Retired American nature-lover, living in Costa Rica, photographing birds and other jewels of nature. This site simply reports on my joys of being RETIRED IN COSTA RICA!
The two most numerous wildlife at Villa Lapas this first afternoon in my camera were iguanas and dragonflies and I decided to share photos of 2 of the many dragonflies on the water lily pond in front of their colonial chapel in the jungle village across from my room. I left my dragonflies book at home, so no IDs on these yet! 🙂
Unidentified Dragonfly, Villa Lapas, Tarcoles, Puntarenas, Costa RicaUnidentified Dragonfly, Villa Lapas, Tarcoles, Puntarenas, Costa Rica
In the morning I do their “Early Bird Walk” before breakfast and their“Sky Way Tour” after breakfast. Then tomorrow night I do their“Night Walk” and hope for a good frog photo! So I should know tomorrow if I like the “new” Villa Lapas (changed a lot in 9 years). The afternoons are too hot & humid here (closer to coast) to do much of anything! Finally, Wednesday morning I’ve decided I will do their “Jungle River Wagon Tour” to get the whole picture of this changing resort and then I will go home after that and give you my final evaluation later. 🙂
My second overnight trip after moving to Costa Rica nearly 10 years ago was to this locally-owned & operated lodge/hotel near the village of Tarcoles, less than an hour west of Atenas, Villa Lapas. I did not get many bird or other wildlife photos compared to later trips other places, but you can see what I got in my Trip Gallery:Villa Lapas, July 2015. The appeal then and now is that it is located next to Carara National Park, where, with a good guide (that I did not have then), you can photograph a lot of different bird species as you also can on the right Tarcoles River Boat Safari. Since then I’ve discovered lots of better lodges for birds and other nature photography (even in that area – see bottom of post), so why am I returning now? Because of a recent announcement about this little-known place with some rooms arranged as a “Colonial Spanish Jungle Village” becoming a Marriott Resort . . .
Villa Lapas set up as a “Colonial Jungle Village” in the Transitional Forests of Carara National Park.Continue reading “Villa Lapas”
An old regular is back! And in the next two months there will begin to be an increase in the number of butterflies with May-October the peak months for me or at least in my Atenas garden, roughly the same time as the rainy season. This Cloudless Sulphur, Phoebis sennae, is fairly common throughout the southern half of the USA down throughout Central America and the Caribbean Islands. One photo from my garden the other day:
And be sure to tune in tomorrow! I plan to tell you about my 3-day, 2-night adventure planned for Monday less than an hour from Atenas. One can have adventures close to home! 🙂
The next day after photographing them the gardeners cut them down with their weed eaters! 🙂 And NOTE for those receiving this as an email: All blog posts received in an email are BEST SEEN AND READ ONLINEby clicking the title above. Some design features are not carried over to the email version.
The first photo is a yellow & white daisy-like tiny flower that does attract the tiny butterflies and the second is some kind of whitish puff ball with a separate flower bud in front of it. The bud is probably of the same species as the yellow & white flower pictured, since it was close by. Even weeds have a beauty that can be photographed and several of my butterfly photos include such “weed flowers” never mentioned! 🙂
“Weed Flower,” Atenas, Costa RicaWeed flower bud in front of a “puff ball” of another weed, Atenas, Costa Rica
These two White-winged Doves, Zenaida asiatica, seemed to be cuddling in the first photo and closed-eyes kissing in the second photo. I never know what to expect next in my trees, but I have some pretty good photos in my White-winged Dove Gallery. 🙂 Read about them on eBird. They are just about everywhere in the Americas and the bird I am hearing the most this month.
The Tropical Kingbird, Tyrannus melancholicus, can be read about on eBird and you can see some of my many other photos of this tropical bird found throughout South & Central America in my Tropical Kingbird Gallery. Here’s 2 photos of one on the powerline in front of my house the other day:
Because I no longer print my images to sell through a galeria or seasonal shows here, I will make it a little easier for you to order Wall Art or other art image by narrowing down the possibilities some. Every image in every gallery is available but this new gallery includes both the images I’ve sold before and some I think would possibly make good art! And remember that in the buying process menu you can crop the images more or differently than I have.
SmugMug (my gallery host) uses the very best printers for each type of art and I recommend for wall art high gloss metal prints to stand out or for a softer look, try photos printed on canvas (and I prefer the wrap-around canvas). They have many other items you can print any of my photos on from greeting cards to coffee mugs, etc. Have fun exploring! Just click the shopping bag pix on any photo or the BUY PHOTO button on an enlarged photo and follow the menu! Easy! 🙂
And for COSTA RICA CUSTOMERS, you will need a shipping service that provides you a U.S. address like Atenas Webshop or Costa Rica Shipping with both getting the package to Atenas and if picking up in Alajuela is no problem, Aeropostis a little faster because they have their own daily planes. All three of these give you a Miami Address to use on your orders.
Now it is not me writing, but it tells a lot about life for one expat from the states living here, and of course not everything applies to me! I do not have a car, I don’t drink alcohol, and though I like beans and rice I don’t eat them every morning for breakfast! 🙂 But it is still an interesting article supposedly about the life of one North American expat living here and the relaxed culture that many Americans adopt here! And one thing that is like him, I too live in T-shirt and shorts all day every day! 🙂
Appearing on one of my tree limbs looking like a loving married couple the other day were two Inca Doves, one of my favorite dove species with their “sculpted” look. You can read about them on eBird or check out some of my earlier photos in my Inca Dove Gallery. The scientific name is Columbina inca and they are found from Panama north through all of Central America and Mexico into much of the Southwestern USA. Here’s just one photo:
It’s fun to “REDISCOVER” what you already have! A new collection of photo galleries has been created in my big main gallery, to display butterfly photos I made in other countries before moving to Costa Rica, especially during my last 10 years in the USA, where I found that I had old photos for 64 species! Not as many in other countries visited, particularly since I was not focused on butterflies back then! 🙂 There is a main “folder” Gallery for “other countries” with country galleries in that or in the case of the U.S., another folder with Taxonomy Family folders for a lot more butterflies! These new galleries are organized as follows . . .
What I can find online (Wikipedia link) about this plant is that it is in the genus of Physalis, with “approximately 75 to 90 flowering plant species in the nightshade family (Solanaceae), which are native to the Americas and Australasia.” ~says Wikipedia
Variously call Chinese Lantern, Japanese Lantern, Bladder Cherry, Ground Cherry, Tomatillo (a red or gold fruit grows inside the lantern or bladder). I have seen them in other parts of Costa Rica and finally tried to research online. I won’t venture to guess which of the up to 90 species this particular plant is. 🙂
I made these 2 photos across the driveway from my garden, on my landlord’s property where they appear to be a wild vine climbing up another plant. I hope to eventually learn more about them. These two shots seem to show them at different stages of development.
