Category: Wildlife

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Back Home with Butterflies

I’ve been back from Villa Caletas for a couple of days and my most obvious wildlife observation has been the butterflies, some repeats here from earlier posts but the Yellow-rimmed Skipper is a new one for my gallery and blog. There are soooo many different skippers!   🙂

Remember to CLICK an image to see it enlarged plus see the link to my butterfly gallery below the images.

4 Butterflies Today

 

See my growing Butterfly Gallery! Bueno!  🙂

 

For friends in Costa Rica, I have found that the best book for identifying butterflies (though still not 100%) is A Swift Guide to the Butterflies of Mexico and Central America by Jeffrey Glassberg. I’ve been using the first edition but just ordered the Second Edition which is improved and for those who prefer electronics, it is available in a Kindle Edition. I’m still a little partial to paper wildlife guides, though I do use Merlin on my phone for birds!

For just Costa Rica Butterflies there is a little less extensive book by Carrol Henderson titled Butterflies, Moths, and Other Invertebrates of Costa Rica which is also available in an electronic  Kindle Edition. It is good for the most common butterflies & moths here and okay for maybe most people, but I like having many more butterflies to choose from in the Swift Guide, though I actually use both books. Because it is also more work digging through more choices!   🙂

See all my photos from this trip at 2019 Villa Caletas, Jaco Photo Gallery.

¡Pura Vida!

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Villa Caletas Photo Gallery

I just uploaded the last photo I’ve chosen to share from a very photogenic resort! I’m pleased with a lot of the photos and you can see them in the gallery at:

https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2019-July-28-31-Villa-Caletas-Jaco

Or it may be more fun   🙂   to click the image of the first page:

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Click above image to see the gallery.

Villa Caletas Website

¡Pura Vida!

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Wednesday at Villa Caletas

Slowing down a little – here’s my shots from the last full day at Villa Caletas and a very relaxed 4 days. The featured image is of a hotel worker walking up the street in front of my room towards the Zephyr Palace.

Butterflies

The prettiest things here along with the vistas . . .

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See all my butterflies in my Costa Rica Butterflies  Photo Gallery!

 

Flowers

No gardens, just pots and plantings around buildings.

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Birds

Such as there were today . . .

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This is not the very best birding place even though you do see toucans and macaws. The concierge never worked out my two requested birding hikes because no others here wanted them and they don’t do for one person. No problem! I’ve already been to Carara NP 4 times and Rio Tarcoles about 8 times! Hanging out here was more relaxing and it was a good time on the mountaintop!

Wednesday Sunset

CLICK image to enlarge.

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All shot from my room before dinner.

 

“Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.”

– Leo Tolstoy

🙂

¡Pura Vida!

My favorite butterfly shot – a Dina Yellow.

 

See all photos from this trip at 2019 Villa Caletas, Jaco Photo Gallery.

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Tuesday Birds

The little trip to the beach gave me some different birds than the many toucans & macaws around the hotel, plus I saw a new type of Euphonia today in a tree off my room terrace, just not a good photo, but a “lifer” for me! (First time to see that species.) Only 6 birds but interesting ones:

Tuesday Birds

CLICK image to enlarge.

 

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

~Rabindranath Tagore

¡Pura Vida!

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Colorful Creatures

Well . . . my goal for today was to photograph a toucan and a macaw. Goal accomplished! Plus some other colorful creatures before, during an after breakfast, with several butterflies included and a most interesting blue-winged insect on my breakfast table! Remember, nearly all restaurants in Costa Rica are alfresco! Enjoy my photos from Villa Caletas today.

Colorful Creatures at Jaco

CLICK image to enlarge

 

Color is like the finishing touch on everything.”

~Marc Jacobs

See all my butterflies in my Costa Rica Butterflies  Photo Gallery!

Or all photos from this trip at 2019 Villa Caletas, Jaco Photo Gallery

 

¡Pura Vida!

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Guarumo Bird Gallery

“Guarumo” is the Spanish name Ticos call a Cecropia Tree (English name) and about 4 years ago I asked my gardeners to plant one in my front yard because I had heard that they attract toucans for the easy perches and the food of the flowers. I would be patient, not really knowing how fast they grow!

In just 4 years it is the tallest tree in my yard, more than twice the height of my little house and my favorite “Bird Gallery” or place for birds to land so I can photograph them because it is such an open tree with a limited number of large leaves. See in the tree photos below what it looked like when we planted it and how big it has grown.

No telling how many birds I miss that land in the top of the tree!   🙂    But the lower limbs are what I watch while eating breakfast every morning and where I photographed from my terrace the birds in the birds photos below, including two kinds of toucans! I love nature’s gallery of birds that helps me grow my own photo gallery of birds!   ¡Pura Vida!

Birds in Tree

CLICK photo to enlarge or start manual slideshow.

The Tree

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“Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish.” 

― Munia Khan 

¡Pura Vida!

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Garden Visitors

This morning a quick walk through my garden gave me photos of these four butterflies plus I kept seeing a bright yellow one (probably one of the Sulphurs) who would never slow down enough for a photo. But here’s the four I got (CLICK to see larger):

 

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.

~R. Buckminster Fuller

 

See all my butterflies in my Costa Rica Butterflies  Photo Gallery!

 

¡Pura Vida!

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Another Witch Visits!

Yeah, I have these Black Witch Moths visit my house almost every year and you can see at least 4 others in my Butterfly & Moth Gallery, found alphabetically as “Black Witch Moth.” And I obviously don’t believe the Latin Folklore that the appearance of one means death is coming to that house soon.

This one was on my bathroom wall at the ceiling last night and gone by this morning. To the naked eye it is very dark as this photo on my Canon SLR without a flash shows (only bathroom ceiling light on in the night). In February I shot one on my brown shower curtain with my cell phone and flash and if you go to that link you will see how much more colorful they are with more light or in the gallery there is also one with the Canon using the flash. Big difference! As light always brings!

As one visitor to my house said “I always see something scurrying away when I turn on the light during the night.” Well, living with strange wildlife is not for everyone, but I find it quite interesting and kind of fun when one is named a “Witch!”    🙂    Why, it even calls for a Halloween Cartoon I think:

Witch-Quiditch Cartoon

🙂

¡Pura Vida!

 

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Brilliant! The Book

Because it was a special week, I’m doing a second book on Xandari where I celebrated my birthday last week. It was such a colorful week, I titled it “Brilliant!” Follow the link to a free online preview of the book showing 82 of my photos. Or click this smaller image of the book cover below:

Brilliant Book cover
Click cover to Preview the book online.

Also see the 2019 Trip Gallery for this week. 

Or the older 2018 Xandari Trip Gallery

And my photo book for that year’s visit titled Xandari Enchanted by Nature

A truly amazing place!

Xandari Nature Resort

¡Pura Vida!

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Nature is . . .

Nature is what we see – the hill, the afternoon, squirrel, eclipse, the bumblebee. Nay, nature is heaven. Nature is what we hear…

~Emily Dickinson

Above is this morning’s photo of a Variegated Squirrel at  Xandari Nature Resort (link to their website) or see my photos of last year’s visit here.

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¡Pura Vida!