My favorite time in my house is during breakfast on my terrace when I usually have many visitors and sometimes try to photograph them, whether bird, butterfly or other creature. This morning I managed to grab shots of 4 after trying and failing to get shots of two tiny orange & black butterflies that flew as a pair and never lighted on a flower for me. Shooting them in flight is very difficult and I failed. Both these butterflies and birds are regular repeats for me, but each one is a unique individual! 🙂
Finally – “the big book” – what I’ve been planning for nearly 6 years! Almost all the birds I’ve photographed since moving to Costa Rica in 2014. I haven’t finished photographing birds here, and next month at Maquenque Lodge I could easily get a photo I will regret is not in this book! But why not do it now, with the Coronavirus Down Time providing time to create and the year of my 80th birthday as a celebration excuse! 🙂 If I keep putting it off, there won’t be a book! And this one is so much bigger and better than my recent Roca Verde Birds book which was just birds in my yard!
Here’s the bookstore official description:
Click cover for preview. Best at full screen!
About the Book
Eighty-year-old retiree from Tennessee, Charlie Doggett, has lived in and explored the rainforests and cloud forests of Costa Rica for 6 years, sharing photos and experiences in his “Retired in Costa Rica” BLOG. This book has 420 bird photos from his blog – more than 300 species of birds, named in both English and Spanish with a complete English-names INDEX. At 230 photo pages, 10 X 8 inches, it’s a great gift or coffee table book about Costa Rica, printed on 100# Premium Lustre Gloss Photo Paper.
Walking to the supermarket Monday morning I crossed one of these “seasonal streams” or THE NASTY PLACE, a storm sewer creek where unfortunately some locals dump their “gray water” (sink & bath/shower water) which is always whitish from the soap, especially with the hand-washing emphasis these days. 🙂 There is no public sewage in little Atenas with everyone’s toilets going into their private septic tanks that work better without the abundance of “gray water.” Houses like mine have the gray water going into a “root-system-looking” group of pipes deep into the ground where the water goes through holes in the pipes and soaks down through dirt and rock purifying it before it gets to the underground aquifers, from which come our well-water or drinking water. 🙂 TMI?
As I crossed over the “bridge” (street over a concrete culvert or pipe) where the city is bulldozing to widen the road or bridge at that point (extend the concrete pipe), I see a Lesson’s Motmot, THE PRETTY BIRD, fly up from the stream to a tree and I quickly grab my cellphone for a photo at quite a distance and thus the herewith BAD PHOTOS! Yes, I know that I could carry my big camera with me everywhere I go, but just don’t find that very comfortable or convenient (especially in the supermarket) and settle for what I can get with the cellphone camera. And it is okay for buildings, people, or even flowers which let me get closer than the bird will! 🙂
Anyway – that’s my story! And I’m sticking with it! And I apologize if you find the part about “gray water” objectionable! 🙂 ¡Así es la vida! That’s life!
Look closely in upper left corner for the Motmot on a dead tree limb.Just consider this “cellphone pixelation art.” 🙂
Well . . . actually Red-billed Pigeons, in the rain! But after a great response on my “Rain Trees” post, I may do some more rain-themed posts. 🙂
I was on my terrace waiting on the delivery guy to bring my once-a-week “meal out” now “meal delivered” from Parrillada Androvetto. I usually have a grilled rib-eye steak but tonight (Friday) I tried their grilled Chorizo sausage which was very good and not too spicy. Well, anyway . . .
It was raining pretty hard with all the birds hiding in the big trees under leaves and limbs except this one loving couple, sitting on the power line like it were a nice sun-shiny morning! Of course their overlapping layers of feathers keep their bodies dry, but it still seemed a little unusual to me. Not singing in the rain, though one was grooming. Blurry raindrops are ugly but the birds are kind of cool! Pura vida!
When I watch an animal gazing like this I cannot help but wonder, “At what does he gaze?” Us humans tend to think he is looking for food, and maybe he is – but could he not also be gazing at some beauty unseen by me? A Rufous-naped Wren in my Guarumo Tree during my breakfast.
This is one of several birds I saw at breakfast this morning including a Lineated Woodpecker, Blue-gray Tanager, Clay-colored Thrush, White-winged Dove and some unidentified flyers. But this is the only one I got a photo of and my second time to see this species here. One of my guide books says they come as breeding visitors Feb to Oct. It is a sparrow-sized bird very much like the Red-eyed Vireo which is less common here.
I saw the other one March 28 on Calle Nueva with not as good a photo, but you can see it in my Yellow-Green Vireo gallery. Or read about them on eBird with a map showing where they are found. Happy birding!
Yellow-green Vireo, Atenas, Costa Rica
Yellow-green Vireo, Atenas, Costa Rica
“Not humans, but birds often witness the most beautiful mornings in this world!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan
¡Pura Vida!
P.S.
And oh yes, if I haven’t said yet, “Rainy Season” or “winter” (my favorite time of year) is well under way here with rain or showers every afternoon. I love it! Cooler, fresher air and so much greener! My garden loves it too! 🙂
Come join one of the guides at Selva Verde Lodge on a typical night hike in their Sarapiqui Private Reserve. Since people have not been able to visit them live, they put this”virtual night hike” on their YouTube Channel. One of the guides shows you the kinds of things I get to see live when I go on such night hikes at this and other lodges in Costa Rica. It is real and typical except for the short time of only 3 minutes! In real life there is more walking between the animals seen! 🙂
Featured image is from my Red-eyed Tree Frog Gallery and another night hike somewhere else (Danta Corcovado).
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And here’s the same guide on a DAYTIME TOUR of Selva Verde, Just be aware that in an hour or more tour you see a lot more wildlife than in these little 3 minute videos! But both are a taste of what I regularly see and photograph in my retirement in Costa Rica:
Sure! I photograph ALL BIRDS, anywhere I find them, and many zoos are great places for birds, with some you will never get to see in the wild!
One of my many “quarantine projects” is getting my old “pre-Costa Rica” photos in my online gallery where I can see, use or reference them. One of the biggest galleries I am now working on is the gazillion photos I made at Nashville Zoo, my favorite zoo in the whole world!
And my first sub-gallery for Nashville Zoo is of course BIRDS! Today (Monday) I just finished my Nashville Zoo BIRDS gallery with 65 different species and a few of my favorite photos from Nashville days. About 6 of those are “wild” birds that just flew in for the ponds, trees, etc. Just be aware that these are older photos made between 2004 & 2014 and some birds may not still be there and of course there are new animals there I’ve never seen! 🙂
First page of Nashville Zoo Birds alphabetically. Each is a gallery with multiple photos of that bird.
That got me thinking about the birds I’ve seen and photographed at other zoos, so today (Monday) I created a new page for my big BIRDS gallery: Links to BIRDS in ZOOSwith literally hundreds of bird photos from around the world and 40 zoos! Only a few birds in each zoo, none comparing to my Nashville Zoo collection, but a lot of birds and fun to collect! Staying busy at home! 🙂
What the links page look like in my BIRDS Gallery.
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:
The day for all of us to count birds where we are to help science better determine the stability of our fragile planet. Today, 9 May 2020 is GLOBAL BIG DAY of counting birds.
