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If there is one animal that you are guaranteed of seeing many of in Tortuguero, it might be the Green Iguana! And remember the differences in the two iguanas here: the Black Spiny-tailed lives only on the Pacific Slope & Coast while the Green can live anywhere but is more predominant on the Caribbean Slope. One photo for the email version and then a gallery of 6 different looks of the Green Iguana (my gallery link).
Every morning at Tortuga Lodge & Gardens there were two little flocks of two species of toucans directly behind my room eating berries from different trees; Keel-billed Toucans and Yellow-throated Toucans. Here’s just one photo of each species with more in my species galleries linked below the photos.
See more photos from this trip and from many other places in Costa Rica, including my gardens at home, with a gallery for each species:
¡Pura Vida!
This is one of the “resident” herons that do not migrate north during the rainy season. Same with the Black-crowned Night Heron, Boat-billed Heron (I shared a few days ago), Green Heron and other similar herons. While we did not see on our boat tour any Little Blue Herons, Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets or Snowy Egrets because they have all migrated north until around October when they begin returning to avoid the winter up north. See more of my photos of Yellow-crowned Night Heron, Nyctanassa violacea in that gallery.
¡Pura Vida!
And in the past I would have shared photos of the parade in Atenas, but the hot sun and often long time sitting on a little plastic stool or if early enough, a concrete bench is beginning to be too much for me, so no report on yesterday’s patriotic parade in Atenas. Here is Google’s AI summary of what goes on every September 15:
“Yesterday’s Independence Day celebrations in Costa Rica included the traditional “Foles” or lantern parade the night before, followed by patriotic school parades, flag ceremonies, and student performances on the actual holiday, September 15th, emphasizing unity, hope, and freedom. The day honors Costa Rica’s 1821 independence from Spain with national pride and cultural traditions.”
RUNNING OF THE TORCH Tico Times article on that event.
Jaco was the only town with a parade amateur video posted online last night when I did this. Jaco is a beach town west of Atenas and their parade seems more hectic than ours! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
I see them everywhere I go in Costa Rica, even occasionally in my yard, but I still continue to be amazed by the prehistoric looking, dinosaur-like creature! On the Caribbean Coast, where Tortuguero is located, you find only the Green Iguana; while on the Pacific slope you can find both the Green and the Common Spiny-tailed Iguana, and that includes Atenas where I live,s which is on the Pacific Slope. All four of these photos are Green Iguanas and if you don’t already know, the orange colors come to only the males during mating season, which supposedly attracts the females more than the green or brown colors. 🙂 I shared a face-shot of the all-orange one in an earlier blog post.
I usually get more frog photos in wet places like Tortuguero, but most frogs are nocturnal and it was very dark & cloudy on our night hike in deep mud (wearing required high boots they provide) and thus I was doing good to just keep up, not to mention trying to make photos, of which I got few! 🙂
We did see a lot more frogs than this, just no photos! Our guide on that hike was a very good spotter named Elvis! 🙂 I can’t use my 600 mm zoom lens in the dark successfully, but did try an older camera with a “normal” lens, but it was no better than the cellphone camera at night, which is what most of my good frog photos have been made on in the past.
See my galleries of Costa Rica Frogs with more than 40 species, though the “unidentified” sub-gallery is the largest. 🙂 I got a new CR Amphibians field guide, but they are still difficult for me to identify. 🙂 But still, I’m proud of my large set of frog photos, especially several great shots of the Red-eyed Tree Frog over the years! He is one of several unofficial symbols or mascots of Costa Rica like the below shot at Danta Corcovado Lodge. 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
All this trip in: Tortuguero 2023 Trip Gallery
Not good quality photos, but they show what you can see at Tortuguero and then tomorrow I will have some more small “land birds” to share. But here are my efforts to catch these last 4 water birds . . .
Three days ago, March 2, I published a blog post on the Snowy Egret, an all-white bird, and here are the other 2 all-white birds at Tortuguero: the Great Egret and the Cattle Egret.
You can tell the Snowy Egret and Great Egret apart by the opposite colors of their beaks and feet: Snowy has black beak and yellow feet, while Great has yellow beak and black feet. 🙂 The Cattle Egret is much smaller with shorter neck and beak and often with pale salmon coloring on head and chest. After this introductory photo, there is a 3-pix gallery for each of these two new all-white birds . . .
It’s the same photos I’ve reported with on this blog and are in my trip gallery, but it is another creative opportunity for me that I find fun and will enjoy having a copy of the book and sharing a couple of copies with the lodge which they will share with other guests, so a nice creative use of my photography from a trip like this and the first trip book I’ve done in a year or two.
You can click the book cover below and see an electronic preview of the whole book for free without having to buy it! 🙂 Or you can go directly to this web address to see it: https://www.blurb.com/b/11499801-wowlife-tortuguero
¡Pura Vida!
The only bird I photographed that is usually associated more with the ocean than the wetlands is this Spotted Sandpiper, without spots of course, which is usually the case, though you can see photos of some with spots in my CR Spotted Sandpiper GALLERY. 🙂
Read about this bird found throughout the Americas on eBird.
¡Pura Vida!
And the Tortuguero 2023 Trip Gallery is ready!
. . . and one with babies or juveniles – The Purple Gallinule and the Northern Jacana. One photo for the email announcement and two of each bird to follow.
