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This Red-spotted Scrub-Hairstreak or Strymon ziba is another new species of butterflies for me! Also found only in Central America and southern Mexico. See more of him on butterfliesandmoths. Here’s one of my shots and you can see more in my gallery: Red-spotted Scrub-Hairstreak.
¡Pura Vida!
Blurb is offering a flash sale on all my photo books for 3 days, April 21-23. Use the discount code: FLASHAPRIL
One of my favorite insects in the garden, who adds almost as much color as a butterfly! 🙂 The Green Orchid Bee, Euglossa dilemma (Wikipedia link) is a native of Central America, plus someone introduced it in Florida.
Since around the first of the year I have been using the sound identification feature of my Merlin phone app to identify birds. For years I only used it to identify birds by photograph. I was slow to adapt to the new sound recording ability, always hesitant to add new technology, like the old man that I am! 🙂 But when I did, I was so surprised at how easy it was to punch a button and record singing birds, usually many at at the same time! With it identifying each one and highlighting the ones singing at that moment! While at Carara Park a week or so ago I heard almost 3 times as many as I photographed! But I still prefer photos! 🙂
So while preparing my breakfast the other morning I turned it on and in 10 minutes it recorded 13 different species singing around my house! Including 2 Trogons! (Black-headed & Gartered). So I took my camera with me to the terrace to eat breakfast and hopefully see and photograph some of those 13. I got useable photos of only one! 🙂
It was the Yellow-green Vireo, Vireo flavoviridis (eBird link) shown by eBird to appear from the southern edges of the USA to the northern edges of South America, so in other words, mostly a Central American! 🙂 Here’s 3 shots from my terrace the other morning while drinking coffee after breakfast. And to be fair, I did see 2 others of those 13 recorded, but did not get useable photos of the Clay-colored Thrush or the Blue-gray Tanager (their back sides). And you can see other photos of this one in my Yellow-green Vireo Gallery which I’ve seen only 2 other times here in Atenas and nowhere else. Now here’s 3 shots from the other morning, including one of him/her singing . . .
The Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl or Mochuelo Común en español, is one of the smaller of the many owls found in Costa Rica and for the first time I saw one this morning in my yard uphill from me with four photos to follow (though I was shooting into the sun). I’ve seen this species 3 other places in Costa Rica and you can see those photos in my Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl GALLERY. And one of the more interesting sightings was outside Costa Rica of a family of this owl in Guatemala which they locally called “Guatemalan Pygmy-Owl” but I’m pretty sure it is the same species. 🙂
With 6,400 different species of Katydids worldwide, this one may not even have an “official” name yet. Another amateur photographer online called it “Flat-faced Katydid” which is certainly descriptive but I’m not going to give it a name until I find an official entomology name for it – but it is a cool bug that we saw on the “Farm Tour” at Maquenque Ecolodge & Reserve a week or so ago (time is blurring on me now). 🙂
Here are three different views of what I am pretty sure is one of the many Katydids . . .
“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 . . .
At the Catholic Church Central Park, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
There is an inside manger scene to the right of altar, but people were praying in that area and I did not want to disturb them.
My Atenas Catholic Church GALLERY.
My 2021 Christmas Photos GALLERY.
¡Pura Vida!
Here’s only 3 shots from our capital city of San Jose, which of course has many more admirable Street Art works that I have just not discovered yet! I don’t hang out in the big city much! I’m a nature photographer! 🙂 Also included is one from Alajuela, my provincial capital, and one from nearby San Ramon. These are the last of my Street Art photos from Costa Rica. Tomorrow I share just 2 from Nicaragua and then around the world we go! 🙂
I just read an online article by a creative photographer named Dan Milnor who was sleeping in his truck as he traveled through mountain deserts making photographs. Someone asked him why he was doing that and what would be done with all the photos? He told them “possibly nothing” would be done with the photos but “I was doing it because the need to create is overwhelming, regardless of the end result.” Spoken like a true “starving artist.”
Well, he kind of speaks for me and why I travel all over Costa Rica photographing birds and other things in nature and the beautiful culture. THE NEED TO CREATE IS OVERWHELMING and I enjoy it more than anything else I do.
And tomorrow I leave for one of the most creative lodges I have stayed in yet in Costa Rica, Xandari Resort (click the Costa Rica section of this resort with 3 other locations being in India), just an hour or a little more from here, north of Alajuela on a mountain. There I plan to experience (and photograph) a blend of art, birds, nature, architecture, and 5 natural waterfalls – while resting and being creative myself with my cameras. Just 4 nights this trip (a more expensive place!). Expect blog posts from there starting tomorrow night (Saturday). And I will continue to fill in the static pages on my new website, now featuring this blog and I hope improving! More fun anyway! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
I lived for 3 years in The Gambia, West Africa which is undoubtedly a “3rd World” country, so much more primitive and less developed than Costa Rica which some call a “2nd World” or developing nation, but still almost a night-day contrast with The Gambia, though occasionally something reminds me of Africa, usually in rural areas but sometimes even in the cities.
When I go to Alajuela by bus I arrive at a primitive bus station, just a big parking lot! Not in the most desirable part of town! Then my most common first stop is Aeropost to pick up an internet order package, about a 10 to 12 block long walk (I need to count it sometime!). The first 4 blocks or until past the Central Market is what sometimes reminds me of Africa. The broken sidewalks are usually crowded with many people, most poor. They are made more crowded by the occasional vendor like the fruit & vegetable guy in this photo and beggars sitting on the sidewalk asking for money. (None of this in Atenas.) And this area has only cheap merchandise shops, trash in the street, nasty smells of rotting food, milk, or even a dead animal today (probably a rat/mouse) causing me to walk fast the first four blocks to get past the mercado and my reminders of West Africa. Then there is a large department store, bank, nicer businesses, Central Park, Cathedral, restaurants, etc. Another world a block away!
And today I fell again (like I’m getting old or something!). On the way back up the street from Aeropost, just before Central Park and the McDonalds where I ate breakfast, my foot was stopped by a loose brick in the sidewalk while the rest of my body kept going! Crash into the nasty street gutter with abrasions on both hands and knees and immediately a plethora of people helping me get up, a parking lot attendant giving me his chair. I asked him for a band-aid but could not remember the spanish name (la curita) and rare that I did not have one in my billfold, but I didn’t. I just wrapped my bleeding finger in my handkerchief and walked on to McDonalds where I cleaned up in their bathroom and rested with a full breakfast before walking back to the next bus to Atenas. That was today’s adventure and I’m staying home the rest of the day! 🙂 And reminding myself to break a very old habit of walking fast! And life is still good here!
PS — The related posts that are following at the end of each new post are automatically generated by WordPress, I assume based on keywords. I find this interesting and think that most of their suggestions are pretty good. 🙂