Juvenile Birds

It seems like maybe there have been more than a usual number of immature or juvenile birds this week, so I’m featuring 5 today. 🙂

Tomorrow morning, I go on a guided bird hike and expect to get a lot more above the 35 species I’ve photographed on my own so far. 🙂 Plus, I’m taking a tour of the farm where 85% of the restaurant food is raised and that will probably be tomorrow night’s post! ?

Here’s my 5 juvenile birds . . .

Clay-colored Thrush juvenile bathing in a rain puddle.
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Egret Fishing

I photographed so many birds today, but decided the fishing action shots were the ones to show. Note that the lake is very low during this dry season, even though it rained off and on all day today. ? Here’s the five steps a Great Egret took:

Patiently stands motionless for many minutes waiting for a fish to swim by . . .
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Maquenque Arrival

The three hour plus trip was four hours with the last 40 km on a pot-holed dirt road which I knew, but when you like a place, you forget about the bad things! 🙂

My Treehouse Cabin is in the trees on that hill at right.
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Flowers for Your Valentine’s Day

As I travel today and get settled in my treehouse room at Maquenque Eco-Lodge, I’ll do a post from my garden featuring the contrast of a yellow flower called “Golden Shrimp” with all the other flowers that are red or orange. I love the flowers in my garden! Enjoy your Valentine Flowers . . .

Golden Shrimp beside my Indigenous Man Statue

These yellow flowers contrast with all the reds and oranges in my garden . . .

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This Week’s “Wildness”

“Wildness . . . has also been defined as a quality produced in nature, as that which emerges from a forest, and as a level of achievement in nature.”

~definitions.net

I leave tomorrow morning for my third visit to a favorite rainforest lodge, Maquenque Ecolodge & Reserve in Boca Tapada, which is in my province of Alajuela but in the far north near the Nicaragua border, a 3 hour drive for my driver Walter. 🙂 Read on for why this is a favorite lodge and check out the links to my two other visits there . . .

One branch of a very large lake plus they are on a big river.
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Five at Dusk

Last week (Feb. 2) I tried to see what birds would come around my terrace as the sun starts setting around 5 pm, with camera in hand of course! 🙂 There were several other birds, but I managed to capture only five, and of those only the Clay-colored Thrush (feature photo) was in good light, but regardless, here’s five common birds often around my house with the Oropendola staying near the tops of tall trees and not photographed as often. The Doves and Chachalacas are seen more in the mornings. Others are “special” or more rarely seen.

Clay-colored Thrush or Yigüirro
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Green Privacy Wall

The “greenness” of Costa Rica is just one of the many things I love about it and this green privacy wall is one example of how green the houses are around here. Photographed on one of my walks down “Country Lane.”

¡Pura Vida!

Colorful Walks

This bougainvillea is in front of one of the houses I pass on one of my walk routes. This is the time of year for most bougainvillea to be at their peak in blooms and I enjoy the color on my walks! 🙂

Bougainvillea on my “Country Lane” walk, Avenida 8, Atenas, Costa Rica.

¡Pura Vida!

More flowers in my Flora & Forest GALLERY.

Two New Restaurants in Atenas

For the last year or two I’ve worked hard a preparing good, healthy meals at home from making 8-servings of spaghetti with meat (eating 1 & freezing 7 for future meals) to multiple recipes of homemade vegetable soup to help me eat more veggies, last week a yummy Chick Peas Salad from a Washington Post Recipe and also last week a 7-layer dip (mostly veggies). And I do breakfast at home all but one morning a week with 3 or 4 fruits, nuts, whole grains in either bread, hot or cold cereal or French Toast, saving my omelets for some dinners! 🙂

But living solo, I still like to eat out and I’m now trying to find more restaurants that I like while some I liked closed during Covid. So I was a little surprised to see two new ones open in the last few weeks, one serving everything from pizza & burgers to steaks & seafood and the other one our first “genuine” Mexican Restaurant:

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Great-tailed Grackle

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.

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