Category: Mountains

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Stately Female Quetzal

While the male is more “showy” with his very long two green feathers that really impress when he is flying (that I can never capture in the camera), the female is just as colorful and maybe more “stately” in my opinion. Only one shot here, but you can see my other photos in this trips “Trip Gallery Sub-gallery”: Resplendent Quetzal Female.

Resplendent Quetzal Female, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica

And you who have visited the tropics might look at her tail and say that she looks like a Trogon – and you would be basically correct, in that the Quetzal is in the Trogon family, just a little more colorful and showy than most Trogons, though some of them are pretty colorful too! Just no long green feathers like the Quetzal Male.  :-)

Today is the day I leave San Gerardo de Dota to return to my home in Atenas, Alajuela Province, but I will continue sharing images from these beautiful mountains over the next week or so and be developing a new trip gallery, so keep reading! :-)

¡Pura Vida!

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A “Parade” of Quetzals

Well, I call it a “parade” because I’ve never seen so many Resplendent Quetzals in one place before. I got a different guide yesterday after getting no good Quetzal photos on Christmas day and told him that my goal was to get some good photos of Quetzals! He asked “Are you willing to pay $5 to go on someone’s private property?” I said “Yes!” and he said “We will go to the best place to get photos of Quetzals.” And it was! But I didn’t even get the name of it, if it has a name! It is behind a farmer’s house where he has a bunch of Wild Avocado trees planted and built several perches near them because they like to perch before and after grabbing a Wild Avocado. Note that these are much smaller or about 1/4 the size of our human Avocados. It is interesting to see them eat one. They put the whole thing in their mouth and eat all the Avocado meat off the seed, then spit the seed out. :-)

Here is only one photo because of slow internet here, but you can go to the only sub-gallery I’ve created yet in my trip galleries and see all 17 shots and most are different individuals with 2 or 3 photographed twice. It is simply called Resplendent Quetzal Male gallery and will ultimately be a part of this trip’s gallery. Tomorrow I’ll do the same thing with the female Quetzal which were there in almost equal number with the males who would fly acrobatically over the females to impress them. And if you are interested in seeing some very different photos of Quetzals from my earlier trips to San Gerardo de Dota and Monteverde, check out my Resplendent Quetzal GALLERY going back to my first trip here in 2009! :-) Quetzals are just one of the special treats in Costa Rica!

Resplendent Quetzal Male, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica.

¡Pura Vida!

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A “Lifer” Bird First Morning!

Right after breakfast in a garden behind the restaurant I got several shots of this male and a few weaker shots of the female Yellow-bellied Siskin – Spinus xanthogastrus (eBird link). Because the wifi or internet is weaker or slower here I will be trying to use only one photo per post but to include both male & female, two photos today! :-)

Yellow-bellied Siskin, Male, Hotel Savegre, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica.
Yellow-bellied Siskin, Female, Hotel Savegre, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica.

See my gallery of Yellow-bellied Siskin with more shots from this morning. This morning I went to a new garden on the hotel campus and have a lot of photos of a lot of birds that I will slowly share, one bird at a time and then tomorrow morning I plan to go to Batsu Gardens across the road for even more birds. I did get a couple of butterflies this morning and a caterpillar, but this trip will be mostly birds it appears! :-)

¡Pura Vida!

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Enchanted by the Hills

Yes, it’s just me, but I continue to be enchanted or mesmerized by the hills opposite me and Atenas Central. And I keep trying to capture that something that is so enchanting, but never seem to totally catch it! :-) Though each one seems to be a little different! Here’s one more effort in a 3-pix panorama with a 150mm lens from my terrace at breakfast. I consider myself “rich” with the beauty that surrounds me!

The Coffee Hills of Atenas, Costa Rica as seen from Residential Roca Verde.

And the gallery for these shots is titled: ”From My Roca Verde Terrace“

¡Pura Vida!

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November Macaw Lodge GALLERY!

