Tropical Kingbird

I remember seeing this bird on my first trip to Costa Rica back in 2009, down on the southern end of Osa Peninsula near Corcovado NP at Lookout Inn, Carata. He’s a handsome bird without the extravagant colors of many tropical birds. And now he’s a regular in my garden! 🙂 See more photos in my gallery for the Tropical Kingbird, Tyrannus melancholicus from literally all over Costa Rica and that first I saw is at the bottom of the gallery. 🙂

Tropical Kingbird, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Continue reading “Tropical Kingbird”

Yellow-haired Skipper

Is another one that seems mis-named with no obvious yellow, though one that I found online did have a golden yellowish hue. 🙂 It seems to be a rare or seldom-seen butterfly with only one other reported on iNaturalist CR and me being the only one on butterfliesandmoths dot org, with three sightings now. 🙂 I’m basing my identification mainly on those two sets of 3 white dots on the wings. I guess most people just see it as another one of the many brown skippers! 🙂

Yellow-haired Skipper, Typhedanus cajeta, Atenas, Costa Rica
Continue reading “Yellow-haired Skipper”

Blue-vented Hummingbird . . .

. . . is still my #2 hummingbird but could takeover my gardens as #1 with seemingly only one Rufous-tailed Hummingbird active now that I quit using the feeders. (I keep debating with myself over using feeders or not.)

See more of my photos of this colorful bird in my Blue-vented Hummingbird Gallery. I’ve photographed this one in only two places, here in Atenas (2 locations) and once at Xandari Resort in Alajuela.

Blue-vented Hummingbird, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

Fading Flowers & Butterflies

Banded Peacock on Fading Zinnia, Atenas, Costa Rica

The little Zinnia Patch in my uphill garden is fading just as are the number and type of butterflies with the Banded Peacock being the most numerous butterflies now, along with the less-noticed Skippers and a few Yellows that seldom land. Below is a slide show of my images of the fading Zinnias and Banded Peacocks in front of my “Bird & Butterfly Bench” as I will now be more focused on the birds than butterflies for a while, though we do have some butterflies year around in our “forever Spring!” 🙂 Rainy Season has pretty much ended with only a few straggler showers in December and it’s Dry Season from now until May when things turn back to green and are covered in butterflies! While dry season has us covered in tourists! 🙂

Continue reading “Fading Flowers & Butterflies”

Sloth Rescue . . .

. . . on a busy street in downtown Atenas, Alajuela Province, Costa Rica. I was in a taxi running errands downtown when I realized that the man in the tree was not a tree-trimmer but a National Park employee rescuing a Hoffmann’s Two-toed Sloth, Choloepus hoffmanni (my gallery link) from a tree near Central Park on a busy street full of businesses where he/she would certainly be killed by a car soon. He/she will be taken to a national park or wildlife reserve to live peacefully in the wild as God intended. I jumped out of the taxi and tried to make a few photos with my cell phone, which show what was happening but are not good shots of the sloth. They are all difficult to photograph as mainly big balls of fur that don’t frequently show their faces (both 2 & 3 toed). Just a report of a moment of excitement in busy, pre-Christmas, downtown Atenas! (For which my stopped taxi blocked traffic for about a minute on Calle 1!) 🙂

Sloth Rescue, Downtown Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

More photos in the online version of the blog post . . .

Continue reading “Sloth Rescue . . .”

Artisan Birds Christmas Tree

My collection of artisan bird ornaments got pulled out of storage this year and stuck on an ugly artificial tree or bush, but I think that the Latin American Artisan Birds are beautiful, so I created a slideshow of about 20 closeup photos of some of my collection. See them in the online version of this post . . .

ÅS

See 20 (not all) of my artisan bird collection in the slideshow online . . .

Continue reading “Artisan Birds Christmas Tree”

Blue-gray Tanager

Here’s just two of the shots I made in November of this frequently seen tropical bird, the Blue-gray Tanager, Thraupis episcopus (eBird link) is found only in tropical Central & South America and is one of the more frequently seen birds for me in Costa Rica as my Gallery: Blue-gray Tanager will show.

The feature photo at top is what most of this species looks like and I am guessing that the more rotund one below is a pregnant female, with several eggs to lay. 🙂

Blue-gray Tanager, my garden, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

A Sulphur that’s White, Green & Yellow

For the White Angled-Sulphur, it depends on which side and angle you are viewing it, with the top of open wings (didn’t get this time) it is bright white with two bright yellow patches and four brown spots, but the folded wings views can be either green, as one of these shots sort of is, or a more yellow look as two of these three photos appear and one shows a sliver of the bright white top. See all of the many looks in my White Angled-Sulphur, Anteos clorinde GALLERY.

White top and greenish/yellowish bottom of wings: White Angled-Sulphur, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Continue reading “A Sulphur that’s White, Green & Yellow”

Lineated Woodpecker

This species is becoming more frequently seen for me, with the last one shared November 1 this year. He is very similar to a more rarely seen Pale-billed Woodpecker with not only the pale bill being different but also his black and white coloring is different, but both have the big bright red pointed head like Woody Woodpecker. 🙂

Lineated Woodpecker, my garden, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

See more photos of this species in my Lineated Woodpecker Gallery or you can read about them on eBird where you will see that they are found only in the tropical forests of Central and South America.

¡Pura Vida!