. . . was a Buff-rumped Warbler, Myiothlypis fulvicauda (eBird link) who literally followed along with me on the trail through the forest, sometimes leading the way. 🙂 He was always in the shadows, thus no good photos, but I do have better photos from other locations in my Buff-rumped Warbler Gallery. He is found only in Central America and northwestern South America.
. . . at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge is surprisingly also one of the largest! (a little larger than toucans.) And maybe size does help with visibility, 🙂 plus the fact that the ones living there are used to people (all nature-lovers) and thus don’t run at the site of a dangerous human! 🙂
The Great Curassow, Crax rubra (eBird link) is a tropical pheasant-like bird found from eastern Mexico throughout Central America to the northwestern edges of Columbia and Ecuador. I see them in most of the protected forests and national parks I visit in Costa Rica. See some of my other photos in the Great Curassow Gallery. Just another of the many nature joys in Costa Rica! 🙂 And yes, they are similar to the Crested Guan (my gallery link) also here and about the same size, but with a bright red waddle. I heard guans on this trip but neither saw nor got photos. Both of these birds remind North Americans of Wild Turkeys, which we do not have here.
Great Curassow male & female, Esquinas Rainforest Lodge, Parque Nacional Piedras Blancas, Golfito, Costa Rica, on a stream bank behind the dining hall.
And a gallery of 5 shots . . . (click an image to enlarge)
This morning after breakfast I walked the maybe half mile down the road to La Gamba Rainforest Research Station sponsored mainly by the University of Vienna, Austria, hoping to see more butterflies! But only got one there plus one on the road near Esquinas Lodge which I will share later as part of Esquinas. 🙂
At the research station, I simply walked the garden trails, looking for nature to photograph and got quite a few photos in less than an hour. Here is a sampling of the photos in a gallery below the email photo with not everything identified yet. I have to go to the dining room for internet connection, but prepare these posts and the photos on my cabin porch during the afternoon rain, though it didn’t rain this afternoon, but will tonight! 🙂
For maybe an hour this morning, two Yellow-throated Toucans called out to each other from two different trees behind my cabin. Finally, they got together in one tree, though my last pix indicates that one is shy, hiding behind an air plant with her back to the other. Always fun to observe nature in action! 🙂 This was one of 11 bird species I photographed today, here at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge. A nice day! And though cloudy most of the day, no rain. Below this photo for the email is a photo of the two together or almost together! 🙂
. . . is the most common hummingbird in gardens from southern Mexico to northwestern South America, says one website, meaning they are throughout Central America and I see at almost every lodge I visit. Plus, hands down he’s the most common bird in my garden! 🙂 In June I was photographing them a lot and chose my 12 favorite shots from June for a gallery in the online version of this post (below this one photo for the email version). The software for my chosen blog template doesn’t support galleries in the emailed version. Plus, if you’d like to see more photos of this active and colorful bird, I’ve added these 12 shots to the 130 already in my GALLERY: Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Amazilia tzacatl (linked to the gallery). There you can see my favorite shots of one feeding on a Bird of Paradise Flower at Arenal Observatory Lodge and several shots over the years of one feeding on my Torch Ginger flowers, as the most colorful meal here! 🙂 While the most common flower everywhere for them is the “Porterweed” in these photos. 🙂
In the past I’ve had a problem with the Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds chasing off any other hummingbirds, but so far the Canivet’s Emerald, Cynanthus canivetii (my gallery link) have made themselves at home and I see them on my Porter Weeds almost as much as the Rufous-tailed. But the Blue-vented seem to have gone somewhere else again. Maybe I will refill the feeders more often! 🙂 Here’s three shots of the female in addition to the feature photo above. The male doesn’t have the white eyebrow and chest and thus I probably call some of them Rufous-tail or Blue-vented, which are all three similar males.
Sunday before last in the early morning before walking to El Fogon for breakfast, I was on my terrace with a cup of tea and my camera when the neighborhood motmots came to my garden with their offspring. It appears that they were teaching him/her (male and female look identical to humans) how to catch a Cicada (or find a dead one). 🙂 Check out the gallery below of 6 shots chronologically of the lesson in my Higuerón and Nance Trees and on the ground below . . .
When trying to photograph that tiny little butterfly on the left of that rock in my garden I discovered later that I instead got a silhoutte shadow of a hummingbird flying above the butterfly. 🙂 Not great, but an interesting surprise when going through the photos. 🙂
Hummingbird Shadow on rock near a tiny butterfly in my garden, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
Just a little serendipity! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi
And now I will try to focus on nature in June, right here in my garden! 🙂 I started May still processing photos from April and I finished May with blog posts scheduled through this one today, June 10. Yes, I’ve been staying ahead about a week and a half or 10 days on writing the blog posts while coordinating the useable photos for not only the blog, but I post the useable ones in . . .
I now post all my nature photos for future research on iNaturalist (linked to my posts with a map of where photographed in CR.
I am still putting butterfly photos also on butterfliesandmoths.org (linked to the Costa Rica Region where I’m the primary contributor).
And I still post bird photos on eBird of course! You may have to add my name to see my postings there: charliedoggett.
And though it may seem like I shared a lot of butterfly photos in May, there were a lot more photographed! I got 45 species of butterflies in my garden in May! At least two species were new ones for me. And I’m having trouble keeping up with them all! 🙂 It is like I don’t need to travel to get photos, but I look forward to some different animals in my July rainforest trip when I celebrate my 85th birthday.