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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!
I left about 5:30 this morning for a walk to help me shape up for the coming week of hikes and to maybe get some birds on the hill above my house, always hoping for a “lifer” or first time bird. It was cool and very foggy and so I wrote my first blog post on the fog which I’ve already scheduled for tomorrow morning.
THEN I went through my bird photos and found that I did indeed get a “lifer” this morning, even if not a good photo. It is the featured photo, a Cabanis’s Wren (eBird article link) in bad light and too far away with lots of limbs and leaves, but I got it! 🙂 Another new bird in my gallery and that now makes 5 different wrens and a total of 344 identified birds in Costa Rica plus a few unidentified ones. So a nice surprise this morning in my neighborhood. All the other birds today are fairly common, except maybe the Yellow-faced Grassquit which I have photographed in two other places (better photos) plus one juvenile here earlier.
¡Pura Vida!
My Central America Butterfly book has 119 pages of Skippers, some barely differentiated by the size or shape of a dot or dash on the wing, meaning that I am seldom 100% sure of my identifications and I have a whole folder of photos labeled unidentified skippers and another of unidentified other butterflies, but this is the closest match in the book and online plus I’ve photographed him before in my garden and given this same ID, so I will stick with it or be consistent! 🙂 See all my butterfly photos in CR Butterflies Gallery OR more of my photos of this Chisos Banded Skipper.
This is my last post from home before going to Bajos del Toro (Reviews of town and area on Go Visit CR site, My Tan Feet an expat couple’s folksy site and travel site Anywhere Costa Rica) & where I stay at El Silencio Lodge tomorrow, when/where I hope to post something from there tomorrow night and at least once a day during this week. The nature adventures continue! 🙂
In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful. –Alice Walker
¡Pura Vida!
My morning walk to town Wednesday, like all walks, rejuvenated me. Peaceful!
See also my gallery VISTAS, BEACHES, SUNRISES, SUNSETS CR
“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
¡Pura Vida!
Blooms, smiles – Greeting me – Happy!
¡Pura Vida!
See photo gallery More of My Garden or . . .
The Flora & Forest – more Costa Rica flowers
Mountains – Mist, fog, cloud – Shrouding
The Giant White and Banded Peacock were seen on my last walk.
¡Pura Vida!
I do not know a single person here in Costa Rica who has or has had the Coronavirus or died of it, but I keep seeing death of small businesses. The featured photo is of small shops closed in Alajuela on my trip there today. Typical of all over the country.
And this week I sadly report the permanent closing of one of my two favorite 
restaurants, Poco Loco (“A Little Crazy” in Spanish). He seldom had big crowds, but steady customers until the pandemic came and now there simply is not enough business (even with home delivery & “take-out” orders) to pay the expenses and he has permanently closed much to my dismay.
It was my favorite place for soup and salad (fabulous!) or almost any kind of sandwich as the best in town and he made the best Sangria in Atenas! But no more. Poco Loco is gone due people being afraid to get out of their houses now. My other favorite, Parillada Androvetto (my Friday night steak place), is still hanging on but just barely with one brother supplementing their income driving a taxi. Likewise an old favorite, Donde Bocha, is hanging on and I ate there yesterday. It’s hard for a lot of people right now. But they all keep their spirits high here and continue to say . . .
¡Pura Vida!
“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
Yeah, that’s the Spanish name which I like better than the English name of Torch Ginger – but by either name this morning I noticed that one plant off my terrace had flowers in three stages and I liked that picture of progression. There could actually be an earlier stage with a tighter bud, but not this morning. 🙂
Tropical flowers continue to be a part of the magic of my retiree life in Costa Rica, both in my own gardens surrounding my little rental house and in my travels around the country. Click either above link for more of my flower photos – what a joy to live in paradise! 🙂
“A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.”
– Zen Shin
¡Pura vida!
As I continue to see more butterflies than birds in my garden, I found this one yesterday morning after breakfast which I haven’t seen in awhile, the Banded Peacock. He is very common all over Costa Rica and I was seeing more in May and June here. I do have better photos than these in my Banded Peacock Gallery, if interested.
And if you like to read more about butterflies, here’s a Wikipedia article: Anartia fatima, Banded Peacock and/or the Butterflies & Moths.org Map shows them mostly in Central America and Mexico.
Remember to CLICK image to see larger:
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
-Maya Angelou
¡Pura Vida!
