Okay – an odd combination! 🙂 But I’m trying not to show too many birds at one time as I continue to share the many birds I photographed at Maquenque.
My collection from the past has much better images of the Pale-billed Woodpecker but I’m lucky to have even this shot, shooting through the jungle vines, limbs, leaves to a distant and constantly moving bird – but the pale -billed is not seen that often and I wanted to include him.
The woodcreeper was also difficult to shoot among the trees but I lucked into just this one decent shot (if enlarged). Bird-photography in the rainforest is a tough challenge sometimes, but very rewarding when you get even one shot! CLICK an image to enlarge it and better see the bird.
Streak-headed Woodcreeper
House Wren
Pale-billed Woodpecker
Black-cheeked Woodpecker
Clay-colored Thrush or Yiqüirro — National Bird of Costa Rica
Or you could call them “water birds” since they eat fish and other water creatures requiring water. 🙂 Because there are so many rainforests and bodies of water all over Costa Rica, most of these birds are fairly common here with the featured image being an exception: The Green Ibis is seen only in a few place, more rare than the White Ibis which was not seen here this year.
I’m still working on my bird photos of 60+ species and will continue to present them here in manageable groupings and then I will introduce a Maquenque 2020 Gallery where you can see all my photos from last week’s visit to my best birding lodge in Costa Rica! While still at Maquenque, I presented these 3 groups of birds on the blog (click titile to see):
In the post “On the Road” I mentioned that on our way back from Maquenque we stopped for coffee at Cinchona, and even though in the middle of the day, I photographed 6 species of birds while drinking one cup of coffee (10-15 minutes) AND 2 of them were lifers! That’s new birds for me! The new ones were the Bronze-tailed Plumeleteer and the Prong-billed Barbet. Every time I stop there I hope to get a shot of the Red-headed Barbet and after 3 stops, nada! But this time I got his uglier cousin. 🙂 CLICK to enlarge an image.
And this view of San Fernando Waterfall is a bonus when stopping at Soda Cinchona! 🙂 And you can see all my Costa Rica Waterfalls in my CR Waterfalls Gallery.
There are 4 kinds of Kingfishers here at Maquenque and so far I’ve photographed 3 of those species. I’ve seen Green Kingfisher here before but not this week so far. Here’s the three species I’ve got with two shots of the Amazon because he looks different in each shot. CLICK image to enlarge.
There are 4 species of Honeycreepers in Costa Rica and these three are easily seen all over the Maquenque Lodge & Reserve. Note the big difference in male and female of all three! CLICK image to enlarge.
Instead of traditional 4th of July fireworks I am enjoying the colors of parrots and toucans this weekend. I’ve photographed over 65 species of birds so far, so still way behind on presenting them all and decided to show just the two categories most foreigners consider the most colorful here! Enjoy my tropical fireworks show as a slideshow of 10 photos.
Today was my first “bird day” with what looks like will be around 40 species, but still not through processing nearly 2,000 photos! 🙂 So I will have to show the collection later and it looks like I could beat the 53 species I got here last year!
My interim post will be an interesting little oddity in nature. For whatever reason, the Giant Cowbird (a big blackbird) sometimes lay their eggs in the nest of the Montezuma Oropendola and the really good mother Oropendola hatches the egg and raises the child as her own (do the cowbirds know that?). I had heard about this but never seen it until today. At the rather ugly fruit feeder at the dining room I got this photo of a mother Oropendola feeding a juvenile (bigger than a baby) Giant Cowbird she evidently is raising it as her own child. Since the baby is in the blackbird family I somehow thought of the Black Lives Matter movement in the states and thought this might be considered a beautiful example in nature! Hope so! 🙂
Mother Montezuma Oropendola feeds a “baby” Giant Cowbird she is raising as her own child.
Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.
~Lao Tzu
And for you birders, I know it is a Giant Cowbird juvenile because he has red eyes, not obvious in my photo but in real life it is. No other blackbird has red eyes.
