In nature everything is always changing and nowhere is that more obvious than in the leaves. Yesterday my attention was grabbed by this small dead leaf curled up in the larger green and very living leaf of a different plant which will soon let it slide on to the ground to renew the life of all the living things around it as the dead leaf becomes nourishment for the other living plants. And what can I learn from this? Maybe about change, like the changes my life continues to surprise me with, and maybe, as this little leaf, I will add nourishment to another life somewhere? 🙂 Learning from nature . . .
“Change”
“Learn character from trees, values from roots and change from leaves”
I’m back home for awhile and one of the first contrasts with the big city was the green field across from my house, seen here at ground level . . .
Grazing place for cows, hiding place for Fer-de-lance and a peaceful place for me!
And online I found a poem that expresses some feeling of my front yard “green field,” though I would never lay down in this one with the cow patties and snakes! 🙂
One of my blog readers, Patrick, who is thinking about beginning his retirement in Costa Rica (like I should have!) shared with me the just-released new hiking guide available on hiking coast to coast across Costa Rica. It’s first on his agenda here! Are you interested in such a hike?
There’s also a newer video of the trail than the one I showed earlier plus more new info on the website and I found a good “Make the Leap” story I’m also linking! 🙂 . . .
Saturday morning in Atenas I checked with my new internet order-delivery service called “Atenas WebShop” and had two packages, one a new paperback book from Amazon.com, Dragonflies and Damselflies of Costa Rica, A Field Guide by Dennis Paulson and William Haber (Link to Amazon ordering). It’s also available direct from the publisher, Cornell University Press.
It is a very thorough and scientific book and the first I’ve found anywhere here to help me identify these odonatan insects that I occasionally photograph. They have detailed descriptions and photographs of all 283 Dragonflies and Damselflies identified in Costa Rica with more being discovered frequently here.
I will use it to try and identify the ones I already have in my Dragonflies and Damselflies Photo Galleries, though it will not always be easy as there are some finely detailed differences between many species that all of my photos are not good enough to show, but at least I will have more labeled than before! 🙂
Now I just wish someone would develop as good a field guide for the butterflies of Costa Rica! A much bigger job! And until then I will continue to use the Butterflies of Mexico & Central America book for my IDs.
This Rufous-collared Sparrow (eBird link) is Latin American, found from the hills of Chiapas, Mexico to the southern tip of South America, including throughout the central hill country of Costa Rica. Every time I see one, I remember my first trip to Costa Rica in 2009 when I saw and photographed my first one at Savegre Hotel, San Gerardo de Dota. Memorable because it was a mother bird feeding her juvenile an earthworm. You can see that photo and others in my Rufous-collared Sparrow Gallery. Or in my travel gallery, 2009 Birding Tour. Pura vida from that very first visit here!
Rufous-collared Sparrow, Best Western Hotel, San Jose, Costa Rica
A lot of American, Canadian and European retirees choose to spend their last years in the beautiful land of nature called Costa Rica. And I am amazed at how many of them get a house somewhere and just sit on the porch, leaving only for the many necessary functions including immigration paperwork, shopping, medical services, a few for church, etc. While some take an occasional trip to see other parts of Costa Rica, there seem to be only a very small number like me who have a passion for seeing every “nook and cranny” of this beautiful natural paradise. And wow! What most of these gringos are missing! 🙂
For more than two years of the past 6, I traveled to a different park, reserve, or nature lodge every month. Last year I decided to slow it down to one place every two months, then got even that slowed down with the Coronavirus Pandemic. While this year was scheduled for a trip every two months before the villain Cancer came into my life. Meaning only God knows how many more places I will get to visit or revisit as I have been going back to favorite places more lately. Either way I get to be immersed in nature, my passion!
One wall of my living room is covered with photos of birds I’ve photographed here and another wall behind my dining table has photos of me on adventures around the world from Africa to Tennessee with a metal print of my social media logo, meme, or “gravatar!” 🙂 And below that gravatar is a map of the many places I’ve visited in Costa Rica. I just updated that map including my anticipated trip to Bosque del Cabo on Osa Peninsula this July for my 81st birthday, the only “new” place this year. The rest of the year I have 2 or maybe 3 scheduled repeat visits to favorite places, assuming I will be able to travel: Caribe Puerto Viejo and South Pacific Uvita for sure with Tambor Bay a maybe.
Birds Wall
Adventure Wall
Since I’m not sure how much more traveling I will get to do here in my final years paradise, I decided to share the updated map that is on the wall mentioned above. Here:
Places I’ve visited in Costa Rica over 6 years in no particular order.
And just for fun, here’s the Google map that shows where Google has tracked me going all over Costa Rica with the number of times. Of course the solid red blotch is the Central Valley where I live and they’ve tracked me moving around near home a lot! 🙂
Where Google has “tracked me.” This map is more than a year old. And I have no explanation for the dot out in the Pacific Ocean. A Google error I assume. I have not been that far away from land! 🙂
“Jobs fill your pockets, adventures fill your soul.”
I’m back to sharing nature from my garden again for a while and this morning the first thing I saw from my terrace was this Variegated Squirrel (Sciurus variegatoides) is a tree squirrel in the genus Sciurus, the most common squirrel of the 4 or 5 species of squirrels found in Costa Rica. He can be seen at many elevations and is more numerous than any of the others and varies somewhat in looks and color combinations with black, white, gray and reds or oranges.
This Variegated one is found only in Central America from Southern Mexico to Panama and is the most common throughout Central America. For anyone really into squirrels, the 4 others said to be in Costa Rica are the Central American dwarf or pygmy squirrel, Microsciurus alfari LR/lc; Deppe’s squirrel, Sciurus deppei LR/lc; Red-tailed squirrel, Sciurus granatensis LR/lc; and Bangs’s mountain squirrel, Syntheosciurus brochus LR/nt.
And my first afternoon walk was cut short because the clouds literally moved in as shown in earlier post with a sort of mist, not exactly rain, but my camera was getting wet and time to go in! 🙂 See all 8 photos from the walk . . .
