Last week (Feb. 2) I tried to see what birds would come around my terrace as the sun starts setting around 5 pm, with camera in hand of course! 🙂 There were several other birds, but I managed to capture only five, and of those only the Clay-colored Thrush (feature photo) was in good light, but regardless, here’s five common birds often around my house with the Oropendola staying near the tops of tall trees and not photographed as often. The Doves and Chachalacas are seen more in the mornings. Others are “special” or more rarely seen.
The “greenness” of Costa Rica is just one of the many things I love about it and this green privacy wall is one example of how green the houses are around here. Photographed on one of my walks down “Country Lane.”
This bougainvillea is in front of one of the houses I pass on one of my walk routes. This is the time of year for most bougainvillea to be at their peak in blooms and I enjoy the color on my walks! 🙂
Bougainvillea on my “Country Lane” walk, Avenida 8, Atenas, Costa Rica.
The iridescent colors make this common bird stand out, even in the shadows of my garden. Three of the four photos are definitely male (blue), while one appears to have the brown coloring of a female. See my Great-tailed Grackle Gallery or read about them on eBird.
Well — the house is now law offices and as you can see the yellow is actually flowers that fell off a tree, carpeting their yard, sidewalk and cars yellow. 🙂 Here’s shots from 4 angles . . .
I believe this is a small or immature Tropical Kingbird in the shadows of my garden. I like the softness of the image even though not very sharp or in good light. 🙂 It could be a rare Western Kingbird, but I don’t think so with the faint white on the neck.
From my Country Lane walk the other day I snapped these three slightly different small colorful flowers. I just learned that they are called San Rafaels here. (Thanks Shannon!)
That’s what artist Cynara Shelton calls her painting, Those Bloomin’ Cactus. She even has hers for sale, so if you want to buy mine, you can order from my gallery image of this photo to be printed on canvas, metal (my favorite now) or paper. My markup is only $1, the rest goes to SmugMug Gallery and the printer. 🙂 But I think reasonably priced and a good service SmugMug Galleries provides! And of course I have other photos I think better for wall art than this humble little cactus. 🙂 I’m retired now, so really not trying to sell photos! This one was photographed on “Country Lane” in front of Hotel Las Colinas, Atenas.
Bloomin’ Cactus at Hotel Las Colinas, Atenas, Costa Rica.
For the last week or so the winds have been really strong here whipping those palm fronds around like giant fans! Note that we have high winds in the Central Valley of Costa Rica every January-February, so not unusual. It’s how our summer begins.
I’m sorry that the White-winged Dove had her egg-laying time come now and chose to make her nest in a palm frond, less secure from wind than any other tree limb would have been. The third photo below (and feature photo) is her on the nest the morning of the 29th after sitting there nearly a week and I have yet to see an egg. But by the afternoon of the 29th she was gone from the nest and not seen there since and I checked all day the 30th. If she lost eggs it must have been to predators (here Iguanas or a large bird or snake) because I’ve seen no egg on the ground under the nest which would be broken if it fell. The second empty nest photo was made from my step ladder (higher up) but still not showing any egg(s). So I don’t know what has happened. If she lost eggs, it will be the second time a dove has lost eggs from my palm fronds. Sad.
I know that it was only a couple of weeks ago when I shared another one of these (maybe the same one?), but this one hung around after breakfast the other morning longer than any other bird and I had fun trying to capture her in the shadows of the Cecropia Tree. Here’s 3 of my efforts . . .
