. . . is one I never tire of and though the same, it is slightly different every morning with changing light, sky, clouds and foliage. I am so thankful to live retired in a tranquil little farming town in what might be the most nature-centered and ecology-minded little country in the world! We use 99% renewable electricity and are slowly but steadily moving towards electric cars and buses and have more than 25% of the country’s land set aside in reserves or national parks and we still plant trees! Pura vida!
View from my terrace every morning at breakfast + birds & butterflies! 🙂
I’m starting to see more birds in my garden trees now with yesterday and today including a Keel-billed Toucan, Squirrel Cuckoo, Gray-headed Chachalaca, White-winged Dove, Red-billed Pigeon, Clay-colored Thrush, Great Kiskadee. Rufous-naped Wren, and today a Summer Tanager Female which was the only decent photo I got. Here’s three shots of her at different angles . . .
Coming down the driveway in early morning I noticed something white in the tops of my neighbors Red Palms or Palmas Roja, an ornamental plant, not a tree and snapped this shot on the cell phone . . .
Then I go get my camera and go for a closer look seen in the next three photos with not a single spider seen anywhere! I will try to research these online to learn more about them, but it looks like a huge “spider city” is being built! 🙂
Again I photograph one in my garden that I cannot positively ID. The white fringe on the wings makes it a Cloud-forest Poan or Snow-fringed Skipper (Poanes niveolimbus) while the back and shoulders are more like the Inimical Poan (Poanes inimica) and the red-orange coloring overlaps with many of the Poans and other Skippers too, plus the tail on this one doesn’t match any of the above, so much to my disappointment, I may have to mark it “Can’t Identify!” Though I’m leaning toward the “Snow-fringed Skipper!” 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Check out some of my other Skippers in my GALLERY: Hesperiidae – SKIPPERS (37+) where there are more unidentified plus many more named. And so far, the online websites have been no help to me on this one.
The birds seem to be coming back to my garden little by little, though this noisy little chicken-sized bird never completely left! 🙂 I usually look for interesting behavior shots with them, but when I saw this one in one of my Yellow-bell Trees I thought this might be considered a “portrait” of sorts. Read about Gray-headed Chachalaca on eBird or to see some of the many photos I’ve made over the years, check out my Gray-headed Chachalaca GALLERY.
Gray-headed Chachalaca, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
I never before thought of my garden as a place of carnage, but insects eating other insects is quite normal and helps with the balance and ecology – then I witnessed it first hand this past Tuesday morning as I focused my camera on what I hoped was a new butterfly species (it was!). This, my first Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak (Strymon istapa) was flying and landed on one of my Heliconia flowers (1st photo below) and when I snapped this photo that tiny Jumping Spider (Salticidae) down below him in the photo jumped up on the little butterfly (with attached silk thread) and grabbed the butterfly by its head, biting it with a venomous bite that instantly paralyzed and will soon kill the butterfly which the Jumping Spider will eat. I did not stay around for the full meal, but photos of three stages follow this one. 🙂
Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak above and Jumping Spider below. Yes! He jumped that far!
3 more photos below of the capture, paralyzing and preparing to eat.
It is looking like someone may soon buy this property and live in the big house on top of our hill as my new landlord, so I walked up to the now vacant big house the other day for some “Hillside Vistas” of what they can see from there that I can’t from lower down on our hill. Nothing spectacular and the mountains opposite us that I usually photograph were covered in clouds, so here’s some closer views that I can’t see from my house and I like what looks like hillside farm land near us that I hope will not be covered with houses anytime soon! 🙂 Que sera, sera . . .
That is my best effort identification and the closest match in my book, Dragonflies and Damselflies of Costa Rica, A Field Guide by Dennis Paulson and William Haber. But for those who care about ID, note that this one is very similar to Calvert’s Dancer female and the wings just like the Cerulean Dancer female, though mine here has a darker body and tail. I’m finding Dragon and Damselfly ID pretty difficult as I haven’t learned the subtle differences in body parts yet. 🙂 This one was in my garden the other day.
Black-fronted Dancer Damselfly female, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Finally! A toucan where I can photograph him! 🙂 Even though it was raining all morning yesterday, the sky overcast white, and he was two houses over, uphill! 🙂 I was still excited because this year I haven’t had as many close to my house or really many birds of any kind it seems. This is where my 150-600mm lens was absolutely essential and still I just barely caught him resting in a dead tree and trying to eat a nut which he later dropped. Not like the photos made in my garden or on trips, but still fun to see and try to capture!
