Category: Rainforest

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Scarlet-rumped Tanager

This one on the Caribbean Slope used to be called Passerini’s Tanager with the Pacific Slope’s called Cherrie’s Tanager, but now they are all called Scarlet-rumped Tanager (eBird link), yet eBird and others still use “Passerini’s” and “Cherrie’s” in parentheses after the new together name, especially with the females which are distinctly different. And you will see below that I have two photos of females with one either a Cherrie’s or a darker morph of the Passerini’s. Confusing? Yes! 🙂 And of course the new species name only describes the male which is, by the way, identical on both slopes! 🙂

Thus IN MY BIRD GALLERIES, I still have two galleries but added the new name in front of each:

Male Scarlet-rumped Tanager (Passerini’s), Chachagua Rainforest, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
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Chachagua Waterfalls

The feature photo is their main or largest waterfall with several other small ones like the one at the swim hole I showed in my May 16 Arrival at Chachagua Post. And repeated here:

Some swimmers get photos on those rocks by the little falls.

Their Main Waterfall . . .

Chachagua Waterfall, Chachagua Rainforest Hotel, Costa Rica

And tourists getting their photos by this falls . . .

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Sleeping Kingbird

One of the things different on the Night Hike at Chachagua Rainforest Hotel was that we saw more sleeping birds than I’ve seen on any other night hike all over Costa Rica. Our guide said this one was a Tropical Kingbird (eBird link) which looks like a baby or a little smaller than usual to me, but this one could be an immature or they just scrunched up tight for warmth and sleeping. 🙂 And the whiter stomach could have been the camera flash, made with a cell phone camera plus people’s flashlights. So I’m sticking with the ID our guide gave us. 🙂

Sleeping Tropical Kingbird, Chachagua Rainforest Hotel, Costa Rica.

And for comparison, here’s two more Tropical Kingbirds photographed in the daytime . . .

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Band-tailed Barbthroat

My favorite hummingbird seen or photographed on this trip was this Band-tailed Barbthroat which is not seen very often (only my second time). And I got only one useable photo before he flew off as do all hummingbirds. You can read about this uncommon species on eBird or see the one other I’ve photographed in my Band-tailed Barbthroat Gallery. The other one was at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge near Golfito (where I photographed almost twice as many species as here). This bird is found only in Central America and Northern South America.

This was indeed a fortunate find and on top of that, in decent light! 🙂 But only one good shot and he’s gone! 🙂 I had very little sunshine the whole week I was at Chachagua, just a few hours on Wednesday, so to get this beautiful bird in good light was a real blessing! My trip gallery is up now but unfortunately is filled with a lot of low-light photos. Sorry!

¡Pura Vida!

TRIP GALLERY: May 2022, Chachagua Rainforest Hotel

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Chachagua Trip Gallery

Though I still have another week’s worth of blog posts about my visit to Chachagua Rainforest Hotel, I have also completed the photo gallery on this trip for anyone who wants to see all the shots from this trip together in one place. 🙂 CLICK on the image of first page of gallery below which this time is all in just 3 folders: Birds, Other Wildlife and Hotel Grounds.

First Page of this “Trip Gallery” – CLICK to visit the gallery.

If that image click doesn’t work, try this new SmugMug Gallery Address URL: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2022-May-16-21-Chachagua-Rainforest-Hotel-San-Ramon-Alajuela

¡Pura Vida!

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Black-striped Sparrow

This sparrow is said to be fairly common though I’ve only seen it in 3 other places as shown in my Black-striped Sparrow Gallery. You can read about this one of many sparrows in Costa Rica on the eBird website. Here’s 4 photos I made at Chachagua Rainforest Hotel . . .

Black-striped Sparrow, Chachagua Rainforest Hotel, San Ramon Canton, Costa Rica.
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Western Pygmy-Blue, Brephidium exilis

UPDATE & CORRECTION, April 2024:

I made a big mistake when I first identified this back in 2022. The real identity is Simple Sarota, Sarota acantus. Sorry for any inconvenience! I first made the correction with a blog post April 14, 2024: Correcting a Butterfly ID. Then later decided I should make it here also.

I’m still going through photos from my visit to Chachagua Rainforest Hotel in San Ramon Canton of Alajuela Province and just discovered a new favorite that has taken a lot of work with the photos to get them visible. They are of a teeny tiny butterfly the size of a fingernail or at most my thumbnail! And with an internet search I discovered that it is a Western Pygmy-Blue, Brephidium exilis (Wikipedia article link). In my photos he/she is on the leaf of a flower and then on the stem of a flower. It is about the size of a fingernail or thumbnail, the smallest I’ve ever photographed and websites say it is one of the smallest in the world and the smallest in the Americas, found from the western U.S. south through Venezuela. They come in many color combinations and I think mine is prettier than any I saw online! 🙂 It wasn’t included in my earlier Rainforest Butterflies post because I had not processed these photos yet, made on my last day there in one of their gardens.

Western Pygmy-Blue Butterfly, Chachagua Rainforest Hotel, San Ramon, Alajuela, Costa Rica
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Rainforest Butterflies

I managed to get photos of 6 butterflies at Chachagua Rainforest Hotel out of about 10 different species I saw. These aren’t great photos but they document what I saw all over the hotel property from gardens to the lakes. Of these 6, four are first-time-seen butterflies for me, all but the Yellow and the White Peacock. Here’s one photo for the email announcement of this post, then all 6 are in a gallery in the full post online.

Unidentified Butterfly at Chachagua Rainforest Hotel, San Ramon, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
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