Finally, I have the photo gallery for my November trip to Macaw Lodge completed, just 6 days before I begin my Christmas Trip to San Gerardo de Dota! I have been very busy since that last trip! 🙂 I will now blog those 6 days before Christmas trip on my garden and some more from Macaw Lodge. :-)

This was just my second time to go to Macaw Lodge which is at the closest national park to where I live. And though I’ve visited 4 other lodges/hotels near that park, Macaw is my favorite and I’m likely to be returning! :-) You can read about the lodge on their website linked here: Macaw Lodge, and it is a lot more than a yoga retreat which the site seems to emphasize! :-) And now for my unique (and I think good) collection of photos from just 3 nights at Macaw Lodge last month, click the gallery image below or go to this web address: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2023-November-21-24-Macaw-Lodge-Carara-NP

CLICK image to visit this gallery.

¡Pura Vida!

AND ABOUT MY OTHER BLOG POST TODAY: Back in January I read an article about fun or funny “Annual National Days” in the U.S. and quickly did a blog post on what I thought was the most interesting one for each of the 12 months and today is the last one on “Underdog Day!” I promise not to do anything like that again, though it was kind of fun when I put together all 12 posts! :-) Tomorrow I’m back to only one nature blog post each day! My real passion! :-) 

¡Hasta luego!

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Rooftop Iguanas

Though I haven’t noticed them as much recently, I think they are always around, maybe a family, as one of these looks younger than the other.

Black Spiny-tailed Iguana, Atenas, Costa Rica

The featured photo is of the older one on the roof, so email recipients have to go to the website by clicking the post title. 🙂 For more photos of this species, go to their gallery: Black Spiny-tailed Iguana.

¡Pura Vida!

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Flowing from my heart . . .

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

~Proverbs 4:23

Yes, this blog started as a “reporting” of my experiences of living “Retired in Costa Rica” and the first few years have lots of “how to” or sharing my experiences of the big transition to a legal resident of Costa Rica. Now that I’m a “Residente Permanente,” it is more of the experiences “flowing from my heart,” and the God I love, and his beautiful natural world that he created for us to enjoy and manage. I hope my current nature blogging motivates just a few people to help save the natural world all around this globe, to love it and to be inspired by it while much of the world’s humans are systematically destroying forests and all the nature within! Nature is the theme of my blog now! But I will not change the name because that is still who I am, a retiree in Costa Rica! 🙂

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

~Albert Einstein

I remember as a child in El Dorado, Arkansas (14 miles from the Louisiana state line) walking the three blocks or so to a small city park with a little pond and being amazed at all the life and activity seen in just the shallow edges of the water and wanting to look at drops of that water through a microscope for the protozoa and other life a book had told me about.

WARNING: This is a longer than usual blog post but still with nature photos! 🙂

Continue reading “Flowing from my heart . . .”
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2 Views – 2 Smiles

Here’s what I see when I walk out my gate walking to town in the first shot, looking NNW, and the second shot is looking NNE from the driveway behind my house just before the rain started. 🙂

View from my driveway exit as I was walking to town.
Looking up one hill behind my house over George’s roof.

¡Pura Vida!

🙂

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Cloudy Morning Hills & Gallery Opening

The Hills of Atenas the other day (October 2). I tried to do a panorama that didn’t “catch” or all match, so this is just one section that depicts the clouds or fog in the hills surrounding Atenas many early mornings, as seen from my terrace. There seems to be something “magical” or “mysterious” happening when the morning air is like this. 🙂

Cloudy Morning in the Hills of Atenas, Costa Rica.

¡Pura Vida!

Report on Galería ARTenas Opening

Gallería ARTenas Opening

We had a great opening to our little art gallery yesterday with hundreds of people coming to see (and some buy) hundreds of pieces of art. I think it was a big success and that many people in Atenas will become regular visitors and customers. We have a VIP Opening November 5 (government officials, etc.) and the JIT or “Just in Time for Christmas” arts and crafts fair the second week of December, so lots of things planned to motivate return visits. I plan to work with the gallery until sometime in January and then I am going to phase out this old man who is finding it a little too much now at age 83, but after that I may have an item or two in the gallery on consignment but will go back to photography just for fun and sharing it on the blog. So keep reading this blog for my usual flow of nature photography. 🙂 ~Charlie

And a few shots from the Gallery Opening . . .

  • My 6 Wall Art Photos
  • Gallería ARTenas Opening
  • Gallería ARTenas Opening
  • Gallería ARTenas Opening
  • Gallería ARTenas Opening
  • Gallería ARTenas Opening
  • Gallería ARTenas Opening
  • Gallería ARTenas Opening
  • Young Tico Singer

¡Pura Vida!