Category: Photography

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Rainy Season Green!

A ground-level shot of the cow pasture across the street from my house where the grass stays taller and VERY GREEN during our rainy season, May to November.

Cow Pasture adjacent to Residencial Roca Verde, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica. In front of my house! 🙂

See my photo gallery Cow Pasture Across the Street.

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And read in yesterday’s Tico Times English Language Paper the cool article on: Eco-Friendly Lifeguard Stations Coming to Costa Rica’s Beaches. In brief they are picking up the millions of plastic bottles left by idiots on our beaches, converting them into a wood substitute and forming substitute lumber with which they will build these cool Lifeguard stations for beaches all over Costa Rica! This is a great solution for both increased pollution and decreased forests! 🙂

Tico Times photo of recycled plastic Lifeguard Station

Or check out this COSTA RICA CAMERA TRAP OCELOT:

¡Pura Vida!

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New Species of Butterfly!

Back on July 21 when I took Linda & Carlos Cobos to the Butterfly Conservatory, I was busy relating to them and did not photograph as many butterflies as usual there, but I did get 12 species! And best of all, one of those was a new species for me and my collection! it was the Consul fabius or Tiger-striped Leafwing. That common name is because when his wings are open, instead of folded as here, the top of his wings are black and orange striped like a lot of “tiger” butterflies but with different shaped wings that when closed look like a dead leaf for protection from predators! Only this one never opened his wings for me and we had to keep moving through the greenhouses. Maybe people look like predators to him! 🙂 But, regardless, I got my first photos of a Tiger-striped Leafwing! It is always fun to see something for the first time! 🙂

Tiger-striped Leafwing, Consul fabius, Butterfly Conservatory, El Castillo, Arenal Alajuela, Costa Rica

See all of my Costa Rica Butterflies GALLERIES!

246+ species!

¡Pura Vida!

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Green Plant has Tiny Flowers

I can’t find this in any of my tropical plants books or online, so I think is a foreign introduced plant and will try to get my gardner’s ID next time he is here. Most of of the time it is a dark green plant with white or cream bordered long leaves. Then occasionally it sprouts these long thin stems with tiny little yellow buds that finally open into a tiny white flower with a tinge of blue or purple and yellow stamens. These 5 photos are in order to tell the story of 1-green plant, 2-sprouting long stems with tiny flower and photos 3-5 gradually zooming in on the flowers.

Often it is just a green plant like this.
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Baby Green Basilisk . . .

. . . which is not an exact match to any of the online baby iguanas or baby basilisks, thus I’m not positive it is the correct ID. During a morning garden walk he was crawling through the ground cover plants, partly hidden. I’m always frustrated when I can’t make an exact identification, but that is the way nature is! 🙂 Here’s two shots and you decide . . .

Baby/Juvenile Green Basilisk, Atenas, Costa Rica
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Gray-capped Flycatcher

Another one of those “former” birds that seem to be returning to my garden these days. I think the rainy season helps and there may be other factors. This one is not as common here as the Social Flycatcher and Great Kiskadee, but is fairly common. Here’s two shots from my garden:

Gray-capped Flycatcher, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Gray-capped Flycatcher, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

See also my Gray-capped Flycatcher GALLERY and note that the Tropical Kingbird is similar but larger than this bird with slightly different coloring.

¡Pura Vida!

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Thank you! – ¡Muchas gracias!

My WordPress host, DreamHost, and a service company, Jetpack, just released the July stats for my blog “Retired in Costa Rica” and its related website, charliedoggett.net. And I say “THANK YOU” to the 501 subscribers of the blog, 650 FaceBook Friends who receive a link and hopefully follow it, 🙂 the 2 thousand views of my website/blog in July, the 95 comments on blog posts and the 158 “Likes” in July, which can only be made by other WP Bloggers, making those likes special! 🙂 I am fulfilling my dream of retirement with nature in Costa Rica that began with the adventurous move here in 2014 and the start of this blog. Thanks for coming along! 🙂

My site header pix of the valley town where I live, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
The feature photo at top is of Arenal Volcano.

I’m an old man of 83 years, retired from a publishing business in the U.S. who left the states in 2014 to live out retirement with the beautiful natural worlds of Costa Rica and its loving people, reporting in this blog. Even after a year-long battle with cancer, I’m having the best times of my life, my final years immersed in nature! I hope you will continue following my stories and photos! Your presence delights me! 🙂

That’s me planting an Almond Tree for the Great Green Macaws in the Maquenque Reserve, Boca Tapada, San Carlos in 2023.

¡Pura Vida!

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Gracefulness in Nature

This Heliconia Leaf seems to me to be gracefully bowing its head as the first signs of deterioration begin it’s final days with only a little touch of brown now and the folding of the once tall and straight green leaf. Nature as Art continues to inspire me as I find my own life slowing down and less capable than before. May I conclude my life as gracefully as this Heliconia Leaf! 🙂

Nature as Art

¡Pura Vida!

See another Heliconia Leaf in a further stage of death that I used on the cover of a recent photo book titled Designed by Nature which you can preview for free online. Nature is truly graceful!

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Wren in Garden

Several wrens have been checking out my severely pruned Triquitraque Vines or Flame Vines that I asked the gardeners to cut back and they cut way back! 🙂 Plus all the ground cover around them! Oh well – it will grow back and the vines are already sprouting new growth. But I think it is the open soil and not the sprouts that attract these Rufous-naped Wrens, probably looking for worm or insect food! 🙂 It has always been one of my common or regular birds year around and, though decreased recently, they seem to be returning in greater numbers now. Here’s 4 shots of these birds in their dapper plaid sport jacket! 🙂

Rufous-naped Wren, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
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New Children’s Playground

The new Central Park Playground has been finished and open for maybe two months and I’m just slow reporting on it. At first I reacted negatively to all the bright colors and what looks like cheap Chinese Plastic, but I think I mis interpreted! It is designed for younger Elementary School and Preschool kids and now I think it is perfect for them! And the artificial turf too! The other day I stopped by one afternoon after many kids would be out of school and it wasn’t raining and there was a lot of activity! It was fun for me to see the creativity of some kids using the space under the tree house or slide and climbing wall to gather as in their “clubhouse.” The hyper little boys had plenty to keep them busy and I noticed for older elementary kids maybe, there was a tic-tac-toe wall with changeable X’s and O’s. Clever! And as expected, the swings were the busiest. I tried not to get any closeup photos of children and their faces for their privacy, staying on the periphery for all photos. Here’s four . . .

New Children’s Playground, Central Park Atenas
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