During breakfast this morning I got 7 species of birds from my terrace, but because I was eating, I photographed only one, just at the end of my time looking – The Yellow Warbler, both a migrant from the north and a resident sometimes, meaning I don’t know how to tell if this particular one is a migrant or a resident enjoying an insect for breakfast! 🙂
Yellow Warbler, Atenas, Costa Rica
And the other 6 birds I saw were Great Kiskadee, Turkey Vulture, one of the Swallow species (unidentified), Tropical Kingbird, and Clay-colored Thrush or Yiqüirro.
I hope you are counting birds in your backyard this weekend and reporting to eBird!
To be in a forest may be my favorite activity in Costa Rica, like looking out over the forest below at Arenal Volcano National Park . . .
Arenal Forest from the Observation Tower, Arenal Observatory Lodge, Costa Rica.
Or seeing the inter-connectedness of everything in the forest like Jane Goodall says in this minute and a half YouTube Video:
Or to know that I’ve helped save an endangered globe by Planting One Tree! Check out that link for how you can plant a tree in parts of the world needing them most, OR go plant one in your own backyard or nearby park! 🙂
Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light.
~Leonardo da Vinci
A photo from San Gerardo de Dota that I liked and didn’t include in my flower post. Sometimes it’s the little things that impress me the most, yet often get overlooked like this diminution of light.
Yeah! I know, it seems that I like every tree! And maybe I do, but this one by the cow pasture in front of my house is special I think because of its shape. Though that one little tree to its left sort of takes away from the shape 🙂 it’s still a neat tree!
The Featured Photo above is the broad look from the cow pasture with that tiny sliver of roof on the far left edge of photo being my house on the hill. The tree is the one in center of above photo to the left of the 3 big houses. And below is a closer view.
Big Green Tree by the Pasture.
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”
The #1 best country to retire in according to International Living Magazine (Again!)
The #1 best country to visit or vacation inaccording to National Geographic for 2021.
The highest inoculation rate against Covid -19 virus in Latin America with goal of every adult in the country!
“Rumor” is that Costa Rica may host the 2022 Miss Universe Contest. A new convention center in San Jose makes things like this more likely, though final decision not made yet.
FOR ME? It is the Best Place to Experience NATURE!
One of the many wonderful things about Hotel Savegre is the huge piece of property it sits on in a mixture of primary and secondary forest – the “secondary” parts being where early farmers cleared land that has now been “re-forested” as has a large portion of Costa Rica as farming methods have improved and are becoming less destructive of the natural environment. The guide in some of the photos is Marino Chacon, a son of the man and woman who pioneered this first hotel/lodge in the truly amazing hills of San Gerardo de Dota. His parents are pictured on one of the trail signs included below in my two collections. CLICK image in first gallery to enlarge, which you can’t do in the second one as a slideshow.
Though I still have posts coming through Tuesday, February 2, the photos have all been processed and collected in on of my “Trip Galleries” to see all of the photos in one place called 2021 San Gerardo de Dota Hotel Savegre. Click the linked title or the gallery image below to see.
Photo Galleries for January 2021 Visit to Hotel Savegre, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica.
Male Quetzal, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica — One of the many images in this gallery.
On one of my walks on the nearby “Country Lane,” I found this simple little tree covered in yellow blooms, like many Costa Rica trees now, and liked it!
The Feature Photo is the broad view of the landscape with the little solo tree, while below I include a closer view from another angle, all from behind a fence, and I never cross fences! 🙂
Country Lane Yellow Tree
“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.”
~Isaac Newton
¡Pura Vida!
Tonight or tomorrow I will begin reporting on the Cloud Forests of San Gerardo de Dota in Savegre Hotel. It is a lot different from my Central Valley coffee farming town of Atenas! 🙂
Just in time! The night before I leave on another trip I finished my photos from the Christmas 2020 trip to Arenal Observatory Lodge with more than 50 species of birds! And 5 are lifers for me! Plus a whole lot of other photos from this favorite lodge. For now the birds are presented alphabetically by their English Common Name. Later I will make time to arrange by species families according to my birding guide book. Overall I’m pleased with this collection of photos and moving on to the next collection! 🙂 To see gallery CLICK above link or the image below:
The several swinging bridges at Arenal Observatory Lodge connecting the many trails are a lot more secure than those rope bridges we made in Boy Scouts, but just as thrilling! 🙂 Here’s some shots of two of the hanging bridges I hiked over during my Arenal Visit Christmas Week. CLICK an image to see larger . . .
Danta Bridge
Danta Bridge
Danta Bridge
Approach to Spider Bridge
Spider Bridge
Spider Bridge
Crossing Rivers & Canyons on Arenal Conservatory Trails
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.”
― Douglas Adams
Tomorrow Begins Another Adventure . . .
I don’t plan or intend to have trips just 3 weeks apart! It takes me longer than that to process the photos! 🙂
But because I had to reschedule this next trip, originally set for a March-April overlap week, just as the Pandemic was taking over . . . Soooo I told them to “reschedule it around the middle of January, not thinking about my Christmas trip – But anyway . . . I’m shifting gears from a rainforest at the base of a volcano to a cooler Cloud Forest in San Gerardo de Dota, starting tomorrow at the Savegre Hotel and Nature Reserve. (NOTE: their website is under reconstruction and only the home page shows for now.
This is one of the lodges I stayed in on my first trip to Costa Rica in 2009. It’s the best place in the world to see and photograph the Resplendent Quetzal bird. And the coldest place I’ve been in Costa Rica with fireplaces used at night. Since no rain in January, it is a little warmer at 13° C or 54° F average low to high of 27°C or 81°F, but hey guys! I freeze to death here in Atenas when it gets down in the 60’s F. 🙂
The new lodge website linked above is under construction, so instead of their photos, you can see my photo galleries of 3 previous visits, all a very long time ago 🙂 . . .
