Accept this red berry gift from a Prothonotary Warbler and expect a lot of cool birds in tomorrow’s post about my wet boat trip today. I’m too tired to do a good report tonight but staying in tomorrow. Hasta mañana.
No rain today – so far at 3pm! I had a wonderful 6am birding hike with birding guide Kevin and returned for breakfast and the morning photographing wildlife from my cabin terrace – amazing!
Below is a slideshow of a few of today’s photos – mostly birds but some other animals. Tomorrow Kevin and I go on a boat trip through the mangroves which always yields a lot of birds rain or shine. Then over the weekend I plan to just enjoy walking the forests that surround me here and the really good food someone else is preparing! 🙂 And oh yeah, a night hike one of those nights which is always interesting!
And I’m hearing thunder now, so rain tonight which is always the best time and well, it just started at 3:42! 🙂
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Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval [tropical] forests, … temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature. No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.
I left early this morning, like at 4am from my house for a 5:30 flight arriving in Golfito at 6:35 after a brief stop in Puerto Jimenez – I just love flying in these small planes even when it is cloudy like this morning.
Here the bird photographed today in the rain:
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And here are some shots of the grounds of my lodge for the week:
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And other animals seen today:
AgoutiCommon Basilisk, adult maleCommon Basilisk, juvenile male
Tomorrow I leave early for a short flight to Golfito in the south of Costa Rica for a week at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge in the Piedras Blancas National Park,one of Costa Rica‘s birding hot-spots. And note that they only have Wifi in their main building, so my posts could be limited or certainly my correspondence will be. Part of being in the jungle! 🙂
I live to the left of San Jose. Nothing is terribly far within Costa Rica! It will be a 30 minute flight and a 25 minute drive from Golfito Airport. Costa Rica is the same square miles as West Virginia in size as a comparison for Americans.
AND ZOOMING IN ON THE AREA:
Notice it is across the big Gulf of Dulce from my favorite Corcovado NP. And my last visit there was to Danta Corcovado Lodge about where the capital P is located in the park name, Corcovado NP. I flew to Puerto Jimenez for that.
The Bronzed Cowbird above fooled me at first because his eyes or irises are not red, but then I read that the juvenile has a dark or black iris. ID is always a challenge but also part of the fun. Both of these birds joined me for breakfast this morning around 6:30 or later, along with a Kiskadee and a Yigüirro.
Below is the Blue-crowned Motmot, one of my favorite birds here. But I have had better shots than this. Here he is in the shadows and a good way off with his magnificent tail partly hidden and it appears broken. Still, this is part of the joy of living in the tropics! And my terrace!Plus this morning is practice for tomorrow’s trip! 🙂 Another post to follow this, introducing my next trip.
Blue-crowned Motmot
Blue-crowned Motmot with one tail feather missing
And since the header format cropped off his tail, here is another shot of the Bronzed Cowbird:
Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird?
“Pitahaya” is not a Spanish word but rather a word from the indigenous people of Costa Rica and what everyone calls this unusual fruit or flower growing on a cactus plant. It is used most popularly in bebidas or fruit drinks like American Smoothies and the fruit is called “Dragon Fruit” or “Pitaya” in the states. The inside is gelatin like and pink in color with tiny black seeds and very sweet.
The photo is of one David brought to Spanish class the other day and I thought I would share another one of out unusual foods here in Costa Rica (and all over Latin America and in Asia). Read about it on Wikipedia (en español) or in English as pitaya/dragon fruit.
Variegated Squirrel – La ardilla centroamericana (Sciurus variegatoides)
Yeah, I know, that’s what old men do – watch squirrels in the park! 🙂 But I haven’t done that until recently and snapped a few shots with my phone camera. These are called Variegated Squirrels in English, the most common squirrel all over Costa Rica. I hope that in the future I will sit in the park more whether watching people or squirrels or just relaxing or reading. It is a good place to be! To be in nature and to be in community. And eventually we will have a newly remodeled park which will necessitate more photos! 🙂
Note that we also have a lot of birds in the park also with parrots coming to the tops of one group of palms at one particular time of year and we also have had some Montezuma Oropendola nests in another part of the small park. I’m hoping they keep the trees with the remodeling!
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
~John Muir
Rough translation of sign in park: “Celebrate your life, take care of nature”
The above link is a really interesting article in one of our online English newspapers. Chocolate comes from the cacao tree which will only grow 20 ° north or south of the equator and in the correct amount of humidity. Central America and particularly Costa Rica are perfect for that. West Africa has been good for cocoa, but global warming, higher temperatures and the desertification of West Africa along with some plant diseases there may someday, possibly by 2050, eliminate all cocoa farming in West Africa. They are experimenting with hybrid plants there says this month’s National Geographic magazine, but already people are saying the resulting chocolate is not as good.
Cacao is grown all over Costa Rica as small family farm businesses and by some of the indigenous peoples as I described in my recent visit to the Bribri Watsi village and earlier from my visit to Bribri Yorkin as we watched their children suck the sweet white stuff from around the cacao beans and we tried it ourselves.
If you ever visit Costa Rica there are many chocolate tours you can take to learn the complicated process for making one of the world’s favorite sweets.
“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
― Charles M. Schulz
Here’s the LINK to the photo book of my trip two weeks ago: Caribe Tuanis Click title to REVIEW the book electronically in my bookstore, all pages for free! Best seen at Full Screen!
Jumping at Bribri Watsi Waterfall
The title is my fusion of two Costa Rica slang words and is not grammatically correct Spanish! One Tico tried to get me to add “El” like “The” in English. No. “Caribe” is CR slang or short for Caribbean which I think is used in English some also and the slang word “Tuanis” is like the American slang of earlier years “Cool.” So my English translation of the title would be “Caribbean Cool.”
Three-toed Sloth this year – Rare face shot
Since my last year’s book on the Caribbean was all birds and nature, I wanted to do something different this year, featuring teens jumping off a waterfall and surfers riding the waves plus Bribri Indigenous People, and of course the Rastas of all Caribbean Culture. Enjoy!
My Costa Rica Birds Gallery is still big with almost 270 species of birds included but is a little cleaner and easier to use now, especially for birders. Instead of one gallery with a jumble of 400 to 500 photos arranged alphabetically, it is now a folder with a SEPARATE GALLERY FOR EACH SPECIES so there is no longer the confusion of having multiple images of some species, but when you browse you will only look at one image of each species and then click it if you want to see that image larger or see multiple images of that bird. A separate gallery for each species. That will make it even more efficient as my collection of bird photos grows and gets better!
Plus birders will especially like that I have them ARRANGED BY FAMILIES or in the order found in the book The Birds of Costa Rica, A Field Guide.
Emerald Toucanet — One of the 269 species in my new CR Birds gallery.
And you might want to know that I am uploading the full-size image here so you can DOWNLOAD ONE FOR FREE and use as you wish or PURCHASE A PHOTO (like the above Toucanet) as a “Card,” “Paper Print,” “Wall Art” print (I’m favoring high-gloss metal now) “Keepsake,” or “Phone Case.” It is a service of Smugmug.com with multiple vendors at their prices with me getting only $1 per order which is okay with me because I’m retired now! 🙂 And not in business! At the bottom of each enlarged photo is a green button BUY for you to go to the purchase options. Check it out for all the neat options for some of my birds or other Costa Rica photos!
Flash Postscript! 2 of my photos made the final 10 cut for header of the Facebook Group Atenas Costa Rica InfoMine are the Spanish Dancers & the Pink & Blue Sunset Mountains. For a header I prefer the sunset photo as better for type face going over it, but I do not expect to win, believing that either the orange tree or green landscape will win and of those two I prefer the landscape also because it is better for titles printing over it. Members of the facebook group vote for the new group header photo.
“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson
Hopefully I am beyond 10,000 by now! 🙂 ¡Pura Vida!
