Close to home I usually photograph my most birds along the 1 km or so up the hill from my house. Today I met a neighbor to show her where I find them and we spotted or recognized a minimum of 12 species. Here’s photos of 8, having no good photos of female Blue-black Grassquit, Hoffman’s Woodpecker, White-winged Dove and Inca Dove. The two doves I have so many photos of I just didn’t even try to photograph today. 🙂 The featured image is an immature Tropical Kingbird which is fairly common all over Costa Rica. CLICK an image below to enlarge and/or start a manual slide show.
Blue-gray Tanager
Tropical Kingbird
Red-billed Pigeon
Barred Antshrike
Great Kiskadee
Stripe-headed Sparrow
Blue-black Grassquit Male
Tennessee Warbler
See all my BIRDS galleries from many countries or just Costa Rica Birds if you prefer! 🙂
If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.
This Banded Peacock Butterfly was just one more colorful thing in nature I photographed on yesterday’s morning walk. I don’t carry my big camera on all walks because I photograph too much! 🙂 And tomorrow I will share the flowers I photographed on yesterday’s walk!
The “Big Day” of Global Bird Counting was not extremely big for me. I chose the dirt country road alongside our development thinking it would have more birds as usual than around our houses, but . . . it was a little windy from 6 to 8 this morning and one of the bicycle clubs was out whizzing down our little country road which did not encourage the presence of birds. But I’m counting 12 species and a total of 50 birds, with three species not in photos below. Here’s my list for today with non-photo’d first and others alphabetically:
Gray-headed Chachalaca (3) not photographed.
Orange-chinned parakeets (12) not photographed
Melodious Blackbird (1) not a good photo to show here
It’s not the corn in the musical “Oklahoma!” but the grass in the cow pasture across from me is as high as my eyes now, thanks to the regular rains! That’s why some call this time of year “The Green Season.” And the cows are mostly eating around the edges of the pasture. 🙂
Today is “Global Big Day” of counting birds where you live to help science better see what is happening to the health of our planet. I was out from 5:30 AM to 7:15 AM along the border between our housing project, Roca Verde, and the adjacent farms on the border-line gravel road called Calle Nueva (literally “New Street”) that serves as one emergency evacuation road from Atenas along with being a great nature walk and road for bicycles.
I’ve had better days and worse days of birding on that road, so maybe “average” is what the scientists want! 🙂 I observed at least 60 birds of more than 12 species, which is the number of species I photographed. I only report on eBird what I get photos of, which is not the typical eBird user, but I feel more confident with my reports because of that and eBird has volunteer “checkers” to make sure I labeled a bird correctly. Of my 60 seen, 30 were one flock of parakeets! 🙂
It was overcast or cloudy almost the whole time I was out, meaning poor light and white skies as terrible backgrounds most of the time! Only one photo has even a semblance of a blue sky. That’s life! There were no “lifers” or first-time birds for me, though my first time in Roca Verde to see and photograph the Rufous-capped Warbler, and the photo included here is of him “warbling!” 🙂 The name link is to my gallery with shots of this bird from 4 other locations in Costa Rica and some are better shots. And then maybe a first for me at Roca Verde is the juvenile or “immature” Yellow-faced Grassquit which at that age does not have the bright yellow on his face.
Here’s my mostly weak photos against drab skies, but they show you what I saw today:
On this cloudy morning I walk up the hill above my house and back at less than an hour with these colorful photos even without sunshine. Nature is everywhere and my favorite way to celebrate “May Day” or May 1.
May, more than any other month of the year, wants us to feel most alive.
~Fennel Hudson
May Day Birds
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May Day Flowers
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May Day Vistas
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I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.
Or almost no place better for birds than my home in the Roca Verde Neighborhood of Atenas, Costa Rica. My long-time intentions to do a photo book of birds photographed at home just got fulfilled!
For preview, click image or address below:
Check out the free preview of this book of 80 photos of more than 40 species of birds found in my garden and neighborhood. Plus this book is bigger than my travel series books, a full 8 x 10 inches, making it acceptable as a “Coffee Table Book.” 🙂 The hardcover edition is printed on a higher quality of lustre photo paper, though the paperback edition is nice on standard paper. Enjoy! 🙂
I got usable photos of 19 species of birds from my little one-hour walk yesterday morning, 6-7 AM, in the neighborhood on Calle Nueva, the little country gravel/dirt road that separates Roca Verde neighborhood from the adjacent farmland. Nineteen is not bad and as good as some longer walks I take when at expensive birding lodges! 🙂 PLUS, if my identifications are correct, I got 3 new species, “lifers,” for me, though I may get corrected by an eBird expert reviewer after I post them on eBird. 🙂 The new ones are Giant Cowbird, Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher and a Yellow-green Vireo.
This road and my own street uphill above my house always yield a lot of birds early in the morning. And I have another neighborhood further away that I intend to try for even different birds, a place my birding friend Margaret found to be good.
Saturday AM Birds
Blue-gray Tanager
Crimson-fronted Parakeet
Clay-colored Thrush
Inca Dove
domesticated Chicken
Crimson-fronted Parakeet
White-winged Dove
Tropical Kingbird
Grayish Saltator
Brown Jay
Yellow-green Vireo
Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher
Yellow Warbler
Melodious Blackbird
Giant Cowbird
Rufous-naped Wren
Domesticated Rooster
Turquoise-browed Motmot
Great Kiskadee
Tropical Mockingbird Juvenile
“Every bird, every tree, every flower reminds me what a blessing and privilege it is just to be alive.”
― Marty Rubin
In an earlier post I introduced you to the little 5 km country lane behind our Roca Verde development and along the stream by that cow pasture in front of my house. It is called Calle Nueva which would be simply “New Street” in English and the 2018 blog post was titled Finishing the country road walk today . . . Then later I added a photo gallery: Walking Calle Nueva Atenas 2018. Same photos!
Yesterday I walked part of the road more slowly than I did with young man Jason Quesada back then. It was with another older person who is a birder from Canada! Totally different! We saw more than 15 species of birds just behind where I live and here are a few photos of some of them! Even got one lifer on this walk of about 2 hours, the Black-crowned Tityra, both male & female! CLICK A PHOTO TO ENLARGE.
And apologies for several washed out pictures with white sky. That was because I was not paying attention to details and accidentally turned the dial to “Manual” without setting the manual settings and wasn’t looking at the images on screen! Ugh! Sloppy old man!
Birds on Calle Nueva
Groove-billed Ani
Yellow-throated Vireo
Great Kiskadee
Blue-tailed Hummingbird
Olive Sparrow (almost like Stripe-headed)
Black-crowned Tityra Male
Streaked Flycatcher
Hoffman’s Woodpecker
Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher
Rose-breasted Becard Female
Rose-breasted Becard Male
Melodious Blackbird
Black-crowned Tityra Female
Yellow Warbler
Buff-throated Saltator
Interesting Flowers on Walk
Mountain Farm Vista on Calle Nueva.
Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong.