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This first day of butterflies will be 4 I photographed on the Arena Observatory Lodge property with the preferred 2-shots: spreadwing & folded wing. Of course they don’t always cooperate for those two views helpful in identification! 🙂
With 4 birds in today’s post and 4 more tomorrow I will have shared all that I got useable photos of on the Christmas trip. And no, I got no “lifers” or first-time seen birds on this trip, but that is expected when you have photos of more than 359 species of birds in Costa Rica! It’s getting harder to find a new species! 🙂
Trying to group birds by size is not real accurate, but now it leaves me with 4 “smaller” birds for tomorrow and 4 others for the next day! 🙂 Then I will get on to other wildlife and the many butterflies photographed at Arenal Observatory!
Yes, you can sometimes see a hawk at Arenal Observatory, but I did not this time nor the two larger toucans, Keel-billed and Yellow-throated, which I have every other visit. But these 5 are still impressive birds and there’s six photos because the male and female of the Great Curassow are so different. I debated about putting the Collared Aracari here, since he’s the smaller toucan, but he seemed too big for the “medium birds” post that’s next. 🙂 And despite their bad reputations, both vultures are beautiful (when flying) and so important to the ecology of our lands!
As usual, one photo for the emailed notice with the others in the online post . . .
Possibly my favorite bird seen at Arenal Observatory Lodge with the only other place seen so far being at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge at Piedras Blancas National Park near Golfito. The rich colors make this bird very attractive though he/she tends to stay behind the limbs and leaves of trees with berries, thus difficult to photograph! 🙂
Three more shots below including one eating a berry, plus you can see my other shots of this bird in my Bay-headed Tanager GALLERY! I love my growing collection of Costa Rica birds! 🙂
This was my fourth time to visit Arenal Observatory Lodge (link to lodge website) and the second time as my annual “Christmas Getaway!” The first two days we had a lot of rain & wind unlike the other Christmas visit and I thought it was not going to be a good place for Christmas this year, but then Christmas Day was a bright blue-sky, sunshiny day and we had a mixture of weather my remaining 4 nights there, and though I initially thought I didn’t see as much wildlife, I actually did pretty good with 27 species of birds and more butterflies and “other wildlife” than before! So – No big toucans or monkeys! I had a lot of other wildlife and some of my best frog photos plus more butterflies! 🙂
Also, I had less energy than on the previous trips here (cancer recovery is slow) and I scheduled no early-morning guided bird walk like usual, so to have 27 birds on my own is okay! 🙂 And I will be sharing those bird and butterfly photos in future days on this blog when I finally get them organized.
So . . . YES! I continue to rate Arenal Observatory Lodge as one of the best places in Costa Rica for birds and for my nature fix AND also for the lodge services with an excellent room and gourmet food, surrounded by one of the largest rainforests in the country! And yes, it is not cheap, but worth what you pay in my opinion. Superb guides, the best of other services, plus the best maintained wilderness trails that are featured below in this post, a birding tower, a big waterfall, and more birds, butterflies and trails than almost anywhere else! So yes – I will return to Arenal Observatory Lodge! But next time I’m going in May again, for the beautiful sunsets over the lake every night, and maybe monkeys then! 🙂 I think the sun moves further south this time of year, putting the sunset behind the mountains, but in May, it’s right over the lake! 🙂
Below is a Gallery of some rainforest trails at Arenal Observatory, then links to the photo galleries of my other 3 previous visits with a comparison of birds and other wildlife photographed. 🙂
From the top of a volcano to the mangroves at the ocean’s edge and even in the tiny garden behind my casita, I’ve daily photographed nature for 8 years here and called that photography “Nature as Art!” and shared it in this blog. 🙂
I like this Collins Online Dictionary definition:
Nature is all the animals, plants, and other things in the world that are not made by people, and all the events and processes that are not caused by people.
Thus in nature I worship God and find my peace & inspiration from Him, the creator of it all!
Each year I find it difficult to select only 12 photos from the year and I first tried to come up with 12 “categories” of nature to make sure I selected a variety, but that became as cumbersome as trying to have a “photo-a-month.” So I decided to just stick with “12 favorites,” even if more than 12 are favorites! 🙂
So, however labeled, here’s 12 photos I made in 2022!
Happy New Year and Pura vida! 🙂
To the nearly 500 email subscribers: I hope you read on for the other 11 favorite photos . . .
For my final morning post from Arenal Observatory Lodge, three photos which are sort of representative of what I photographed most while here this time with the weather eliminating some of my favorite subjects here, though there are still more things I photographed to be shared in the next few days or weeks including more of these three categories! 🙂
And these are not my favorites in each category, but rather representative ones from my last full day here . . .
¡Pura Vida!
Tomorrow I will give an evaluation of this visit and whether I recommend Arenal Observatory for Christmas Week.
As a waterfall lover, I don’t miss any waterfall that a lodge or park has and this “main” falls at Arenal Observatory Lodge is one of the nicer ones, and it’s my third time to visit it! There are other “seasonal” waterfalls here for when the rain is heavy, but the longer trails to them are more dangerous when wet for this old man who falls easily, so I haven’t tried any of them. 🙂
The people who were at the falls the same time as me were all Europeans from England, Holland, Germany and maybe one more country. We also have other countries represented at the lodge this week including Canada, Japan and China and though I haven’t met anyone from the states yet, there are most likely some here. The ones playing in the waterfall plunge pool are Europeans – 4 shots including this first scenic one for the email notice . . .