Category: Wildlife

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Reduced Travel This Year

As my age, health and increased cost of living here begin to require, I simply need to reduce the big activities, so only 3 trips this year of 4 nights or more, and I may sneak in some day trips or even a 2-nighter at a nearby lodge – we’ll see! 🙂 But I’m still focused on nature and have plans for a few changes in my garden this year. And the three “big” trips are going to be very good, as always! 🙂

Rufous-tailed Hummingbird in a Heliconia Flower, Esquinas Rainforest Lodge, Golfito, Costa Rica.

It will be a coastal rainforest jungle in July as I return to Esquinas Rainforest Lodge for my 3rd visit and second time on my birthday! 🙂 Both photos with this post were made at Esquinas Lodge.

Then in September I’m exploring the “Amazon of Costa Rica” again at Tortuguero National Park on the Caribbean Coast instead of my usual Hotel Banana Azul beach trip. I like all the lodges in Tortuguero, but Tortuga Lodge & Gardens gets my vote for the most comfortable with the best food! And I don’t care if it is more expensive! 🙂

Then I finish the year with Christmas at Ballena National Park, Uvita in another favorite lodge, Hotel Cristal Ballena with a room overlooking the Pacific and nightly sunsets! Plus their 30 acre rainforest refuge! 🙂 And “Ballena” = “Whale” in English.

¡Pura Vida!

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Banded Peacock in Windy Season

January to March is very windy here and maybe that is one reason for fewer butterflies, but one of the larger and more colorful ones that keeps hang on around my gardens is the Banded Peacock, Anartia fatima (my gallery link). While several Yellows fly around high in the trees and never seem to land for a photo and a few Skippers can be seen close to the ground, it is mainly these Banded Peacocks who frequent my gardens now.

Banded Peacock, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Banded Peacock, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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A New Rufous-tailed Visited

This older and much larger Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Amazilia tzacatl (my gallery link) was visiting a couple of days ago and has not been back. I think that the smaller and younger one is chasing all other hummingbirds away as if he owns the place. The Blue-vented I had here earlier last month has not returned either. I filled the feeders again, hoping if would attract others, but maybe not with a little boss bird around. 🙂

Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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Green-browed Skipper – A Lifer!

Yesterday was a new species of birds for me and today a new species of butterflies for me, the Arita Skipper or Green-browed Skipper, Arita arita. No link to my gallery because this is the only photo in it now. 🙂 And no good article online, though there are 2 other photos on butterfliesandmoths.org and 5 more sightings from Costa Rica on the iNaturalistCR site. Not a spectacular butterfly, but one more species which brings my CR Butterflies Galleries up to 320 identified species now! 🙂

Green-browed or Arita Skipper, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~Henry David Thoreau

¡Pura Vida!

2,000 Blog/Website Visits in January! THANK YOU!

One of the services provided by my WordPress blog/website host is a monthly report of page visits on my site and it has been typical for the last few years to have around 2,000 page views of my blog/website at charliedoggett.net each month!

And though my photo gallery is a menu item on the website, it is actually separate and hosted by a different business, SmugMug.com, and they started in February 2022 counting my gallery visitors with several galleries now having had over 1,000 visitors in 2 years! And the shocker for me, as I typed this (yesterday) is that I’ve had 1,957 views of the gallery “My Home Gardens.” 🙂 Flowers are more popular than birds?! So I express my THANKS to all of you who read the blog (with more pictures than words)! 🙂 And then go on to look at my photos in the gallery! 🙂 Maybe “A picture is worth a thousand words” is a true statement after all! 🙂

Moving to Costa Rica 10 years ago and immersing myself in the incredible nature here was definitely one of the best decisions I every made! And I’m thankful for the many people who have joined me in my adventures vicariously by reading the blog posts and looking at the photos! ¡Pura Vida!

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Lifer Bird Just 3 Blocks from Home!

It makes 379 species of birds photographed in Costa Rica and with that many it is becoming rare to find a new species anywhere, especially so close to home. Hotel Colinas del Sol is just about three or four blocks from my house and while my BC Canadian friends were visiting in January I was over there 2 or 3 times. One of those times when I had my camera, Margaret noticed first this Blue & White Swallow, Pygochelidon cyanoleuca (eBird link), on the wall of a carport by one of the houses they rent out. It was overcast, no good light, and thus not a good photo, but useful to say that I added one more species to my collection! 🙂 AND NOTE that this is a South American bird that gets no further north than Costa Rica! 🙂 There are so many birds here that you never know what you will see next or where! And though my CR bird count will continue to grow much slower than in those early years here, I believe it will continue to grow with who-knows-what coming next! 🙂

Blue & White Swallow, Hotel Colinas del Sol, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
I tried to lighten the shadows of above pix so the blue would show, but it’s grainy! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

And oh yeah, if you are interested in swallows. there are three others that I see here with the Mangrove being the most common. See those in their photo galleries at:

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Wall Crab Spider

The fairly common Wall Crab Spider, Selenops mexicanus is not poisonous to humans (a bite can cause allergies in some people) and does not normally bite humans anyway. Like all spiders, he is a part of the total ecology of the world and I generally leave them alone in my house just like my geckos! I don’t always photograph when seen in my house, but did this one and online discovered his identification. For those in Costa Rica, the Spanish Common Name is “Araña de Pared” which translated to English is simply “Wall Spider.” I tend to photograph spiders more when outdoors or in a forest, thus I have a few photos of different spiders (about 20 species) in my Spiders gallery. Always interesting even if scary looking! 🙂 And remember, most are not poisonous!

Wall Crab Spider, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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Gray-headed Chachalaca

The only “regular” (almost daily) large (Turkey-sized) bird in my garden is the Gray-headed Chachalaca, Ortalis cinereiceps (eBird link) which is found only in the southern parts of Central America or from Honduras to Columbia. When a whole flock of them swoop into one of my trees they are sort of “pests” because of their constant chatter. But lately it has only been 2 to 4 at a time which is less noise and more interesting to watch. See my many photos of this unique bird in my Chachalaca Gallery. Just one shot here.

Gray-headed Chachalaca, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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Red-billed Pigeon

This colorful, purpleish, dove-like bird is not as common in my garden as the White-winged Dove, but I like him just as much! He is the Red-billed Pigeon, Patagioenas flavirostris (linked to eBird) and found only from Costa Rica to Mexico. Just one more of the many birds unique to this part of the world! The best place to go birding! 🙂

Red-billed Pigeon, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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Tropical Greenstreak

This is not the most common of the Hairstreak Butterflies, but I have seen it 3 other times before these two in my garden the other day. These photos of two different individuals show the variations in shades of green they can have. And yes, there are other species of green hairstreaks that are different in design from this one and their IDs are also not based on the shade of green which seems to vary in all the green ones.

Tropical Greenstreak, my garden, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Tropical Greenstreak, my garden, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

See my Tropical Greenstreak, Cyanophrys herodotus Gallery for more photos and more shades of green! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!