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Funny Fungi

The feature photo is a “Pixie Cup Fungus” (link to Wikipedia), the second time I have seen this species (on the Cativo Jungle Waterfall Trail) with the other time being in Carara National Park near Tarcoles & Jaco in 2015, the closest national park to where I live in Atenas. The many other fungi I saw at Playa Cativo were the ones you usually see on trees and dead trees or stumps. I saw no “toad stools” or common mushrooms this trip like usual.

Pixi Cup Fungus at Playa Cativo Lodge, Golfo Dulce, Piedras Blancas NP, Costa Rica

Plus three more fungi photos from Playa Cativo . . .

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Dorantes Longtail

This Dorantes Longtail, Urbanus dorantes (Link is to butterfliesandmoths.org) was in my garden the 3 or 4 weeks ago with one of the yellows being the only two at that time. I wrote this post and then forgot about it, lost in my “drafts.” 🙂 This one is found from Argentina north through Central America and Mexico to South Texas and Florida plus the West Indies. I’m expecting more butterflies to start arriving soon or sometime in June.

Dorantes Longtail, Roca Verde, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
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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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UPDATE to Chainsaw Massacre Post

I was contacted by one of the board members and assured that they did not approve the destruction of that beautiful big tree. It was the landowner’s decision and right to cut it down. You can see my updated or revised statement on the original post Chainsaw Massacre Across the Street or I am copying the revised statement here plus I edited a couple of other lines in the post:

I apologize that I blamed the Homeowner’s Association and the employees for allowing or doing this destruction of a beautiful big tree. A board member contacted me to say they were distraught also about the loss of this great tree and that the landowner is the one who decided to cut it down and he/she owns it and has the right to do so. So shame on whoever that is! Note that it was an employee that said it was cut down because of the water shortage here. I don’t know if that is why the owner cut it. Maybe I was right the first time saying they would probably build a rent house there.

The large  Higuerón Tree or Strangler Fig someone cut down to a stub.

Our board of directors work hard to make this a better place to live! Thank you!

I’m still sad! 🙁

Last Week – what’s left of the large Strangler Fig.
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Chainsaw Massacre Across the Street

Last February I wrote a blog post titled “Tree by the Pasture” featuring one of my favorite trees, plus it is (was) across the street from my house in a vacant lot beside the houses on the edge of the cow pasture. Well I was quite troubled the other day when I heard a chain saw continuing most of the day Monday and continuing on Tuesday and went over to see what was happening, fearing they would take down that beautiful tree to build another ugly house, which is what they seem to be doing.

A Dark Green Umbrella by Pasture
Closer-up to big tree Then.
I’ve since learned that it is a Higueron Tree.
Or a Giant Banyan Tree.
The two photos in the last February Post of my favorite tree.

Well, below are my photos of the following 2 days of their chainsaw massacre. Will they leave the ugly stub or eventually level it?

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Cloud Cuckoo Land a Must-read for . . .

. . . lovers of stories, books and libraries – the 3 main characters in this multi-layered story of totally different people from the 1450’s all the way through 2020 and to the future in 2164, all impacted by this fictitious lost and found story by a very early Greek writer who called his story “Cloud Cuckoo Land” (in Classical Greek of course!). It touches on so many life issues and about our own future on earth that I won’t try to list them all. You move between the stories of totally different people (ages 12 to 86) affected by Cloud Cuckoo Land (the Greek novel) in Constantinople (1450’s), Bulgaria (1450’s), Idaho (1940’s to 2020), Korea (1950’s), and outer space (2164) so that like his “All the Light” book (just 2 overlapping stories) you can get confused at first (if not more so). Eventually the many complicated pieces of the puzzle start coming together and you too begin to get what all these others are getting from Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is more multi-layered than Anthony Doerr’s previous classic All the Light We Cannot See (Goodreads Reviews), but just as impactful (if not more so) and will certainly become another classic! I highly recommend both books! 🙂

Read some other Goodreads Reviews of this NY Times best seller, Cloud Cuckoo Land. Now I will simplify my reading escapes with another Agatha Christie mystery! 🙂 Rest my simple mind which is still spinning from this read. 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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WALKING PATHS of My Ancestors

MAP By Saioa López, Lucy van Dorp and Garrett Hellenthal – López, S., van Dorp, L., & Hellenthal, G. (2015). Human Dispersal Out of Africa: A Lasting Debate. Evolutionary Bioinformatics Online, 11(Suppl 2), 57–68. http://doi.org/10.4137/EBO.S33489 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4844272/, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50508700

All of us literally walked out of Africa at one time ancestrally and the paths taken greatly affect who each of us are. Because I participated in the National Geographic DNA Genographic Project I got a report on both my Maternal and Paternal paths out of Africa which are greatly different . . .

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Unique Insects

I didn’t actively search for insects on this trip, but as in any rainforest you can’t help but notice some unique ones! Here’s three:

  • Unidentified with some kind of ants on a Heliconia flower.
  • A rarely resting Blue Morpho Butterfly in closed -wings camouflage.
  • Golden Orb Spider on back of bar stool in the “Internet Lounge.”

¡Pura Vida!

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How I Choose & Plan My Trips

The thrill of landing on a short strip by the ocean!

This may be too boring a topic for many of you faithful readers, but IF you are one of those considering retirement here AND you are a details persons like me AND you also want to see the whole country like me OR you are a birder or other kind of nature lover/collector, then this post is for you! 🙂 Otherwise it gets footnoted as another biographical page on my website! 🙂

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