charliedoggett.net
My profession is to always find God in nature.
– Henry David Thoreau
This Banded Peacock Butterfly was just one more colorful thing in nature I photographed on yesterday’s morning walk. I don’t carry my big camera on all walks because I photograph too much! 🙂 And tomorrow I will share the flowers I photographed on yesterday’s walk!
¡Pura Vida!
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.
¡Pura Vida!
Check out my new photo book, one of the most fun yet! The FREE Preview shows all 42 pages! Click above link or the book cover image below;
¡Pura Vida!
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!
¡Pura Vida!
The featured photo is looking towards my house from my street along side the cow pasture. The visible house on the left is my neighbor across the driveway from my house which is hidden in the clump of trees behind that street light. I like being in the woods! 🙂
The “Big House” is barely showing on top of our hill which our landlord has rented out since he now lives on the beach north of Jaco. And that’s today in my neighborhood! 🙂
“Love thy neighbor — but don’t pull down your hedge.”
~Benjamin Franklin
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¡Pura Vida!
Rain, wet
Tropical green
Sunshine
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!
Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.
~Bob Marley
¡Pura Vida!
HURRICANE ETA
For 4 days and nights it has been raining almost constantly in my Central Valley town of Atenas, while some lowland areas that typically flood or have landslides are being effected much more than we and our just wetness.
For example, see this related Tico Times article: Indirect effects of Eta lead to at least 500 evacuated in Costa Rica (my feature photo by Tico Times from this article)
Most of us in Costa Rica are fine with no landfall of Hurricane Eta here, it has made landfall in Nicaragua and Honduras and I understand will just scrape Guatemala and Mexico as it heads for Western Florida and Alabama.
And the rain just makes us greener and more beautiful for when you tourists come here in the next few months! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
The Rusty-tipped Page, Siproeta epaphus, is found from Peru northward through Central America. I have seen him once before in my garden and now inside my house on a window screen – and yes, I let him out after the photo! I’ve also seen him in two other locations: Si Como No Hotel in Manual Antonio National Park and at Tapirus Lodge in Braulio Carrillo National Park with much better photos in my Rusty-tipped Page Gallery which is a part of my bigger Butterfly Gallery.
Note that I also now have a Costa Rica butterfly book, Pura Vida Butterflies with photos of 120+ different species of butterflies and moths, including this one, with a free preview at the link.
¡Pura Vida!
For photos only, see gallery: Charlie Doggett’s COSTA RICA
¡Pura Vida!
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 Observatory for 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:
¡Pura Vida!
