charliedoggett.net
Before I left on my recent Maquenque trip I caught a few shots of this male Great-tailed Grackle fluffing his tail in my Guarumo or Cecropia Tree. I thought it kind of funny, interesting and almost like art! 🙂 Here’s just 3 shots at different stages of his fluff! 🙂
My 4th time at Maquenque Ecolodge, but first time to go on this particular float trip (their web description link) though I’ve canoed their lake and been on the bigger river, San Carlos, in a larger boat. The only reason I’ve missed this one is that they require a minimum of 2 paying customers and I travel solo! 🙂 This was the first time there were other guests interested in this same float trip to make up the minimum with me. They were a lovely couple from Europe, he Italian and she Swiss! We had a great time together and I got a lot of photos which is right now the only part of my Maquenque Trip Gallery that is completed. So you can see more photos at Rio Tres Amigos Safari GALLERY. 🙂
And note that the only wildlife (The cow doesn’t count!) that I show in this post is one bird, but it’s a rare photo of a female Sunbittern sitting on her nest! In earlier blog posts I’ve shown you 3 animals from this safari: Crested Caracara, Green Iguana and Mantled Howler Monkey, yet there are still many more in the above gallery including 12 species of birds! 🙂 And here are 6 shots to give you an idea of what just one morning at Maquenque can be like! 🙂 Still my favorite lodge!
Called a “Congo” by Costa Ricans, the Mantled Howler Monkey is the largest and loudest of the four species of monkeys in Costa Rica and the only one I got photos of this trip, from alongside Rio Tres Amigos on float trip last Wednesday near Maquenque Ecolodge. I heard them at the lodge but never was close enough for photos and the same for the Spider Monkeys. I’ve been photographing Howler Monkeys since my first weeks in Costa Rica and have an okay GALLERY: Mantled Howler Monkey of Costa Rica.
¡Pura Vida!
I photographed this beautiful bird along the road on our way to Rio Tres Amigos for our floating safari. The guides and drivers are all so good about stopping when a significant bird is seen. I would not have photographed this bird had we not stopped the van. The map on eBird shows this falcon type bird throughout the Americas, but more so in Central and South america.
I was originally planning to do my post on Rio Tres Amigos today, but simply have too many photo of too many things to have them ready by today, plus this is a very full week with two medical appointments and tourist friends from the states stopping by! 🙂 So I may stick to individual birds, etc. for most of this week. But that Rio Tres Amigos was a great half-day trip that is going to make a super gallery when finished!
And oh yes, my Crested Caracara GALLERY!
¡Pura Vida!
WARNING! The photos in this post are graphic and could be considered gross, especially if you are a lizard or have close friends who are lizards! 🙂
I was waiting for my driver from Atenas to arrive at Maquenque for lunch and our return trip home when one of the lodge staff come running in, excitedly telling me that there was a Toucan in a tree in front of the restaurant eating a lizard. Of course I grabbed my camera and ran out for some photos which were difficult because of the poor light in the tree at almost 12 noon! But here’s 5 shots of the Yellow-throated Toucan with his captured lizard and the final shot of another toucan either stealing lizard meat from him or having it shared. I could not tell which. 🙂
. . . at drastically different stages of development! 🙂 And so I guess all the eggs don’t hatch at the same time?! Four of us humans walked up to the nest where the mother was sitting and she just flew off! Hopefully to get food for that gaping mouth! 🙂
This is the nest of a Scarlet-rumped Tanager at Maquenque Ecolodge the other day. This is a nesting & hatching time for some near the end of the Dry Season These babies will grow up in the Rainy Season!
¡Pura Vida!
The only way we are going to save the earth for future generation is by “rewilding” or creating “new” old growth forests of about 50% of the globe by planting more trees. Yesterday I did one tiny part of that by planting an Almond Tree here at Maquenque, where they hope to reintroduce the endangered Green Macaws that eat mostly almonds! And soon they will add nesting boxes to replace the big old trees with nesting holes, one of several reasons they are endangered. It will be a few years before my little baby Almond Tree will feed Macaws, but we have to plan for the future! And that is symbolized by Vicky’s (lodge manager’s) children standing with me in the second photo.
Plus Maquenque does have a few grown Almond Trees here already, “los almendros.” But very few macaws on the ground now, mostly flying overhead as in the third photo below. Plus, since they are located north-central, close to the continental divide, they can have both Green Macaws (Caribbean Slope which they are on) and some Scarlet Macaws (from the Pacific Slope). The Scarlets evidently fly over the Continental Divide which is not high mountains here in the lowlands. Scarlet Macaws are not as endangered as the green but are near-endangered because of habitat loss.
This common resident bird is found literally all over Costa Rica at most levels and this is my 4th time to see one in my Atenas neighborhood, with all other photos here in trees, bushes or on a fence, though their feeding is in the grasses! I have seen one across the street in the cow pasture grasses but without a photo! 🙂 I did get photos of him in the grasses of a meadow in Curi-Cancha Reserve, Monteverde and I’ve also seen one at Celeste Mountain Lodge at Tenorio Volcano NP. See my other photos in the Yellow-faced Grassquit GALLERY. And you can read about them on eBird. He’s a resident, tropical, non-migrating bird found throughout Central America, the Caribbean Islands and the northern fringes of South America. Here’s 3 shots of this male in one of my Nance Trees . . .
The most frequently heard song in my garden in April is always the melodic song of the Clay-colored Thrush, called Yigüirro in Costa Rican Spanish. Local tradition is that he is singing in the rainy season, begging God for rain and thus he usually goes near the top of trees to sing and why my photos seldom show him singing. It sounds like he is trying really hard to do a good job and loud! As locals say, “singing his heart out!” You can hear one recording on eBird, click the “Listen” Button.
But they do come down to the lower limbs occasionally for my photos, 🙂 with these two shots from two different days. Usually we have a light start of rain the middle of April scattered over several days with the “real” rain beginning in earnest in May when we can have a shower or more every afternoon through November.
This year we had the unusual experience of 4 days of showers in March! Climate change! I live in the “Central Valley” which would not be considered a “rainforest” like both coasts and their corresponding “slopes” where it rains year around and occasionally all day. I like visiting the rainforests but the Central Valley is better for daily living. 🙂
This one Rufous-tailed Hummingbird appears to be the only one living in my gardens right now and occasionally he almost poses for a photo. I have not been putting out the Hummingbird feeder for a long time now because these Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds are very territorial and he chases any others off. But after next week’s trip I will have nearly 3 months of no travel and may try the feeder again, not to necessarily feed this guy but hope it attracts other hummingbirds. We will see! 🙂
Right now they depend on flowers alone for food! I guess that is more natural! 🙂 But in the past I had a lot more than this!
¡Pura Vida!
And more in my Rufous-tailed Hummingbird GALLERY.