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are starting to land in my Higueron Tree more often now (always chattering) but this time were hiding from me behind the limbs and leaves. Here’s a couple of poor efforts to capture a photo of one of these turkey-like wild birds. See more in my Gray-headed Chachalaca Gallery.
It has been a while, yet this bird is one of the regulars in my garden, though I’ve had to go other places to see and photograph the male, who is strikingly solid red! See my collection of Summer Tangers Gallery. Or you can read about them on eBird. They are found everywhere from southern Canada to northern South America.
Two more photos . . .
Continue reading “Summer Tanager Female”
It is definitely one of my favorite trees in Costa Rica, if for no other reason, an opportunity to photograph their beautiful leaves, both dead and alive as in this photo. They attract many birds from the tiny Euphonias to the Toucans and their openness makes them great “galleries” for photographing birds and sloths! Some of my best bird photos were made in the Guarumo or Cecropia Tree that I planted in my yard the first year here, 2015.
I have them pictured in several popular photo galleries:
Here’s one shot I made the other day from my terrace . . .
¡Pura Vida!
“There’s something magical about rooftops. You feel like you’re in ‘Mary Poppins.'”
~George Clarke
ROOFTOPS through my Higueron (Strangler Fig) Tree . . .
From my terrace the Oró Tree across the street is hidden by my big Higueron Tree (Strangler Fig or Ficus) but when the light is right, I can see glimpses of the orange flowers through the foliage. There is another one up the hill above me that I’ve shown here before, seen more from a distance. Historically, these trees were planted on coffee farms to provide partial shade to grow better coffee beans. They flower between December and April all over Costa Rica, sprinkling the hills and forests with their bright red-orange flowers. See Google Search Photos. :-)
The full name of this one is Gray-headed Chachalaca (Ortalis cinereiceps) with the only other one named “Plain Chachalaca” and it’s found only in Guanacaste (dryer NW Costa Rica). This one is a regular “chicken-sized” bird living in my neighborhood, though like other birds, I’ve been seeing fewer for a while. They always come in groups or families and “chatter” a lot, thus Ticos sometimes jokingly call a person who talks a lot “a Chachalaca!” :-)
Here’s three shots of them moving between my trees and you can see more photos in my Gray-headed Chachalaca GALLERY. I see them in many parts of Costa Rica and they are indigenous to Central America.
NOTE: This is an old “Draft” blog post from December 2022 that I just found and since I like it and I’m cleaning up old files, I’m posting it quite late with more current reports coming! :-)
¡Pura Vida!
See my Flora & Forest Costa Rica GALLERY
This duck was one of several flying into the trees and roosting on tree limbs which I was not aware that they did. I’m still processing photos from the Chucás Hydroelectric Dam trip the other day – so this is just a sample of what I will share later! :-)
¡Pura Vida!
Yesterday was the last morning birding hike with my friend from British Columbia and Walter took us to a new nature reserve for me, Reserva Madre Verde near Palmares which is north of Atenas, a 30 minute drive through beautiful mountains (or maybe hills). :-)
Our two hour hike up & down a hill had a 300 meter rise in altitude was good for us 80-somethings! We heard lots of birds but in a fairly thick forest we did not see as many as the other two birding hikes. I got photos of only 3 birds – BUT – I’m still happy because I got photos of 9 different species of butterflies, which took me all afternoon to identify and process the photos AND I got 3 new species for me! :-) So a very good 2-hour hike! Below is a gallery with one shot of each of the 9 butterflies after this one shot for the email version of post . . .
Taking someone else birding gets me into new locations sometimes and yesterday was my first visit to the very nearby dam on Tarcoles River named officially “Hidroeléctrico Chucás” which was under construction when I moved here. In addition to the expected water birds, the trees around the dam were just full of many small birds and a few larger ones. I got photos of more than 20 species and we heard a Scarlet Macaw, though we did not see him. Well, we heard a lot we did not see. :-) But I’ve always said we are too far from the coast for Macaws, but evidently not! It was a good birding walk before breakfast at Crema y Nata! It may be awhile before I get all those photos processed, but at least I did not erase or lose any this time! :-) Today is the last birding walk which will be at Reserva Madre Verde in Palmares, another new location for me which my neighbors Neal & Judy told me about. A report sometime in the future.
¡Pura Vida!