Category: Wildlife

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Toucan Rescue Ranch

png-logoOne of the things Heredia is know for is The Toucan Rescue Ranch, which is actually in a suburb, San Isidro de Heredia, which like so many other such places in Costa Rica was started not too long ago by someone dedicated to wildlife, and all the animals that recuperate from injuries or whatever to a level of independence are released into the wild.

After class today I had a quick lunch of something other than the rice and beans I’ve been having here 3 times a day and took a taxi to the rescue ranch for a pre-scheduled “Educational Walk” at 1:30 that lasted until nearly 3:30 and my taxi was waiting on me when finished. Plus a funny thing about the tour, there were 14 people on it with 5 of us from Atenas! Two retiree couples from Atenas were there, plus me. I have met both couples in the past but don’t really know them – another one of those “small world” kind of things!   🙂

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Our guide was a really nice & knowledgeable young man from Hungary (the country).

 

Birds at Toucan Ranch

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Other Animals

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Flowers

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San Rafael Church

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On the way back through the suburb of San Rafael de Heredia my taxista stopped here for me to photograph this Gothic architecture church building, second tallest in Costa Rica.

 

And of course I have a “Trip Gallery” of photos from this week, titled:

2020 February 22-28 — Heredia for Spanish Immersion

 

¡Pura Vida!

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Birds on Tarcoles River

Our trip to the river Thursday yielded more species of birds than any other of my now 9 trips on the Tarcoles River! I got photos of 35 species and know we saw several others, but I only count my photos!   🙂   And this was in less than 2 hours on the river! A good place for birding!

It has been a difficult and rushed job to get the photos ready to post while also getting ready for my trip Sunday to Heredia for Spanish Immersion! I’m only including one shot of each bird in this post, but for more of each bird plus crocs, other wildlife, and other photos, see my “TRIP GALLERY”  2020 Feb 20, Rio Tarcoles Birding Trip for more photos!

CLICK AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT

Rio Tarcoles Birds

 

“TRIP GALLERY”  2020 Feb 20, Rio Tarcoles Birding Trip

¡Pura Vida!

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Black Skimmer

My lifer bird this morning on a trip to nearby Tarcoles River was a Black Skimmer. Read an Overview about them on Cornell’s “All About Birds.”

I took two new friends from British Columbia there this morning and we saw way more than 30 species of birds and I think I got around that many photographed! I’m still working on the photos, but maybe a full report tomorrow.   🙂

 

¡Pura Vida!

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Gray & Yellow Mornings

Gray-crowned Yellowthroat

Both yesterday and today I went out around my house looking for birds about 6:20 to 6:40 AM, before breakfast. Both mornings I found birds with gray heads and yellow fronts! Yesterday (before going to Bosque Municipal) I got distant shots of the above Gray-crowned Yellowthroat (link is to Cornell’s “Neo-Tropical Birds”) seen in the cow pasture across the street from my house, my first of this species here, though I got better photos at Curi-Cancha Reserve, Monteverde last year, also in a meadow. Check ’em out!

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Gray-crowned Yellowthroat (different photo) in cow pasture in front of my house.

Gray-capped Flycatcher

A more common or more frequently seen-by-me-bird is this common flycatcher which has gray & yellow coloring like the above but is much larger. To learn more about him from Cornell’s “Neo-Tropical Birds,” click this name link, Gray-capped Flycatcher or go see my Gray-capped Flycatcher Photo Gallery (better photos than this). There are around 50 different species of birds here labeled some kind of “Flycatcher,” so a lot of variety! And yes, they do eat flies and other insects!    🙂

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Gray-capped Flycatcher, in my garden, Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica

 

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

― Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds

¡Pura Vida!

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Bosque Municipal Atenas

Central Park is not the only park in Atenas! We have a sports park in front of the elementary school, a public soccer field separately down the street and a public swimming pool! I have shown much of the sports park and mentioned the others, but the most important one for me is one I had never entered until today – Bosque Municipal Atenas – Atenas Municipal Forest.

