charliedoggett.net
My profession is to always find God in nature.
– Henry David Thoreau
Here is the link to my notes and report on Phase 9: Contemplative Storytelling.
Using a cardboard “window” to find an image outside or anywhere is an old trick in photography classes, but it gets you focused. I may have shared this vista before, but it was the overwhelming image in this lesson’s activity.
¡Pura Vida!
Not new for me, but the first one this rainy season, Yellow-tipped Flasher (my gallery link) is an interesting Skipper Butterfly found from Argentina to Mexico with it seems an abundance in Costa Rica. 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
On the 29th & 30th of May two unusual moths showed up at my house, one inside and one outside in the garden. The featured photo is one I’ve had before in my garden and seen on a trip to a South Pacific Rainforest. Once called “Giant Butterfly Moth,” it is now called the disgusting name of “Screwworm” – Telchin atymnius (linked to my gallery). It is more beautiful when the wings are open with more white and a big orange patch (see the above linked gallery for that).
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And the other one, seen inside my house on the kitchen floor, was comparatively tiny, identified on iNaturalist as a Packard’s Eusarca Moth – Eusarca packardaria, linked to Wikipedia which says it is in North America, but being in the middle of North & South America, we often get species from both sides. Though I am the first to report one on iNaturalist Costa Rica, so it might get re-labeled as something else, though this was the ID of iNaturalist AI and I think a good match.
¡Pura Vida!
This is my other “non-Rufous-tailed” hummingbird from the one shared yesterday and actually the first species of hummingbird that I photographed just 3 days after moving into this house back in 2015. (Bad photo but good memory!) 🙂 As today’s featured photo shows, it has a rich, deep blue tail that helps it to stand out among other birds. See more of my photos of this special hummingbird in the gallery: Blue-vented Hummingbird. And almost all have been photographed in my garden, though maybe my favorite of this species was photographed at Xandari in 2018! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
That is how many views my blog & website got during the month of May according to the Jetpack program on my site. That is a lot! THANK YOU for reading my blog/website and the related and linked Gallery! It makes my retirement activities seem more important to have that many people looking at my photos! 🙂
This Canivet’s Emerald (my gallery link) is one of the 3 hummingbirds in my garden, with Blue-vented being the other one secondary to the Rufous-tailed who thinks he owns the garden and when I fill the feeders, hogs them and chases off other hummingbirds (the Canivet’s & Blue-vented), but these other two have easier access to my large number of Porter Weeds, officially called Blue Porterweed, Stachytarpheta jamaicensis (Wikipedia link). They are in the verbena family and are the most popular flower here for both hummingbirds and butterflies. And they are not all blue! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Because I give priority to wildlife & travel in my blog posts, there are often not a lot of my garden flowers shown, thus I recently started using the last day of the month to feature photos I took that month of flowers in my garden not yet in the blog. Here are my photos from the month of May in two galleries, one of verticals and one of horizontals, simply because they display better that way. 🙂 Both galleries appear in the online blog after this one image for the emailed version of the blog post . . .
You can go directly to the report at: https://www.charliedoggett.net/about-me/photographer/photography-mindfulness/pause-8-looking-inward-may-29-2026/
I continue to find small amounts of inspiration from this class, but overall, I’m not impressed with most of it. Just not exactly what I expected or the way I would present “Mindfulness,” but an excuse, in today’s case, to use some old photos! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
A wet, young, Tropical Kingbird (gallery link) and lots of wet leaves (gallery link) from my terrace Wednesday afternoon. I still haven’t been able to catch the rain falling unless a real hard downpour, but wet birds and leaves seem to show it okay. 🙂
I finished the 7th class out of the total of 10 yesterday (a day after receiving) with #8 coming Saturday. I’m beginning to like a few more things about this and maybe learning something, though it is just a motivator for me to be more creative in my photography and more “mindful” of my surroundings and record that in the camera. Go to my class notes page at: PAUSE 7. RHYTHM AND MOVEMENT for more about this class. Every class has a YouTube video song and 2 other links that I share. 🙂
One of the assignments was to photograph 3 things twice each with different looks each time. One of mine was this leaf, seen from a distance in the feature photo above and up close in the photo below.
To see my other 4 photos and the interesting class links, go to my notes at:
PAUSE 7. RHYTHM AND MOVEMENT. (linked)
¡Pura Vida!
This tiny butterfly appears at first to be plain beige with dark patches showing through from the top side (they are dark brown patches). But if you look close you can see a faint yellow band along the edge of the forward wing. The only ones I’ve seen have been in my garden and on the nearby Calle Nueva dirt road. See my other shots, including one top view showing those dark brown patches and at least one with a more obvious yellow band! 🙂 All in my gallery: Banded Yellow, Limoncito de Faja, Eurema elathea.
¡Pura Vida!