken (feature photo) on my “Country Lane” (8th Ave.) walk almost posed for me. But here’s a rooster at right from earlier on Calle Nueva.
“Then, early, early, early in the morning – just as in countless Disney films – I heard a rooster crow. But guess what? They don’t do it just once.” ~Vivian Vande Velde
Close to home I usually photograph my most birds along the 1 km or so up the hill from my house. Today I met a neighbor to show her where I find them and we spotted or recognized a minimum of 12 species. Here’s photos of 8, having no good photos of female Blue-black Grassquit, Hoffman’s Woodpecker, White-winged Dove and Inca Dove. The two doves I have so many photos of I just didn’t even try to photograph today. 🙂 The featured image is an immature Tropical Kingbird which is fairly common all over Costa Rica. CLICK an image below to enlarge and/or start a manual slide show.
Blue-gray Tanager
Tropical Kingbird
Red-billed Pigeon
Barred Antshrike
Great Kiskadee
Stripe-headed Sparrow
Blue-black Grassquit Male
Tennessee Warbler
See all my BIRDS galleries from many countries or just Costa Rica Birds if you prefer! 🙂
If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.
I just walked up the hill above my house this morning with my camera this time and lots of different photos as usual. I’ll share only 8 of the birds I got and today tried to present some in different positions that the usual side-view on a limb or power line, like the Yellow-throated Euphonia male grooming himself (I also got a profile of him) or the two Inca Doves napping. Enjoy these and I may share some landscapes & flowers tomorrow.
I do a little 7 X7 inch photo book on almost every lodge I visit in Costa Rica and send a copy to the hotel and/or the guides. After my September trip to El Silencio Lodge & Reserve I sent two such books to the hotel along with a copy of my CR Birds Book & one of my CR Butterflies Book for their guests to enjoy.
One of the guides sent me a What’s App message “Thank You” yesterday afternoon with the above photo of my two El Silencio guides, Daniel & Bryan, holding a copy of the El Silencio Book. Nice to be appreciated! 🙂 Thanks guys!
And hopefully the last day of round-the-clock rain as Eta moves on toward Florida. At breakfast on the terrace this morning, the rain had stopped but all was wet and I tried to capture a little sense of the wetness. After breakfast the sun started peaking out and you can see a little of it reflecting off the wetness in the pix. It is the first sun in many days and a pleasant relief! Maybe today will be a more normal “rainy season” day with rain only in the afternoon or early evening. Then before we know it, December will be here with the rain stopped for months and soon after we will be wishing for the rainy season to start again! 🙂 Fickle humans! 🙂 While the cycles of life continue in a now very green Costa Rica! ¡Pura Vida! 🙂
Featured photo is a rain wet Princess Flower in my garden by Charlie and Haiku Poem is also by Charlie. Slide show is of the wetness observed on my terrace this morning at breakfast, just one more beautiful aspect of nature!
My November trip was going to be a repeat to another favorite birding location, Rancho Humo on the Tempisque River at Palo Verde National Park with the nearest town 30+ minutes away, Nicoya. It is a quiet, peaceful rural retreat with luxury rooms and meals on a ranch that still had 800 head of cattle the last time I was there. Featured photo is a White-faced Capuchin Monkey is from my one visit there. It’s a great retreat for couples, families, or anyone wanting peace and quiet in nature, plus the real draw is birds for me, with one of the heavier concentration of birds in the country, especially inland water birds and one of only 2 places here where you might see the rare Jabiru Stork. I saw just one my last visit there.
A month ago they told me they planned to reopen November 1 when our borders are open to all countries for the first time since March. The entry requirements no longer include a negative Covid19 test, but still require sufficient medical insurance, masks, social distancing, etc. But tourists aren’t storming our borders and to make it worse, the U.S. Embassy recommends not traveling here because there is a new wave of the virus here like almost everywhere else. Gloomy – especially for the tourism businesses!
Thus Rancho Humo decided to not open and I had to cancel my reservation which fortunately was not pre-paid like some hotels are requiring now. But I’m still disappointed.
I will keep busy locally with walks and photography and continue my website & photo gallery building, so still a happy retiree in Costa Rica! 🙂 And I may even have Walter (my driver) take me on a couple of Water Fall Day Trips. We will see.
I’m still booked for Arenal Observatoryfor Christmas and they are open now, so I don’t anticipate any problem there. It is listed as one of the “Birding Hot Spots” of Costa Rica and is one of my top 5 favorite lodges, so I know that Christmas will be good and in the wilderness again! 🙂 And by the way, lodges like this take extra precautions because of the pandemic to keep everything sanitized and people masked and socially distanced, plus I spend most of my time solo hiking in the wilderness, so little chance of getting the virus. And just look at what I see from my sanitized room there:
Arenal Volcano View from My Room — same room each time — I love it! 🙂
My last three years of working full time were in The Gambia, with visits to other West African countries like Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire. Plus I made three two-week long trips to Kenya & Tanzania that included two safaris in The Masai Mara, meaning I have a lot of Africa photos! 🙂
Thus I self-curated 139 photos for a beautiful little 7X7 inch photo book titled Magical AFRICA in 102 pages with the hardcover edition including premium lustre photo paper. This is my first book of Africa photos in my Blurb Bookstore and is a general “Portfolio” book.
Click the above linked title or cover image and as always, you can thumb through the book electronically by clicking on REVIEW and pages to turn them.
Another COVID19 benefit of being limited from much travel during the pandemic! 🙂
“One cannot resist the lure of Africa.” – Rudyard Kipling
The “Big Day” of Global Bird Counting was not extremely big for me. I chose the dirt country road alongside our development thinking it would have more birds as usual than around our houses, but . . . it was a little windy from 6 to 8 this morning and one of the bicycle clubs was out whizzing down our little country road which did not encourage the presence of birds. But I’m counting 12 species and a total of 50 birds, with three species not in photos below. Here’s my list for today with non-photo’d first and others alphabetically:
Gray-headed Chachalaca (3) not photographed.
Orange-chinned parakeets (12) not photographed
Melodious Blackbird (1) not a good photo to show here
