I’m happy to announce that the trip report photo book from my visit to El Silencio Lodge is finished and now available for you to preview electronically for free or order a copy if you like! 🙂 It’s 60 pages with 97 photos of a truly incredible place! See it in my Blurb Bookstore at https://www.blurb.com/b/10309436-el-silencio.
Feature photo is front cover and the back cover is below:
“God is the friend of Silence. See how nature — trees, flowers, grass — grows in silence . . .
It was raining every night at El Silencio Lodge, so waiting would not have helped! 🙂 But I enjoy night hikes that are provided in most Costa Rica wilderness lodges and you do see thing not normally seen in the day time. We saw less on this one because of the rain and that also made photography with only a cell phone not super good, but here’s 6 shots that are samples of even more we would have seen if not raining. Daniel was my guide on this hike and he included two miradors (vistas) which were interesting at night and sorry I did not try to photograph the views, though again the rain made it more difficult with less moonlight and no stars. CLICK image to enlarge . . .
Cloud Forest Anole
Tiny Frog Unidentified
Cloud Forest Anole
Strange Insect Unidentified
Red-Knee Tarantula
“Letter Tree”
“Between every two pines there is a doorway to a new world.” ~John Muir
¡Pura Vida!
You might also like my Amphibians Gallery, most of which were photographed on Night Hikes all over Costa Rica! 🙂
I got photos of only 5 species of butterflies during my week at El Silencio Lodge and Reserve, all new to me and difficult to identify – with 2 still unidentified! I also saw a lot of Blue Morphos and Yellows but simply too fast-moving – never stopping for a photo! CLICK an image to see it larger.
White-chain Oxeo
Unidentified – similar to Splendid Mapwing
Harmony Satyr
Harmony Satyr
Orange Mapwing
Orange Mapwing
Unidentified Ticlear or Heliconian
Butterflies at El Silencio Lodge & Reserve – September 2020
With the Hummingbird Garden here dominated by two species of hummingbirds (at home, just one now), it was nice to see these bees in that garden. I’ll share hummers later.
As I continue to see more butterflies than birds in my garden, I found this one yesterday morning after breakfast which I haven’t seen in awhile, the Banded Peacock. He is very common all over Costa Rica and I was seeing more in May and June here. I do have better photos than these in my Banded Peacock Gallery, if interested.
Or is it another type of White? Yellow? Sulphur? You butterfly enthusiasts, especially in Costa Rica, let me know if you know for sure. It was in my garden in Atenas this morning. The closest match in my Swift Guide is the Common Melwhite (though the yellow-white color placement seems a little different), while the flying photo looks a little bit like the White-angled Sulphur, the yellow is greatly different and it doesn’t have the four brown spots, eliminating that option. For now I’m sticking with Common Melwhite (Melete lycimnia isandra) (Butterflies of America link). Whew! Butterfly ID is hard sometimes! 🙂
This trip to Xandari I photographed more butterflies than birds, which I think is a first for anywhere I have visited in Costa Rica. Xandari has always given me a lot of butterflies, partly because of their lush gardens, but today I have photos of 16 different species, a new record! Multiple are new species for me, bringing my butterfly collection up to somewhere near 120 in my Butterfly Gallery. Check it out! Quite a variety!
The only WordPress inline Gallery that now allows labels, which I want to include, is their “regular” gallery which crops each image to same size/shape, meaning you need to click on an image to see the full-size presentation of each and I prefer my framing than their boxes. Clicking one also can start a manual slide show of all 16.
There are dozens of species of Skipper Butterflies and in fact I have 17 plus species in my Costa Rica Butterflies Gallery. This morning after breakfast I walked into the garden to see what I could find and though I saw more, here are 4 different species of Skipper Butterflies I got usable photos of – CLICK to enlarge:
Esmeralda Longtail Skipper
Chisos Banded Skipper
Plain Longtail Skipper
Yellow-rimmed Skipper
Four Skippers at Breakfast this Morning
Border Opens to More Countries: Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and China. So if you live in one of those “safer” countries, you can be a tourist in Costa Rica! Come on over! The water’s fine! 🙂 You will have to be certified free of Coronavirus and follow a few new health rules, but everything else is great as always here!
I have studied the Swift Guide to Butterflies of Mexico & Central America plus the internet and cannot find an exact match, but certain it is in the “Poanes” scientific family name with many called something Poan Skipper, thus my generic name here. It is my second time to see this butterfly in my garden, see my Poan Skipper Gallery for the other one. I have decided it was the angle of sunshine that caused my first one to appear more orange and thus I originally called it “Evergreen Poan Skipper” which is not correct, partly because book says they live only in Mexico. Maybe we have an un-labeled Costa Rica version? Hey! It still happens in all categories of wildlife here. 🙂
The subtitle of my newest travel book is “When you look through the eyes of a child” describing how I tried to present this photo-travel book on Maquenque Eco-Lodge and Reserve. Yes – it is in Spanish this time but for you English-only people, don’t worry! All the photo captions are in both languages and the poem from which I got the subtitle is also in both languages, and here it is in English:
“Everything seemed possible, when I looked through the eyes of a child. And every once in a while; I remember, I still have the chance to be that wild.” ― Nikki Rowe
It’s a photo book with 141 photos, including photos of the 61 species of birds I got this visit. THE ELECTRONIC PREVIEW IS FREE, so go to this link or click the cover image below and you can see all 92 pages of the book for free! Of course full-screen is best for photos! 🙂