20200206_064512-A-WEBMy friend from British Columbia wanted to go and I always have, so we went together to our “nature park” or forest for birds this morning. It is five miles west on Ruta 3 at Vista Linda or the edge of Barrio Jesus, on the right-hand side of the highway with multiple signs and two entrances. The main entrance is near the second sign or further up the mountain at the big community soccer field across the highway from Vista Linda Restaurant & Bar. Just walk around to the other side of the soccer field. Our first taxi driver knew nothing about it but was glad for the $13 one-way taxi drive!   🙂   The taxi that picked us up was very familiar with it, meaning that some people are into nature and others are not!   🙂

Well, we went for birds, especially the Long-tailed Manakin that definitely lives there and we heard their songs many times (toledo, toledo, toledo) but never was close enough to one for a photo. In fact the above Keel-billed Toucan is the only decent bird photo I got with efforts at some tiny birds and a blurry Woodcreeper. Maybe next time!  🙂   BUT, we saw lots of butterflies and below are 5 species I got shots of, some are new species for me.

5 Butterfly Species

Trail-head Signs

I did not get shots of the two highway signs – sorry!

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One of many huge old trees in this dense forest.

See my Butterfly Gallery (nearly 100 species!) or other parts of Atenas in my Atenas Gallery.   Or just go for ALL!   🙂

And though I didn’t photograph any here, I have a gallery of my Long-tailed Manakin shots.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.    ~Henry David Thoreau

¡Pura Vida!

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02-02-2020

Just had to write this unique date down! It is one of the few dates that works for both Americans who write the month first and all the rest of the world who write the day first! Plus it just looks cool! All those twos and zeros! Say it like this:  “O-two O-two, two-O two-O”     🙂

POSTSCRIPT: Larry Yarborough wrote in the comments below what I did not know about this unique date:

FROM AXIOS:

Today’s date is a rare eight-digit palindrome (reads same, forward and backward), 02/02/2020 — the only one of its kind this century:
Aziz Inan, a University of Portland (Ore.) professor who has a website chronicling 500 years’ worth of palindromes, tells the Post about today’s rare configuration — where both MM/DD/YEAR and DD/MM/YEAR are palindromes.

“The previous eight-digit palindrome like this was 11/11/1111, 909 years ago. We’ll only have to wait another 101 years for 12/12/2121.”
? P.S. Today is “the 33rd day of the year, which is followed by 333 more days.”     ~Thanks to Larry Yarborough for sharing this Axios Post!

The feature photo is of the cow pasture and tree line along a little stream across from my house. This morning at 6 I decided to walk over along that tree line with my camera looking for morning birds – nada! Not a one! As has been the case the other times I tried that very “birdy-looking” area. The water in the stream is quite polluted (gray water from houses nearby) which may be the reason for no birds or it was windy this morning, though that time of year. And I’ve never heard of cows scaring birds! But not one bird over there! (Maybe snakes?) I do better just sitting on my terrace! Though walking uphill like I did yesterday is even better! I will do that more often!

The dove below was on the power line in front of my house and the shot of something burning nearby was the only photo I made from the cow pasture. Sugar cane farmers are burning the remains of their fields after the harvest this month or occasionally someone burns trash, though they are not suppose to in the dry season!  🙂   ¡Pura vida!

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White-winged Dove on power line in front of my house looking at the cow pasture.
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Someone burning something nearby, as seen from the cow pasture.

 

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.    ~Khalil Gibran

 

¡Pura Vida!

02-02-2020

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Morning Bird Walk

Glad to get back to nature posts after all the other stuff I’ve been posting the last week! And the featured photo above is a Passion Flower growing on a neighbor’s wall along the street uphill above my house.

In my Roca Verde neighborhood, and most neighborhoods across Costa Rica, we have “Snow Birds” or “winter residents” who come to visit or live here during the very cold months up north (Dec-Apr). One of those couples I met for the first time last year always stay in Roca Verde, just a few doors up the hill from me – she is a birder and he a relaxer.  🙂   They are from British Columbia, Canada.

