Category: Nature

My profession is to always find God in nature.

– Henry David Thoreau

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Poas Volcano National Park in Costa Rica Will Open Doors to Visitors Again This Friday, Aug.31

Read all the details at:

https://news.co.cr/poas-volcano-national-park-in-costa-rica-will-open-doors-to-visitors-again-this-friday-aug-31/75556/

This is one of the oldest and most visited national parks in Costa Rica and has been greatly missed for nearly a year now after some serious eruptions. Safety is always the first concern and you can be confident that it is safe to visit again now. Some say that it is the best or one of the best volcano parks in the world to visit. It is the only one here where you can look down inside the cone. Plus it is a beautiful cloud forest and nature reserve! I highly recommend seeing it when in Costa Rica and always best early in the morning since clouds often move in to hide the volcano by or before 10:00 AM!

The photo above is one of many made on a trip to Poas in 2015 with Kevin Hunter. See the TRIP Gallery Poas Volcano 2015.

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Banded Peacock Butterfly

At first I thought this was something else, a Red-spotted Patch (found only in Mexico) and also of one I photographed in July at Xandari, called the Crimson or Bordered Patch. There are several kinds of Patches, all colorful and interesting, but the more I looked I decided this is the common Banded Peacock. Here he is with wings folded, same butterfly!

Article about this particular Banded Peacock Butterflies  on Wikipedia and another article on Butterflies & Moths of North America.. Note that there is another variety in India with the same English name but looks different.

My Photo Gallery of Butterflies & Moths has over 80 species I have photographed here in Costa Rica. I love living in a colorful place!  🙂

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Panama vs Costa Rica for Retirees – Another article by Christopher Howard on his blog Living in Costa Rica, and of course slanted toward Costa Rica – but still an interesting comparison of the two countries for American retirees and interesting to me because he briefly compared Atenas, Costa Rica (where I live) with Santa Fe, Panama, both popular for retirees and about the same size. He does say that cost of living is higher in Costa Rica but does not say that I have observed Panama as “more Americanized,” if that is a correct term, with more communities full of almost all Americans, speaking only English and store stocking more American products. Retirees are more spread out across Costa Rica with Spanish the needed language everywhere and the few American products here are very expensive! If you want to retire in an English-speaking community of mostly Americans with American products and luxuries, Panama might be better for you.

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Soda y Mirador Cinchona

Early this morning I used my favorite driver, Walter, to take me on an hour and a half drive up the mountains near Poas Volcano (which will reopen by December if no more eruptions). I have been hearing about a little Soda (small family restaurant) for a long time that everyone says I must visit for the wide variety of birds at their feeders and one of the most beautiful waterfall vistas.

I was not disappointed! Here is a slideshow of some of what seen and you can go to my TRIPS Photo Gallery for a gallery of today’s trip, Soda y Mirador Cinchona that will give you larger and more photos to see of one more great place to visit in Costa Rica! Birds are presented in the order found in the book The Birds of Costa Rica, A Field Guide.

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Atenas is 150 Years Old

The above photo is of the sign on the City Hall building (municipalidad). I was recovering from surgery and did not participate in the 5-day long weekend (Friday-Tuesday) celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Canton (County) Atenas with the Pueblo (town) of Atenas the same age. Central Park was full of tents with food, crafts and venders plus a stage to present music groups several times each day with even the American retiree’s oldies band “Flashback” performing one afternoon. And for awhile there was a sign with pictures of the plans for a remodeled Central Park. I didn’t get a pix.

Anniversary Project

On the final day a government program made the birthday official and on this auspicious birthday they presented their plans for a Remodeled Central Park that I have already presented in an earlier post where I referred you to the official Facebook presentation with 18 drawings and photos. They say it will be done this year, the anniversary year, but it is August and no work has started yet. Of course it rains every day now, so if they wait until dry season, it will be started in December!  🙂  And thus may be completed in 2019. Maybe! It is being done by government officials remember!  ¡Pura Vida!   🙂

 

 

More of Atenas in my Photo Galleries:

Atenas  and  People and Fiestas. 

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Preserving the Vista

I asked the gardeners to “take a little off the top” of my remaining Yellow Bell Tree up front that this winter’s (yes, rainy season is called winter here) rain had caused to shoot up rapidly and high, blocking my scenic view. And typically Tico, one of the young men scurried up the tree with his machete and whacked away! I would not have left that bare branch, but it will soon have new branches and leaves. And my view is opened up again. I love my gardeners!

Click image to enlarge.

See more vistas in my   VISTAS    Photo Gallery from all over Costa Rica.

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Giant Grasshopper

Here they call all of these large grasshoppers “Giant Grasshopper” and most are a variety of the officially named Giant Grasshopper. See the other one I photographed on my 2010 Caravan Tour while in Guanacaste, which was actually larger and all green and beige/brown. This yellowish one I photographed the other day going in Linea Vital for my physical therapy.  You never know where you will see cool creatures!  🙂

Here’s a bigger one on someone else’s blog called Beach Life.

I can’t find a scientific article online.      ¡Pura Vida!

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Two Species Share Perching Space

Red-billed Pigeon

I watched these two at breakfast this morning as they perched together on that cable for the power lines. Maybe this dove and pigeon are role models that some North Americans need today. 🙂 Very different but happy together.

(Sorry, but I could not get a photo of them together with both in focus at my distance. They were like 6 to 10 inches apart but down the hill and across the street from me.)

White-winged Dove and Red-billed Pigeon are both common and plentiful here. Their name links are to online articles about each bird on the excellent Cornell Lab of Ornithology Neotropical Birds site. Also see these two and other tropical birds in my BIRDS Photo Gallery.

¡Pura Vida!

 

Some tribes of birds will relieve and rear up the young and helpless, of their own and other tribes, when abandoned. 

~William Bartram

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Giant Swallowtail

The Giant Swallowtail is a fairly common butterfly here and even in the states, but I haven’t shown one in a good while, especially the under-side like the photo above. The topside of this fellow (below) is the more familiar black and yellow shown here on the same butterfly photographed above! Yeah, I know, they look different as do the top & bottom of many butterflies. Read about Giant Swallowtails on Butterflies and Moths of North America.

 

A butterfly lights beside us like a sunbeam, and for a brief moment, its glory and beauty belong to our world… but then it flies again, and though we wish it could have stayed… we feel lucky to have seen it.       ~Unknown Author

 

A New Blog Feature in this New Website

You can hover over the top Menu Item “Blog” above for  Category Sub-menus that will drop down. Go down to “Nature” and its submenu “Butterflies” to see all the blog posts I have made about butterflies since 2014. In this case, 6 pages of butterfly posts! Some old posts are mixed subjects with too many photos. Now I am trying to stay focused on one “category” (WordPress term)  at a time with no more than 2 photos per post and a short, easy-to-read post like above. And you will see that there are many other “Categories” to follow if interested, with “Birds” being the largest and more are being added. And of course you can click on “Blog” Menu item and see all the posts in reverse chronological order or most recent on top.

All of the posts are also searchable in the right hand column or right sidebar by tags, categories, or by date. This makes my blog posts the main focus and main information found on my website now with multiple ways to find old posts. This is the strength of WordPress hosted websites, being blog-focused with many ways to utilize collections of posts.

You will also find a lot of “static” (WordPress term) or non-blog pages which I will tell about in another blog post.

Feel free to explore your interests now within the blogs through the pull-down menus or search boxes. I am having fun creating little articles about my interests, especially when I can share nature photography from my new home country of Costa Rica!