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Saturday morning, both before and after breakfast, before leaving around noon, I got shots of the beautiful Hecale Longwing (Heliconius hecale) and a couple of moths with one quickly identified, using my Costa Rica Rainforest Moths book! 🙂 The other moth is unidentified, though I think he is in the Tiger Moth family. Here’s 2 shots of the Hecale and one of each moth . . .
I only photographed 12 butterflies here this year and the photos of 3 are too bad a quality to share, but I will share the other 9 which are all but one repeats of species I’ve seen before, unless that unidentified one becomes a new species. 🙂 I did not go to the Butterfly Conservatory this year in nearby El Castillo-Arenal, or I would have more species photographed. And by the way, I consider it the best butterfly garden of the many all over Costa Rica, in case you are ever nearby. Here’s one shot for the email announcement, followed by a gallery of the 9 species . . .
It was just 3 miles, but there were several hills and a lot of steps going down into the canyon to see the waterfall, but worth it to this childlike old man who is still in awe of such things! And I’ve been to this waterfall 4 other times before! But never get tired of it! 🙂
I always hesitate to include a selfie photo, but here I am as a nearly 84 year old survivor of cancer whose left eye can no longer blink and thus waters and fogs of my glasses :-), in a wide-brim hat and SPF-50 sunscreen that my Costa Rican doctors expect of me! 🙂 While I still enjoy all the little awesome things in life like this hike through a rainforest to a tropical waterfall! It’s my pura vida! 🙂 Here’s 5 photos, including one of the two sets of moss-covered steps I climbed down with my trekking pole and camera!
It is probably not unusual, but it was my first time to see a bird eating from a Bird of Paradise Flower, in this case a Rufous-tailed Hummingbird (linked to my Rufous-tailed Gallery). It was before breakfast this morning near the end of our birding hike as we walked through some of the lodge gardens on our way to the restaurant.
Arenal Observatory Lodge (their website)
¡Pura Vida!
At least in this area, it is the time that most of the birds are nesting, meaning a different kind of bird activity. The feature shot at top is of a Yellow-throated Toucan coming out of her nest with a berry or seed in her beak. Below you can see a shot of how small the hole is that both the male and female squeeze through. I guess their beak determines the size of the whole, usually a remade or enlarged woodpecker hole. 🙂
And in the spirit of nesting season, there’s also a shot of an unidentified bird on her nest and a hummingbird nest. All this reproduction activity is an important part of the ecology of the rainforest that seems to be coming at the beginning of the rainy season.
This morning my usual transportation of Walter Ramirez Tours and Taxis is taking me away from my home “garden” or “mini-jungle,” featured above, to one of my favorite forest getaways for 5 nights . . .
Arenal Observatory Lodge, the only hotel inside the Arenal Volcano National Park, where I will spend 5 days hiking the trails of a forest with a great variety of plants and animals! Tree Ferns to Toucans and more!
Below are four shots of my little mini-rainforest garden in Atenas that I am proud of and in which I photograph much for this blog! Then following that, another 4-shot gallery from my last trip to the Observatory in 2022. I chose to go in May this year because that is the month I got good sunset photos over Lake Arenal in 2018 and my most monkey shots that year, though anytime is a good time to visit Arenal Observatory Lodge! (lodge website link) 🙂 Looking forward to just being there!
Continue reading “From Mini-Jungle to Rainforest!”
Two years ago, in May 2022, I did a first time trip to a new lodge for me that a friend recommended, Chachagua Rainforest Hotel (link to my trip gallery) and I got a lot of bird photos and quite a few butterflies, two of which are still unidentified. BUT, one of those I identified then was misidentified, and for that I apologize! I first called it a Western Pygmy (blog post link). In retrospect, there is no excuse, but what caused it was that because it was a tiny little fingernail-sized butterfly, I assumed (a dangerous word!) that it was one of the many in the family Lycaenidae or Gossamer-Wings butterflies because all of them are very tiny like this one. Bad assumption as I have now learned that there are tiny ones in all of the families and this one is actually in the Riodinidae or Metalmarks family! It is a Simple Sarota (my species gallery link) or the scientific name Sarota acantus (butterfliesandmoths link where only two of us have submitted photos). 🙂 So I re-submit with the correct name!
¡Pura Vida!
And see all of my Costa Rica butterfly photos arranged by families and then species in my gallery: BUTTERFLIES & Moths of Costa Rica (270+ species)
To celebrate what will be 10 years of living in Costa Rica come December, I decided to publish a coffee table book of my favorite bird photos that turned out to be a lot! 174 photos! Each includes both the English and Spanish common names of that bird plus the location where I photographed it. Whether a birder or a lover of “Nature As Art,” I think you will like this 86 page photo book printed on premium matte paper. It might even become a collector’s item some day! 🙂 It will definitely become the book that I gift to the birding lodges I visit over the next year or two! 🙂
You can see a free electronic preview of all 86 pages by clicking the above image of the book cover or go to this web address: https://www.blurb.com/b/11961281-costa-rica-birds
¡Pura Vida!
Two were photographed at Villa Lapas and one in the Carara Park, but both are a part of the same transitional rainforest in the lowlands of Rio Tarcoles, along the Pacific Coast, just an hour’s drive from where I live in Atenas.
Without a doubt, the most frequently seen wildlife at Hotel Villa Lapas in Tarcoles was the Black Spiny-tailed Iguana, Ctenosaura similis (Wikipedia link) that lives only on the Pacific Slopes of Costa Rica (for reasons I know not), while the Green Iguana can be seen on both slopes, but more so on the Caribbean slope. Just two photos here, but I already have the Iguana Gallery for Villa Lapas ready where you can see more or even more in my CR Black Spiny-tail Iguana Gallery.
