Category: Mountains

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Introducing A New Bird Book!

CLICK this front cover image to see a free preview of all pages!

To celebrate what will be 10 years of living in Costa Rica come December, I decided to publish a coffee table book of my favorite bird photos that turned out to be a lot! 174 photos! Each includes both the English and Spanish common names of that bird plus the location where I photographed it. Whether a birder or a lover of “Nature As Art,” I think you will like this 86 page photo book printed on premium matte paper. It might even become a collector’s item some day! 🙂 It will definitely become the book that I gift to the birding lodges I visit over the next year or two! 🙂

You can see a free electronic preview of all 86 pages by clicking the above image of the book cover or go to this web address: https://www.blurb.com/b/11961281-costa-rica-birds

BACK COVER of the book.

¡Pura Vida!

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Individual Flowers at Savegre

That’s right! I’m back to sharing photos from my Christmas Trip to Hotel Savegre in San Gerardo de Dota. I think I shared some shots of the grounds and a “broad look at the gardens” which are some of the best of any hotel in Costa Rica. Well now that I’m not as super-busy as I have been since Christmas, I’m going to finish the gallery for the Christmas Trip to Hotel Savegre! And this posts introduces the sub-gallery called: Savegre Individual Flowers where I just deposited 57 photos of individual flowers! And here is one of my favorite . . .

Dancing Dolls or Fuchsia at Hotel Savegre, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica. CLICK IMAGE for more!

Enjoy the flowers and if you missed it, go to my photos of the Broad View of the Gardens of Savegre.

¡Pura Vida!

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4 Local Birding Hikes

Local hikes this December-January 2023-24 with a birding friend from British Columbia . . . Here’s a linked small gallery for each, represented with one photo from each and the linked date & place headings (or the photo) to go to that gallery . . .

December 19 – Calle Nueva, Atenas

Lesson’s Motmot on Calle Nueva, Atenas, Costa Rica.
Continue reading “4 Local Birding Hikes”
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Madre Verde Butterflies!

Yesterday was the last morning birding hike with my friend from British Columbia and Walter took us to a new nature reserve for me, Reserva Madre Verde near Palmares which is north of Atenas, a 30 minute drive through beautiful mountains (or maybe hills). :-)

Our two hour hike up & down a hill had a 300 meter rise in altitude was good for us 80-somethings! We heard lots of birds but in a fairly thick forest we did not see as many as the other two birding hikes. I got photos of only 3 birds – BUT – I’m still happy because I got photos of 9 different species of butterflies, which took me all afternoon to identify and process the photos AND I got 3 new species for me! :-) So a very good 2-hour hike! Below is a gallery with one shot of each of the 9 butterflies after this one shot for the email version of post . . .

Tiger Mimic-White, Reserva Madre Verde, Palmares, Costa Rica
Continue reading “Madre Verde Butterflies!”
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The Other Side of Atenas Yesterday

My birding friend from British Columbia, Canada, is here this week and we went birding on a former rural road on the west side of Atenas with lots of houses going up of course! Here’s 3 shots of the area and most of my bird shots were not real good because of light and distance plus I lost about 1/3 of them when somehow my computer deleted a bunch from the camera disk. Aghhhh! (I know! It was me hitting a wrong key or something! Grrrr!) Technology will be the death of me yet! :-) But the cows are cute! And that bright yellow tree is a Cortez Amarillo (Tabebuia Ochracea) tree that is blooming all over Costa Rica this time of year and in the landscape shot you can see yellow spots of them blooming. Thursday morning we will try a real country road south of Atenas and then Friday morning we are visiting a nearby nature reserve that I hope will be birdful! 🙂

Vista from a road on the west side of Atenas with my house on the side of that mountain across the valley.

And read on for a photo of a cow & calf nursing and a close up of the Cortez Tree! :-)

Continue reading “The Other Side of Atenas Yesterday”
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Hotel Savegre Grounds & Gardens

Just one photo that is linked to my Trip Gallery Grounds & Gardens Sub-Gallery with more photos and then in a few days I will share some really beautiful flowers, but this week has become overwhelming and I will be a few days later processing my flower photos with a guest from Canada here, medical lab work tomorrow at the National Hospital de Geriatria in San Jose, a trip to a new nature reserve for me Thursday with my Canadian friend and removing all my stuff from the Galería on Saturday. A really full week! But I see tranquility in next week! :-)

Just one corner of many gardens! CLICK IMAGE for more photos.

¡Pura Vida!

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20 Bird Species from Savegre! A Gallery

I’ve completed one more chunk of my Christmas Trip Gallery, the BIRDS Gallery with 20 species and some of my better bird photos including 5 species of Hummingbirds! You can click the gallery first page image below this one bird photo or just go to this web address: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2023-December-22-28-San-Gerardo-de-Dota/BIRDS

Talamanca Hummingbird, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica. Indigenous to Costa Rica!
1st 6 of 21 galleries! CLICK this image for my Christmas Trip BIRD GALLERIES.

For locals in Atenas:

This is my last week (Jan. 8-13) in the Gallería Artenas! (At Plaza Calle 2 next to Linea Vital.) So if interested in any of my photos there or the Floral Accent Pillows, this week is your last opportunity to shop for them in person, in town, except the Photo Greeting Cards which starting next Sunday, January 14, will be available at Hotel Colinas del Sol, with everything else available only online through my Gallery, – – – Bookstore, or – – – CafePress Shop. 

From now on I will consider my nature photography as my fun and for this daily blog post, with any online sales and the Colinas del Sol greeting cards as “incidentals” to my fun hobby! No more gallerías, arts & crafts shows or physical selling for me! (Which, by the way, has always been tiring and at a financial loss for me.) Now I photograph only for fun! :-)

¡Pura Vida!

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Rufous-collared Sparrow

To me, every bird is a work of art and thus I try to make each photo of one a work of art, though I do have some ugly photos just to document seeing a species! :-) This common Rufous-collared Sparrow was seen a lot at Hotel Savegre this trip and I have a trip gallery of Rufous-collared Sparrows that will soon become a part of the Trip Gallery for this 2023 time at Savegre. And of course in my big birds gallery there’s a larger Rufous-collared Sparrow GALLERY with birds from this and other mountain lodges and even one at a hotel in San Jose and it includes my very first photo of this species from my 2009 trip to this same hotel (then a smaller mountain lodge) which is interesting, of a mother feeding her chick a worm, if you don’t consider that gross! :-) And you can read about this tropical bird on eBird. It is found only in Central and South America. The scientific name is Zonotrichia capensis.

A mature or older adult Rufous-collared Sparrow while the feature photo is of a younger bird,
Hotel Savegre, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica.

¡Pura Vida!

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Flame-colored Tanager

Indigenous to Central America, this colorful Tanager is found only in the mountains of Mexico to Panama, from 1000m up to the timberline, on both slopes, Pacific & Caribbean. Read about him (red-orange) and her (yellow) on eBird. And you can see all my photos of this species in my Flame-colored Tanager GALLERY. I’ve seen them only in San Gerardo de Dota (3 locations) on the Pacific Slope and at El Silencio Lodge in Bajos del Toro on the Caribbean Slope. Here’s one male and one female photo . . .

Adult Female Flame-colored Tanager, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica
Immature or Juvenile Male Flame-colored Tanager, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica — A Mature Adult is in the Feature Photo at top of online Post.

¡Pura Vida!