Category: Weather

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1st 24 Hours of Birds

My birding hikes are not until tomorrow, so these 20 species I got on my own and wanted to get them out before what I hope will be some new or different birds with Guide Nestor whom I’ve had on both of my previous trips here. He is good! They always ask if you have any target birds for the hike and I will tell him the same thing I did last year, “Yes, the Umbrella Bird and the Yellow-eared Toucanet.” These are both fairly rare birds and difficult to find in the thick forest and I want to add them to my collection. 🙂 But I won’t get my hopes up!

I just hope we don’t have rain tomorrow morning like we have had most of today. Here we are on the Caribbean Slope which tends to have more rain than the Pacific slope where I live. But it is still the beginning of the dry season here with less rain than they’ve had the last 6 months. We will bird from 6-8 AM, have breakfast, then the rest of the morning. So I’m hopeful with a half day with a birding guide I will get lots of birds!

Now a slide show of the last 24 hours of birds on my own with two shots of Scarlet-rumped Tanager because the male and female are totally different and two of the Brown Jay with one flying and the other perched; 22 shots of 20 species including my “lifer” I introduced yesterday:

  • Turkey Vulture
  • Great Curassow Male
  • Green Honeycreeper Female
  • Palm Tanager
  • Golden Hooded Tanager
  • Montezuma Oropendola
  • Clay-colored Thrush – Yigüirro
  • Red-billed Pigeon
  • Crested Guan
  • Silver-throated Tanager
  • Bananaquit
  • Baltimore Oriole Female
  • Blue-gray Tanager
  • Yellow-throated Euphonia, Female
  • Brown Jay
  • Brown Jay
  • Collared Aracari
  • Buff-throated Saltator
  • Tropical Kiingbird
  • Emerald Tanager
  • Scarlet-rumped Tanager Male
  • Scarlet-rumped Tanager Female

See my Costa Rica Birds Gallery.

“The bird who dares to fall is the bird who learns to fly.”

¡Pura Vida!

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Winter Solstice Tomorrow?

Costa Rica is technically in the northern hemisphere, though only about 13° above the equator, so I guess we could call it “Winter Solstice” like the rest of the northern hemisphere. But it actually ends what Costa Rica calls “Winter” or our “Rainy Season” (May-Nov) with already 2 or 3 weeks of no rain in Atenas now. So our “Summer” has begun which means no more rain until next May, with a few rare exceptions. And until March the wind blows more. (More on the wind in another post later.)

Since most northerners don’t like rain on their vacations, it also begins the high tourist season (in normal years) 🙂 with no rain and slightly warmer weather Dec-April (but only by a couple of degrees). For example, in Atenas the average temperature in Fahrenheit is the mid-70’s year-around (winter & summer). No one here has or needs heaters or air-conditioners except some coastal or beach houses/hotels that have air-conditioning because it is hotter and more humid along both coasts. One of several reasons I don’t live on the beach.

Now . . . Will tomorrow really be our shortest day and longest night? like Canada & the U.S.? Technically yes, but because or our proximity to the equator, our total daylight variance over a whole year (December to June solstices) is only 30 minutes difference, meaning that in most places all over Costa Rica it gets dark sometime between 5 & 6 PM every evening and the sun rises between 5 & 6 every morning, year-around. 🙂 Thus we hardly notice winter solstice here. Pura vida! 🙂 And oh yes, the featured photo is one of my sunrise photos from the Caribbean or Atlantic Coast at Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo.

“There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”

~John Ruskin

¡Pura vida!

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“The Robin” of Costa Rica

Yigüirro or Clay-colored Thrush (eBird link) in English (at one time called “Clay-colored Robin”) is one of the most common birds in Costa Rica, found everywhere, and is also the National Bird, not because of his/her beauty or color (we have so many more colorful), but because he/she sings so beautifully in late April and early May before the rainy season begins. Tradition is that the Yigüirro sings in the rain every year and thus is loved by farmers and gardeners alike and became the national bird.

This weak photo is of a juvenile or young adult made on that cloudy overcast day. They vary in color from this rich dark brown to a lighter brown with a lighter colored breast, sort of creamy white and more rarely a touch of yellow, but always that same beak! I’m calling it “The Robin of Costa Rica” BECAUSE it is as common here as the American Robin (my gallery) was during my days in the States. 🙂

The top link is to an eBird article on them or you can see many better photos in my Clay-colored Thrush – Yigüirro Gallery. Happy birding! 🙂

 “Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird?”

— Nature historian David Attenborough

Why plant trees?

¡Pura Vida!

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The Overcast Between Rains

This photo was made yesterday morning when for awhile the Hurricane Iota rains had stopped but the skies still overcast. The last hurricane (Eta) gave us 4 days of non-stop rain, so at least this one has given us a break in the rain, even if overcast! 🙂 And I even got to walk to town without opening my umbrella! 🙂 Tomorrow I will show these same hills in the sunshine from last Sunday’s walk.

Post Script: As of this morning, still very little rain compared to the identical sized hurricane on the same path, thus we are not getting as much rain from Iota as we did Eta. No two the same! 🙂

“Gray and overcast from my earthly perspective, but it’s sunny above these storm clouds. Grace lets us see life from God’s point of view.” ~Mark Hart

¡Pura Vida!

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Celebrating in Costa Rica!

  1. Hurricane Eta Rains are gone and we have blue skies!
  2. JOE BIDEN IS PRESIDENT ELECT of the USA!
  3. And Trump is gone!

