I encourage you to watch this brief 1 minute video ad that will be appearing in larger city TV markets in the U.S. and Canada this year. Then plan your trip to Costa Rica for the “Essentials of Life!” in Costa Rica! – 🙂 – ¡Pura Vida!
And for the bird-lovers & nature-lovers up north, are you aware of the tragedy of our lifetime? Nearly 3 Billion Birds Gone from U.S. & Canada – staggering! Link is to article from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We are destroying the earth little by little. I’m thankful to live in a small haven of nature, Costa Rica!
Two butterflies scurrying around my garden the other day captured my attention much because of how fast they traveled and thus difficult to photograph. The one with red & pink is a Transandean Cattleheart (Parides iphidamas), while the one with turquoise is a Short-tailed Flasher(Astraptes brevicauda). These are both identifications using A Swift Guide to Butterflies of Mexico and Central America, Second Edition. On the Cattleheart especially, I trust the book more than the internet where the many different types of Cattleheart butterflies do not have their photos as finely separated as in the book.
The unknown yellow butterfly was on the parking lot by gym at Colegio Liceo (college-prep high school) – must have been pretty when alive but can’t find him in the book. CLICK images to see larger.
Transandean Cattleheart
Transandean Cattleheart
Transandean Cattleheart
Transandean Cattleheart
Short-Tailed Flasher
Short-tailed Flasher
Short-tailed Flasher
Short-tailed Flasher
Unidentified Butterfly
So we’ll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies. ~William Shakespeare
🙂
¡Pura Vida!
And check out my Butterflies & Moths of Costa Rica photo gallery! I have not found another online Costa Rica Butterfly gallery yet with as many labeled butterfly photos, more than 80 with names!
To maintain a vista from my terrace I have to top or prune off the top of both my Yellow Bells Tree and my Nance Tree about once a year.
I asked the gardener to write down the official name in Spanish which is “Arbole de vainillo” (Costa Rica only name – click for español description and other Spanish names by country). I just discovered that the Latin name Tecoma stans (click for English description) also has multiple English names listed in this order on Wikipedia: Yellow Trumpetbush, Yellow Bells (which I have been calling it because of the yellow bell-shaped flowers), Yellow Elder, and Ginger-Thomas. It is the official flower of the United States Virgin Islands and the floral emblem of The Bahamas, both using different names!
Topped the Yellow Bell & Nance Trees to preserve my vista. 🙂
And is very popular all over Costa Rica as a garden tree bringing 2-4 months of yellow flowers every year. You can see more photos of my trees blooming in my photo gallery named: My Home Gardens.
“In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.”
Coming in October: A visit to Rincón de la Vieja National Park & Hacienda Guachipelin, a volcano park lodge, this one in the north of Guanacaste, above Liberia (a new area for me) and another hotel that promises a great birding experience. I continue to try new places while occasionally repeating favorites like a redo of Arenal Observatory (another volcano birding lodge) coming in November. In Costa Rica – the adventures never end!
Included are shots from their “Rainforest Trail” which is a fairly dense forest with a lot of old growth big trees which is refreshing but difficult to photograph birds in because of all the limbs and leaves! 🙂
I did not show my room this time but the rooms are on the hill just above the restaurant and pool seen at top of feature photo above or in the pool photo below at upper left. Rooms 10-14 look directly over the ocean and sunsets, while other rooms like mine have garden views with partial ocean views. (My room views are seen in gallery Day Vistas.) I got more birds from my garden view but the premium rooms have better sunset views (cost more) and with clouds & rain every afternoon in rainy season there is not much sunset to see. See the hotel website for more information at https://www.cristal-ballena.com/
Cristal Ballena Hotel, Uvita
CLICK Image to Enlarge
Ocean Views from Everywhere!
Trees Everywhere!
Bamboo
Bamboo
Rainforest Trail
Old Growth Big Trees
Rainforest Trees
In a Beautiful Forest
Entrance Driveway
Banana Plant Flower
Events Field
Hotel Seen from Ocean Boat
Restaurant by Pool w/ Meeting Room Above
Birds Slide Show in Bar When No Ball Game
Hotel on a Hill
Weddings Platform
Beautiful Plants
Stairs up to Rooms
Yoga Chapel? Hmmm!
Cabins
“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more”
― Lord Byron
Just a few of the beautiful fruits and flowers blooming all over the hotel grounds at Cristal Ballena Hotel with 2 shots made on the river trip in same area.
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“Almost every person, from childhood, has been touched by the untamed beauty of wildflowers.” ~Lady Bird Johnson
Though butterfly season is past its prime, there were quite a few at the Cristal Ballena Hotel in Uvita last week. Here’s some I was able to capture photos of (many I couldn’t).
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“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
Here are photos of 20 species of birds I photographed around the grounds of Cristal Ballena Hotel, about a third of them just outside my room! It is a good birding hotel! I actually photographed more species here than on the Mangrove Boat Tour! 🙂 And I will record all of them on my eBird page, even though I got no new species this trip – but I did get several better photos of some species which is always another goal! Enjoy and as always CLICK image to enlarge or start a slideshow.