Can you believe that the tree house they assigned me to this year is named “Tarzan?” And I love it! Like they knew the little boy Charlie wanted to be Tarzan! Why it even comes with grape vines (see outside views) though I will not be swinging on them! And I was welcomed to my room by a visiting Keel-billed Toucan! See photo below.
And I doubt that Tarzan had a King sized bed or screens and ceiling fans, but I’m sure glad I do! It is hot and humid here like where I grew up in south Arkansas near the Louisiana line – hotter and more humid than Atenas which is in the hills.
CLICK a photo to enlarge it.
Outside Views
Inside Views
Our 3 hour drive took 4 hours with a lot of trucks on the roads today and the gravel road portion of the drive was in pretty rough condition – what it costs to get to real wilderness! 🙂 And yes, we are all wearing masks here, Costa Rica is smart enough to require it and everyone working here is in the same family – cool! And so nice! I’m the only guest until Friday when there will be 8 to 10 other guests for the weekend.
“Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.” – Irving Wallace
This morning I leave at 8 AM with Walter, my local transportation for out-of-Atenas trips, on a 3 hour drive north of here but still in our Alajuela Province. It’s on the San Carlos River near the Nicaragua border as a private nature reserve and eco-lodge that is one of my favorites in Costa Rica, where I’ve photographed more species of birds than any other one place and where I can sleep in a tree house room, watching howler monkeys and spider monkeys from my room. See my 2019 experience there and this short video of the virgen rainforest reserve says it all:
My Paradise Rainforest this week!
I will be here through next Monday – 6 nights in the tree house to celebrate my 80th birthday on Saturday the 4th of July! And, as long as the WiFi in their main building works, I will be posting blog reports every day! Maybe one tonight.
Because of world-wide increasing Coronavirus, the borders of Costa Rica remain closed to non-residents where we have the lowest infection rate in Latin America! But hotels, lodges like this one, and restaurants can open at 50% capacity to local residents only with required social distancing and masks, making places like this more pleasant (no “Ugly Americans” or “aggressive Japanese”) and less crowded. Two weeks ago they told me that in addition to me they had two couples coming for part of the week with me alone the other days, though that could change with late registrations! 🙂 Many Ticos are just now discovering the great tourism in their own country.
I will wear a mask when not eating and around other people, including my birding guide just to be extra cautious. I will not take their delightful boat trip to a little jungle village with great people that I enjoyed but will avoid this time due to COVID19 possibilities. I will mostly traipse through the jungle solo and stay safe from the virus. There have been NO CASES among the lodge employees (mainly one family) nor in the nearby town of Boca Tapada. But I will still be cautious because it is close to Nicaragua where the virus is more rampant and we are still getting new cases in Costa Rica.
“When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen.” – A.A. Milne
My BIG BOOTS Adventure . . .
Yep! I’m taking my big boots this trip because I’m going in a car and can! 🙂 Plus they fit me and the lodge loaners don’t always fit . . . and I’ll be in a rainforest during the rainy season so they are needed! And my poncho!
I know . . . the boots are dusty, but why clean when they will get muddy this week! Plus I had to empty out the spiders and spray with that bug spray before I consider putting my hand or foot inside! 🙂
As noted earlier, one of the things I’m doing more of during the “lock-down” time is trying get all of my old photos culled through and posted in one place.
One of the biggest collections is from my 10 years of volunteer work at Nashville Zoo and my Nashville Zoo Gallery is now completed. It includes one of my biggest collections of bird photos along with so many other animals and a really large number of people photos which was what the Zoo PR Dept. wanted a lot of. It was a nice re-living of many great memories at Nashville Zoo. And as I go through other photo files I expect to find more of Nashville Zoo, like when friends and family visited, I often took them to the zoo but haven’t gotten to those photos yet! 🙂
Organized in 6 super-galleries with many sub-galleries under each.