The featured photo is looking towards my house from my street along side the cow pasture. The visible house on the left is my neighbor across the driveway from my house which is hidden in the clump of trees behind that street light. I like being in the woods! 🙂

The “Big House” is barely showing on top of our hill which our landlord has rented out since he now lives on the beach north of Jaco. And that’s today in my neighborhood! 🙂

“Love thy neighbor — but don’t pull down your hedge.”

~Benjamin Franklin

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¡Pura Vida!

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Wet

Rain, wet
Tropical green
Sunshine

And hopefully the last day of round-the-clock rain as Eta moves on toward Florida. At breakfast on the terrace this morning, the rain had stopped but all was wet and I tried to capture a little sense of the wetness. After breakfast the sun started peaking out and you can see a little of it reflecting off the wetness in the pix. It is the first sun in many days and a pleasant relief! Maybe today will be a more normal “rainy season” day with rain only in the afternoon or early evening. Then before we know it, December will be here with the rain stopped for months and soon after we will be wishing for the rainy season to start again! 🙂 Fickle humans! 🙂 While the cycles of life continue in a now very green Costa Rica! ¡Pura Vida! 🙂

Featured photo is a rain wet Princess Flower in my garden by Charlie and Haiku Poem is also by Charlie. Slide show is of the wetness observed on my terrace this morning at breakfast, just one more beautiful aspect of nature!

Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.     

~Bob Marley

¡Pura Vida!

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Effects of Eta Rain on Costa Rica

HURRICANE ETA

For 4 days and nights it has been raining almost constantly in my Central Valley town of Atenas, while some lowland areas that typically flood or have landslides are being effected much more than we and our just wetness.

For example, see this related Tico Times article: Indirect effects of Eta lead to at least 500 evacuated in Costa Rica   (my feature photo by Tico Times from this article)

Most of us in Costa Rica are fine with no landfall of Hurricane Eta here, it has made landfall in Nicaragua and Honduras and I understand will just scrape Guatemala and Mexico as it heads for Western Florida and Alabama.

And the rain just makes us greener and more beautiful for when you tourists come here in the next few months!  🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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Night Hike in Rain

It was raining every night at El Silencio Lodge, so waiting would not have helped! 🙂 But I enjoy night hikes that are provided in most Costa Rica wilderness lodges and you do see thing not normally seen in the day time. We saw less on this one because of the rain and that also made photography with only a cell phone not super good, but here’s 6 shots that are samples of even more we would have seen if not raining. Daniel was my guide on this hike and he included two miradors (vistas) which were interesting at night and sorry I did not try to photograph the views, though again the rain made it more difficult with less moonlight and no stars. CLICK image to enlarge . . .

  • Cloud Forest Anole
  • Tiny Frog Unidentified
  • Cloud Forest Anole
  • Strange Insect Unidentified
  • Red-Knee Tarantula
  • “Letter Tree”

“Between every two pines there is a doorway to a new world.” ~John Muir

¡Pura Vida!

You might also like my Amphibians Gallery, most of which were photographed on Night Hikes all over Costa Rica! 🙂

Or see THIS TRIP GALLERY: 2020 El Silencio Lodge & Reserve.

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El Silencio

Walter drove me over the mountains in the rain and we arrived in the rain. To explain the “over the mountains” bit – Atenas is in a valley with hills and so is the village of Bajos del Toro and El Silencio Lodge. Between us is a row of mountain, the continental divide. Atenas is on the “Pacific Slope” and Bajos del Toro is on the Caribbean (or Atlantic) Slope. You know, all the rivers have to go into one ocean or the other! 🙂

And from one rural area to another means very narrow roads, and very winding over the mountains with lots of what we called “hairpin curves” in Arkansas or switchbacks. I am so glad I use a driver now! I would have been a nervous wreck (or dead) driving over those narrow mountain roads. BUT it is so beautiful in the mountains around here and that’s why some people have called Costa Rica “The Little Switzerland of the Americas.”

I chose Mon-Fri because local working people go to these places on the weekends when they are off from work and thus they are less crowded on weekdays. But I forgot that the government offices and most businesses celebrate nearly all holidays on Monday now. Our Independence Day is 15 September (tomorrow) and they celebrated it this year on Monday (Today!) and with no parades allowed, many people went to the beach or a lodge like this for the long weekend. So a lot of people still here today from San Jose but nearly everyone leaves tomorrow I was told. So it will be the more typical half empty COVID-era resort! 🙂

Though it rained off and on all afternoon and still raining this evening, I hiked around a little and took a lot more photos than these samples of my arrival here. The restaurant is excellent with gourmet food (and prices) that I enjoyed with a grilled rainbow trout tonight that was raised right here in their own trout ponds. I got back to my room with my bed covers turned down and two little chocolates to make me smile. Another great day! 🙂

  • Many Mountain Streams
  • My Villa’s Jacuzzi
  • My Front Porch
  • My Villa #4
  • Main Building & Restaurant
Before dinner, I soaked in that Jacuzzi! Wow! Love it!

El Silencio Lodge Website

Or see THIS TRIP GALLERY: 2020 El Silencio Lodge & Reserve.

¡Pura Vida!

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Morning Fog

A fog — Covering — My hills

In nature, everything has a job. The job of the fog is to beautify further the existing beauties! ~Mehmet Murat Ildan

These photos were made on an early morning walk yesterday above my house looking for birds but finding a different beauty. I leave at noon today for Bajos del Toro, checking in at about 1:30 this afternoon. I hope for another post this evening and at least one a day from there this week.

See my Vistas Galleries

¡Pura Viida!