Butterflies are God’s confetti, thrown upon the Earth in celebration of His love
~K. D’Angelo
Along with the freshness of the air during rainy season, there are always butterflies in my garden – bringing smiles and sparkles of God’s love! What a blessing!
After the birds and vistas I photographed only a few of the many flowers along my Sunday morning walk. I do enjoy the immense variety of plant life here in Costa Rica! And remember to CLICK to enlarge an image:
“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
The subtitle of my newest travel book is “When you look through the eyes of a child” describing how I tried to present this photo-travel book on Maquenque Eco-Lodge and Reserve. Yes – it is in Spanish this time but for you English-only people, don’t worry! All the photo captions are in both languages and the poem from which I got the subtitle is also in both languages, and here it is in English:
“Everything seemed possible, when I looked through the eyes of a child. And every once in a while; I remember, I still have the chance to be that wild.” ― Nikki Rowe
It’s a photo book with 141 photos, including photos of the 61 species of birds I got this visit. THE ELECTRONIC PREVIEW IS FREE, so go to this link or click the cover image below and you can see all 92 pages of the book for free! Of course full-screen is best for photos! 🙂
Just the views are a reason to walk even if no birds or flowers! 🙂 The cow pasture is across from my house, included to show you how much higher the grass is in rainy season. All other views are from my street just up the hill from my house. And people have similar views all over Costa Rica! One of many reasons I retired in Costa Rica! Pura Vida! 🙂
My hour and twenty minutes walk up the hill and back this morning provided many creativity opportunities as always! I almost overloaded this post with 4 categories of photos but will save the others for the next 3 days: butterflies, flowers and vistas. Today please enjoy the 8 birds I photographed. CLICK image to enlarge. Pura vida!
“Nature as Art” was the name of my little photo business for a few years in Nashville and I was reminded of that theme during my week at Maquenque with lots of “little things” I photographed and enjoyed just seeing! 🙂
As much as I love most art, no artist can compete with the creative handiwork of God in Nature!
All art is but imitation of nature. ~Seneca the Younger
For more of Maquenque “Nature as Art” see these galleries:
My last bird post from Maquenque is two of the largest and most frequently seen groups of birds – Flycatchers and the more colorful Tanagers. Enjoy! And to see all of the bird species I saw on this trip to Maquenque, go to theMaquenque 2020 BIRDS Gallery or better yet, see all my June-July 2020 Maquenque Photos! 🙂
I got all three of the Saltators found in this part of the country with only one other species (Streaked Saltator) found only in the southwest corner of Costa Rica around the Osa Peninsula and the only one I’ve not photographed.
Plus I got 4 of the many types of “blackbirds” here. And if you didn’t see the post about a Oropendola mother raising a blackbird, you might want to read A BLM Example in Nature. CLICK image to enlarge.
“Big” is somewhat relative, but just another way to group my bird photos from a week at Maquenque Eco-Lodge and Reserve. I used two photos of the common Turkey Vulture to show the easiest way to tell the difference in him and the Black Vulture – the white on the underside of the Turkey Vulture goes all the way across and the white on bottom of Black Vulture is only on the tips of the wings. The Red and Gray Heads are another way, but not always clearly visible and as seen here the red is not always very obvious.
And the Featured Image is a Laughing Falcon, one of my favorite big bird, just hard to get close to for a great photo, but I have a few times as you can see in my CR Birds Gallery.
There are two species of Oropendolas common in Cost Rica and at Maquenque, the Montezuma Oropendola (3 photos here) and the less common Chestnut-headed Oropendola (1 photo here). There are two more Oropendolas in Central America, both in Panama with the Crested Oropendola occasionally coming over the border into southern Costa Rica and the Black Oropendola is found only further in southern Panama. Male & female appear the same in all Oropendolas.
This week at Maquenque I observed a mother Montezuma Oropendola feeding a baby or juvenile blackbird (either a Melodious Blackbird or a Giant Cowbird if the eye is red like some said). It was interesting to watch and the pair are in one photo below and I featured them in a post while I was there titled A BLM Example in Nature.
CLICK an image to enlarge or start a manual slide show.