charliedoggett.net
My profession is to always find God in nature.
– Henry David Thoreau
I never get tired of photographing the hills across our little valley and just keep trying to make a different image or view of the same hills I see daily. I would prefer them without the cell phone towers, but the modern society would argue that they are absolutely necessary! 🙂 Debatable! 🙂
If you like hills too, you might also like my CR Vistas Gallery.
¡Pura Vida!
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.
“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.”
― Harold Monro
¡Pura Vida!
Not only does one create his/her own happiness but also the world in which you want to live. When I moved into this fairly new rent house it had the basic trees and shrubs but I immediately planted a garden and added other plants around the yard and that now big Cecropia tree that appears in so many of my photos.
Another one of those early plantings was a row of palms outside my two bedrooms to gain additional privacy from the street that my bedrooms face, howbeit down a steep hill through lots of other trees and flowers and my big Strangler Fig Tree. It was not only for additional privacy but for the feeling that I live in a forest as seen from any of my windows and doors. Yes – we can create our own world! That is what I was trying to show in an earlier post: My Windows – My World, and back then the above bedroom window feature photo was different with an indoor palm (at right). I have to change pot plants occasionally because this window gets minimal sunshine! 🙂
And because it also changes a lot, there’s another earlier post titled Kitchen Window View. I love being surrounded by nature, the main art in my house along with some of my nature photos.
“Nature is the art of God.”
—Dante Alighieri
“Just remember life is all an illusion…..
it’s your creation and you can dismantle it and re-create at will.”
― Nanette Mathews
¡Pura Vida!
For more pix of my “forest house” see photo galleries: My Home Garden, or My Rent House in Roca Verde, or Vistas from My Terrace, or Vistas from Hill Above My House. Of course all of Costa Rica is my big backyard and I travel to all parts of the country about every other month in national forests, parks and reserves, so watch for reports on the blog and/or check out my big gallery where I have photos documenting more than 80 Costa Rica trips in the CR Trips sub-gallery! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Costa Rica offering all-expenses-paid vacations: How to enter
An article in Tico Times on how Canada and U.S. Citizens can win one of 15 free trips to Costa Rica for 2 people each. Just write a brief article or statement on an “Essential Person” to you during the pandemic. The 15 best will be published and you get the free trip! 🙂
My big meal was Thanksgiving Eve and I ate too much and had some stomach problems yesterday, not leaving the house, thus my only photo was this one of a cow in the field across the street. 🙂
“The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the other milk.”
~ Ogden Nash
¡Pura Vida!
Yeah . . . that’s sort of how I get it – every morning at breakfast – from a slanted, sideways view (obliquely) with the distant hills lit first, then part of the town and then it reaches my tiny patch of wildness. Kind of fun – makes me smile – and it’s a great way to start a day! 🙂
The feature photo is of sunrise over Atenas as seen from 105 Roca Verde yesterday morning. The sun is rising from behind a hill to my far right, thus not hitting me yet, but it soon will! 🙂 Our world can be magical!
My Vistas Gallery has lots of different kinds of sunrises & sunsets – all of which are fun! 🙂
“There’s a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them.”
― Jo Walton
🙂
¡Pura Vida!
“Practice any art . . . not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.” ~Kurt Vonnegut
And that quote, I just found, describes exactly what I am doing with my photography, with this blog, and with me being “Retired in Costa Rica!” I am becoming, discovering and growing. Living in and focusing on nature is my idea of life now, “almost heaven.” 🙂
The feature photo of a Red-eyed Tree Frog in the hand of another nature explorer at Aguila de Osa Lodge, Drake Bay, is an example of what lights up my life! As is the frog on the cover of my latest photo book below, photographed with my simple cell phone at the Danta Corcovado Lodge, Los Patos Ranger Station, Corcovado National Park. Frogs are almost as dear to me as birds! 🙂
becoming, discovering and growing
¡Pura Vida!
Some mornings I just walk the circle drive over the hill my house hangs on the side of. Near the top in just one spot, directly above my house, is this view of Atenas, Alajuela Province, Costa Rica – the tranquil little coffee-farming town where I’m living out the rest of my life, Retired in Costa Rica! The town slogan is Mejor Clima del Mundo, “The best weather in the world!” A subjective opinion of course! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
On the front end of the cow pasture across from my house are a couple of short, squatty trees that remind me of the acacia trees I saw in the Masai Mara and Serengeti of East Africa and I’m embarrassed that I don’t yet have the identification of these here. But all trees are worth showing photos of, named or not! 🙂
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”
— Kahlil Gibran
¡Pura Vida!
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.
And for more photos, see my Atenas Chickens and Roosters Gallery.
“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
🙂
¡Pura Vida!
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.
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.
—Aristotle
¡Pura Vida!