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The iridescent colors make this common bird stand out, even in the shadows of my garden. Three of the four photos are definitely male (blue), while one appears to have the brown coloring of a female. See my Great-tailed Grackle Gallery or read about them on eBird.
Well — the house is now law offices and as you can see the yellow is actually flowers that fell off a tree, carpeting their yard, sidewalk and cars yellow. 🙂 Here’s shots from 4 angles . . .
I believe this is a small or immature Tropical Kingbird in the shadows of my garden. I like the softness of the image even though not very sharp or in good light. 🙂 It could be a rare Western Kingbird, but I don’t think so with the faint white on the neck.
My Tropical Kingbird Gallery.
¡Pura Vida!
From my Country Lane walk the other day I snapped these three slightly different small colorful flowers. I just learned that they are called San Rafaels here. (Thanks Shannon!)
That’s what artist Cynara Shelton calls her painting, Those Bloomin’ Cactus. She even has hers for sale, so if you want to buy mine, you can order from my gallery image of this photo to be printed on canvas, metal (my favorite now) or paper. My markup is only $1, the rest goes to SmugMug Gallery and the printer. 🙂 But I think reasonably priced and a good service SmugMug Galleries provides! And of course I have other photos I think better for wall art than this humble little cactus. 🙂 I’m retired now, so really not trying to sell photos! This one was photographed on “Country Lane” in front of Hotel Las Colinas, Atenas.
See my whole Photo Gallery.
And today is last day for 25% off my photo books with Code: FANFAVE
¡Pura Vida!
I photographed a lot of flowers on my walk down nearby “Country Lane” the other day, but I just may be partial to this Hibiscus! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
See also my Flora & Forest Gallery
Or for more of this walking place: Country Lane Gallery
For the last week or so the winds have been really strong here whipping those palm fronds around like giant fans! Note that we have high winds in the Central Valley of Costa Rica every January-February, so not unusual. It’s how our summer begins.
I’m sorry that the White-winged Dove had her egg-laying time come now and chose to make her nest in a palm frond, less secure from wind than any other tree limb would have been. The third photo below (and feature photo) is her on the nest the morning of the 29th after sitting there nearly a week and I have yet to see an egg. But by the afternoon of the 29th she was gone from the nest and not seen there since and I checked all day the 30th. If she lost eggs it must have been to predators (here Iguanas or a large bird or snake) because I’ve seen no egg on the ground under the nest which would be broken if it fell. The second empty nest photo was made from my step ladder (higher up) but still not showing any egg(s). So I don’t know what has happened. If she lost eggs, it will be the second time a dove has lost eggs from my palm fronds. Sad.
I know that it was only a couple of weeks ago when I shared another one of these (maybe the same one?), but this one hung around after breakfast the other morning longer than any other bird and I had fun trying to capture her in the shadows of the Cecropia Tree. Here’s 3 of my efforts . . .
I know they are slow, very slow! But they now have a little wall, a stack of concrete that I’m guessing will hold the 3-D letters for ATENAS (that everyone will be photographed by) and in the 4th month on this corner, they now have a multi-colored sidewalk around the above. I sure hope they are putting plants or gardens behind that wall! 🙂 See more below and my continuing Photo Gallery Remodeling Central Park Atenas. And I’m not complaining about the slowness because I like what they do! 🙂 Now here’s today’s shots (on the 26th):
