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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! 🙂
And CLICK an image to enlarge it!
For more Costa Rica Vistas, see that gallery.
¡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!
See also my BIRDS photo gallery.
¡Pura Vida!
Have your days seemed pass slower or be longer and then your weeks and months passing faster? It is an interesting psychological phenomenon you can read about on BBC at this link: Why time seems to be going faster while we are in lockdown
Or if you are one of those weird Americans who prefers to read American publications, try this one in the LA Times: Is time flying by oddly quickly during COVID-19? Here’s why you may feel that way
Now . . . back to the future in Costa Rica! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Walking around my little house is one morning joy I can have any day! As good as up the hill or in a faraway place.
There I feel that nothing can befall me.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
My Flora & Forest Gallery
¡Pura Vida!
So, I’m photographing clouds and not even from an airplane! 🙂 The photo is from my terrace at breakfast like so many! And for more BIG SKY photos, see my gallery: VISTAS, BEACHES, SUNRISES, SUNSETS COSTA RICA
Since Costa Rica is open for local only tourism now (and I’m local!), I thought I would reschedule that April trip to San Gerardo de Dota for the next week or two. I’m ready to go photograph some new birds and without foreigners I’m less likely to encounter the virus! So I may not wait until the July trip, though so far I’m unable to contact the right person at the Savegre Lodge with their website and email down on Friday and the guy I got on the phone was obviously not a reservations employee and had trouble understanding my bad Spanish, so I will try again this week. Like much of the world, a lot of Costa Rica is simply shut down! I’ll just have to enjoy the clouds! 🙂 Maybe I’ll see a bird there!
“If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud formations.“
-Charles M. Schulz
¡Pura Vida!
On this cloudy morning I walk up the hill above my house and back at less than an hour with these colorful photos even without sunshine. Nature is everywhere and my favorite way to celebrate “May Day” or May 1.
May, more than any other month of the year, wants us to feel most alive.
I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.
~Henry David Thoreau
¡Pura Vida!
I got usable photos of 19 species of birds from my little one-hour walk yesterday morning, 6-7 AM, in the neighborhood on Calle Nueva, the little country gravel/dirt road that separates Roca Verde neighborhood from the adjacent farmland. Nineteen is not bad and as good as some longer walks I take when at expensive birding lodges! 🙂 PLUS, if my identifications are correct, I got 3 new species, “lifers,” for me, though I may get corrected by an eBird expert reviewer after I post them on eBird. 🙂 The new ones are Giant Cowbird, Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher and a Yellow-green Vireo.
This road and my own street uphill above my house always yield a lot of birds early in the morning. And I have another neighborhood further away that I intend to try for even different birds, a place my birding friend Margaret found to be good.
“Every bird, every tree, every flower reminds me what a blessing and privilege it is just to be alive.”
―
¡Pura Vida!
“There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”
― A Hat Full of Sky
¡Pura Vida!
“Breakfast Sunrise”
Feature Photo by Charlie Doggett
The Featured Photo is a shot from my terrace at breakfast this morning looking toward our mountain village of Atenas. I live in a peaceful place, appropriately called tranquilo in Spanish by the people here. 🙂
-o-
WALKING: 36 km, 9 hours
BY VEHICLES: 351 km, 13 hours (Around town by taxi, several Alajuela trips by bus and the longest trip was to Heredia, north of San Jose. The walking was an almost daily walk to town plus 3 local birding walks with a Canadian friend.)
And they reminded me that my most distant destination for February was Heredia from which came my photo below. Should I be worried that Google knows so much about me? 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Retired in Costa Rica
See Charlie Doggett’s COSTA RICA Photo Gallery.
Glad to get back to nature posts after all the other stuff I’ve been posting the last week! And the featured photo above is a Passion Flower growing on a neighbor’s wall along the street uphill above my house.
In my Roca Verde neighborhood, and most neighborhoods across Costa Rica, we have “Snow Birds” or “winter residents” who come to visit or live here during the very cold months up north (Dec-Apr). One of those couples I met for the first time last year always stay in Roca Verde, just a few doors up the hill from me – she is a birder and he a relaxer. 🙂 They are from British Columbia, Canada.
Yesterday she showed me all birds she had photographed in Atenas in just one week, most right here in our neighborhood! Thus I was shamed into birding more in my own neighborhood and later some other places in Atenas – but it means getting up at 5:30 in the morning which I have not been doing much here. Mixed emotions!
This morning I spent just one hour, mostly between 6 & 7 and saw about 20 species of birds, photographing about 15 of them! ALL WITHIN 300 METERS OF MY HOUSE! For you Americans, that’s just 3 blocks, and all along the street in front of my house, up the hill. Of course I ran into Margaret who get out every morning early for birds and we birded together much of the time. I will not do it every day like her, but hopefully more often now!
By 7 there are not a lot of birds to see. It is the magical hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset that give the most birds! (Same thing on my trips!) And some of these birds from today have not come to my house or I haven’t seen them in my garden yet. CLICK AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT . . .
I like where I live! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!