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The wildlife refuge was Wednesday and the best report on that is my Gandoca-Manzanillo GALLERY. And as a sample, here’s one bird, one butterfly and one “other” wildlife pix! 🙂 PLUS one shot of the cloud covered sunrise this morning. At 8 am today I’m going to Cahuita National Park with a report on that later and tomorrow (Saturday) will be my last day for nature around the hotel which will be reported on even later. A good week! Here’s 4 sample shots from Gandoca and one of sunrise today.
I got similar shots yesterday and this morning with the sun completely hidden behind clouds, but as always, it is still beautiful and no two sunrises are alike! 🙂 Here’s 4 shots from this morning while having my early coffee on the beach! 🙂
This Zebra-striped Hairstreak, Panthiades bathildis, is the third new species I photographed yesterday on the beach road behind Hotel Banana Azul in Puerto Viejo, Limón. It looks similar to another species I also got this year and last year called Togarna Hairstreak, Arawacus togarna (linked to my gallery where you can see the differences in the stripes and the orange trim on the two species). My two shots of this new species below are of the only one I saw.
¡Pura Vida!
NOTE: This is the 3rd and last of the three new species I photographed yesterday on the beach road behind the hotel. This morning an excellent new local guide named Henis took me birding in Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge at 5:30 am, where I got at least one new species of birds and at least two new species of butterflies. And thus I’m beginning to get way behind on reporting from the South Caribbean of Costa Rica – but will eventually catch up! 🙂 This afternoon (Wed) and tomorrow I will continue my nature photo collections at Banana Azul, then on Friday Henis is taking me to Cahuita National Park for more wildlife photography, though they don’t open until 8 am! It’s turning out to be a great week here in the South Caribbean while many of my friends back in Atenas are getting the new ARTenas Gallería ready to open on October 4! A lot is happening in pura vida Costa Rica! 🙂
Another new species for me and if approved will be a new species for the website I volunteer with, butterflies and moths dot org. I’m requesting the addition and I’m pretty certain of the ID based first on the Jeffrey Glassberg book and then iNaturalist website. Note that I have indicated male and female in my photos, since I managed to photograph both and there is a difference! 🙂 Here’s one shot for the email version and then all four shots below that in a little gallery . . .
The Cabbage White is a common butterfly over most of the United States, but this is my first time to see one here in Costa Rica. The first shot of four here is not as good a photo but it solidifies the identification with that lone black spot on the upper wing and also makes it a male, since the females have two black spots! 🙂
The sunrise was not spectacular my first morning, but this guy in a canoe made an interesting subject. 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
🙂
And you can take that literally since the Limón Landing Strip in on the Caribbean Beach just south of the provincial capital of Limón with a 25 to 30 minute drive to my Hotel Banana Azul in Puerto Viejo where the owner comes down and welcomes me again! 🙂 Here’s 6 arrival afternoon general shots. Though I’ve started photographing birds & butterflies, I’m saving those for later posts.
Today begins what has become almost an annual tradition of spending a week in the Southern Caribbean of Costa Rica, during September when this rainy rainforest has the least amount of rain. After trying a few other hotels, I’ve settled on Banana Azul as my favorite and it is right on the beach (one of the few!) in a favorite room with balcony overlooking the beach and hotel gardens. It is one of my most relaxing weeks of the year! This Puerto Viejo area is south, near the Panama Border and quite different from my other Caribe fave which is north of the port of Limón and in a great wetlands wildlife national park called Tortuguero.
I have just two morning bird hikes scheduled, one in the Cahuita National Park and the other in Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge. Otherwise I just “hangout” at the hotel and beach, walking both the beach and a forested beach road where last year I found a bonanza of butterflies! 🙂
Read on for some of my past creative endeavors from the South Caribbean of Costa Rica . . .
Continue reading “Flying to the Caribe Today!”
This past Friday was the 15th of September, Independence Day for Costa Rica, when in 1821 it shed the colonial rule of Spain. In this small but very significant little developing country, patriotism is big and almost everyone wears red, white & blue and many decorate their houses with banners and flags. I wore my national futbol (soccer) shirt, red, white & blue! 🙂
And almost every town of any size has a parade, usually featuring their local schools, and Atenas is no exception! 🙂 I have for several years now been photographing it most years (when not traveling) with galleries for those years included in my super-gallery: PEOPLE, FIESTAS & ARTS Costa Rica. Which of course now includes a gallery for this year’s 2023 Desfile del Día de la Independencia, Atenas. And here is a sample photo from each of the 7 sub-galleries in this year’s parade gallery . . .
The other morning I had about four species of birds feeding on the flowers of my Cecropia or Guarumo Tree and one of them was a new species for me! A White-winged Becard, Pachyramphus polychopterus (linked to eBird). He is smaller than the Rose-throated Becard I’ve seen several of here and like that one is less colorful as a male. In this species the female is a golden orange or tan and more colorful than this male photographed here. Here’s three shots including one of him eating a caterpillar:
