Tidepool Exploration

One of my plans for this second visit to Punta Leona was to photograph lots of interesting sea creatures in the Tidepools of Playa Mantas at low tide. Well, the low tide time I could go out for was cloudy and misty rain, but that is okay if there are sea creatures! 🙂 But I was disappointed with no starfish, seahorses, blowfish, crabs, etc! Only a couple of minnow-like fish, lots of broken up coral and shells and some fossils and lichen. But below this introductory photo are photos of what I did find and it was interesting, even if not what I was expecting. I will try tidepools again in September when I’m on the Caribbean Coast and see if my luck is any better there. 🙂

Playa Mantas at Punta Leona, Costa Rica at Low Tide, with
Rocky Tidepools circled in RED where most photos were made.

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Crested Guan

One of the good things about Punta Leona is that there are many species of bird and I got only 11 this trip compared to 21 species on my 2019 visit there. Of course the big turkey-sized Crested Guan (my gallery link) is a favorite of many of the foreign tourists. Not good lighting for this shot, but you can see better photos in the above linked gallery from all over Costa Rica.

Crested Guan, Hotel Punta Leona, Puntarenas, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

Parides Genus

There are 5 different “Cattleheart” (Parides) butterflies that are very similar to this one but I don’t think any are an exact match, so I’m putting it in the Genus and will hope for an expert identifier on iNaturalist to give it a correct species name. Then I will change it in my gallery. These black, red and white Swallowtails (linked to my gallery where there are about a dozen species of these ). They seem to be quite common in Costa Rica and not easy for me to differentiate all of the species. 🙂

Parides Genus (Cattleheart Swallowtail), Punta Leona, Costa Rica
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FAVE BIRDS – Rose-throated Becard

I became aware of the Rose-throated Becard (eBird description) when in 2017 I got this close-up of a female in my own garden! 🙂 See other shots in my Rose-throated Becard Gallery from only 2 different locations in Costa Rica, one other in my neighborhood and one at Punta Leona on the Pacific Coast.

Rose-throated Becard, My Garden, Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica
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Punta Leona Photo Gallery

I really got a lot of good photos on this last trip and finally have them culled and organized into a gallery for the trip. See this newest photo gallery at:

2019 Mar 5-10 – Punta Leona

I’m not doing a photo book on this trip yet but plan on a book of the area after two more trips there, giving a broader picture of the Jaco-Carara Mid-Pacific Costa Rica. I have trips to that area in both June and July, so a book in August maybe? And it will include my earlier trips to Carara, Tarcoles and Jaco – so maybe a larger-format book. Change is good.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

~ Marcel Proust

¡Pura Vida!

Macaw Project – Punta Leona

One of the reasons I chose to stay five nights in the Jaco Beach area of Costa Rica (a heavily visited and touristy area I usually avoid) is because I read about the Scarlet Macaw Project and Hotel Punta Leona’s installation of Nesting Boxes. All Macaws are somewhat endangered because they require a large hole in a big old tree to nest and most big ol’ trees have been cut down. Thus mankind has found a way to help replace what we destroyed by installing nesting boxes for the Macaws to nest in, thus continuing the species. It is a bigger problems on the Caribbean side of CR with the more endangered Green Macaws as helped there by the Manzanillo ARA Project I visited it in 2016 near Manzanillo. The ARA Project is also on the Pacific side focused on the Scarlet Macaws at Punta Islita which I have not visited yet.  Another hotel on the Pacific side that has Scarlet Macaw nesting boxes is the Tambor Tropical Resort, Tambor Bay, I visited in 2017. So I’m happy to see this, another project that helps save an endangered species!

Hotel Punta Leona has many nesting boxes installed over their heavily wooded property and a new exciting thing is that about 5 boxes have REAL TIME CAMERAS where you can watch the babies in the nests. Cool! Just click the real time link. In the photos below you will see a wire running into one of the nests – that’s the camera!   🙂

Here’s a few shots of Scarlet Macaws I made at Punta Leona:

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Learn more about this beautiful but endangered species, the Scarlet Macaw at Neotropical Birds

See my Punta Leona Trip Gallery

And visit the Hotel Punta Leona Website for more about this nature place!

 

FUTURE DREAM – Birding in Columbia

I have often said I would leave Costa Rica only to visit other nearby countries birding and thought that Ecuador would be next – but I just saw the following video (short movie) from E-Birds that has now turned my attention toward Columbia. To see why, watch this little movie called BIRDING: A Musical Journey through Northern Columbia  —  I love living in this incredible region of the world! So much to see/do!

¡Pura Vida!

Punta Leona Grounds

The development is so large and much of it private that I cannot begin to show all that is there, but here’s some shots of the public or hotel guest available areas with two shots up two private residential streets. It is an old development that has a lot!

General Grounds Shots

 

Flowers

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Public Art

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“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”

~Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

See my Punta Leona Trip Gallery

And visit the Hotel Punta Leona Website for more about this nature place!

¡Pura Vida!

Selvamar Rooms at Punta Leona

Punta Leona is big and hotel rooms are in different clusters – mine in Selvamar, Haiti Sidewalk (Between Cuba & Jamaica Sidewalks) where each group of little cabins is named after a Latin American country. So I was Selvamar, Haiti 852. It seems newer than some other areas of hotel rooms and has its own restaurant called Carabelas which is suppose to be Peruvian food, all three meals served buffet style. That is typical of a place that caters to tour buses of which there were a few here. And how Peruvian is debatable, though almost everything was good. I ate at the Mantas Beach restaurant Marinos twice and the Playa Blanca Restaurant once a la carte. Both featuring fast casual food. I don’t rate Punta Leona very high for food, but okay. The room was very nice and by putting the little sign on my doorknob “clean now” it was clean after breakfast every morning! Nice!

Like all of the many buildings at Punta Leona, they have tried to save the old big trees with these cabins nestled in among old trees and new trees and other plants added. Nature is central here which I appreciate.

Selvamar Grounds

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My Room

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Restaurant & Pool

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All we need, really, is a change from a near frigid to a tropical attitude of mind.       ~Marjory Stoneman Douglas

 

See my Punta Leona Trip Gallery

And visit the Hotel Punta Leona Website for more about this nature place!

¡Pura Vida!

OTHER WILDLIFE – Punta Leona

I did not get as many photos as in some places, but “other wildlife” was not my goal. There were lots of squirrels and iguanas which I mainly ignored. And of course the birds and butterflies were in separate posts! Click an image to enlarge or start a manual slideshow:

 

“A forest’s beauty lies with its inhabitants.” 
― Anthony T. Hincks

 

See my Other Wildlife Galleries for many more Costa Rica animals

See my Punta Leona Trip Gallery

And visit the Hotel Punta Leona Website for more about this nature place!

¡Pura Vida!

BUTTERFLIES – Punta Leona

Butterflies always fascinate and dazzle me with their colors and rapid movements. Here’s a sample of what I saw in the Butterfly Garden at Hotel Punta Leona.

 

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.                                  -Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

See my Costa Rica Butterfly Gallery with 80+ species

See my Punta Leona Trip Gallery

And visit the Hotel Punta Leona Website for more about this nature place!