Yesterday she showed me all birds she had photographed in Atenas in just one week, most right here in our neighborhood! Thus I was shamed into birding more in my own neighborhood and later some other places in Atenas – but it means getting up at 5:30 in the morning which I have not been doing much here. Mixed emotions!

I live adjacent to these farming hills seen from street above my house.

This morning I spent just one hour, mostly between 6 & 7 and saw about 20 species of birds, photographing about 15 of them! ALL WITHIN 300 METERS OF MY HOUSE!  For you Americans, that’s just 3 blocks, and all along the street in front of my house, up the hill. Of course I ran into Margaret who get out every morning early for birds and we birded together much of the time. I will not do it every day like her, but hopefully more often now!

By 7 there are not a lot of birds to see. It is the magical hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset that give the most birds! (Same thing on my trips!) And some of these birds from today have not come to my house or I haven’t seen them in my garden yet.  CLICK AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT . . .

This Morning’s Birds

Catholic Church in Central Atenas is also seen from the street above my house, though not as close as this seems through my 60 mm lens!   🙂

 

I like where I live!   🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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Red-billed Pigeon

A bird I have photographed on several of my trips and here he is in front of my house! For more information on this bird, see Neotropical Birds where you will see that he lives only in Central America & Mexico, not the big city pest the word “pigeon” brings to mind. And for some of my other photos of this bird, including last week at Xandari, see my Costa Rica Red-billed Pigeon Gallery with some better shots than these! Or the whole Costa Rica BIRDS Gallery for sub-galleries of 13 different species of pigeons and doves I’ve photographed here! An interesting & colorful family of birds!

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

~Oscar Wilde

¡Pura Vida!

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My Xandari Villa

My third time to visit one of the most expensive hotels that I like in Costa Rica gives me a third different and bigger room/villa. I rarely show this many photos of a room, but because it is unique, I decided to this time along with the Art in My Villa, yesterday’s post.

This “room”  is called a “King Junior Suite” meaning just one king size bed in multiple rooms or spaces, a large suite or villa. They call all their rooms villas because most are in separate buildings and all are large.

From the lobby and restaurant main building, you walk through the gardens on a beautiful winding, paved path to the entrance of #5 in this case:

Private Entrance Compound

Kitchenette by front Terrace

 

Living Room

 

Valley-View Terrace

 

Bedroom

 

Bathroom

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Shower behind blue wall overlooking private garden. Toilet in separate room behind me.

This exceptional hotel is just 20 minutes from the San Jose Airport, thus a starting and ending location for many international tourists coming here, like the people I visited with this time from England, Germany, France, Canada and the U.S.

Yet they are immersed in a tropical rainforest with hiking trails, 5 waterfalls on the river, wildlife, both wild and cultivated flowers, a small farm for the kitchen, a wonderful Spa and restaurant. Some things are worth paying more for!   🙂   I do this occasionally here while other times I “rough it” in the wilderness to be closer to nature. I like both experiences! And the way Xandari combines both luxury AND nature! Plus now they house the Charlie Doggett Photography Library!   🙂   That alone makes the visit worthwhile!   🙂

Luxury is attention to detail, originality, exclusivity and above all quality.
~Angelo Bonati

¡Pura Vida!

Xandari Costa Rica

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Dragonfly & Squirrel

Dragonfly

This dragonfly and squirrel round out my photos of wildlife at Xandari, having already done posts on Birds and Butterflies. The latter giving me 4 new species! Dragonflies seem to interest everyone almost as if magical or “fairy-like” as butterflies, though the larger ones are easier to photograph than these tiny blue ones. See my separate photo galleries for Costa Rica Dragonflies and for Costa Rica Damselflies for more of this magic!

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Variegated Squirrel

IMG_9155-A-WEBAnd finally, every man’s pest, the squirrel, in this case the Variegated Squirrel, the most common in Costa Rica. But there are other species of squirrels and I have galleries on 3 of them:

 

An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.

~Martin Buber

 

¡Pura Vida!

Xandari Costa Rica