The Lineated Woodpecker or Dryocopus lineatus (eBird link) is one of the more colorful woodpeckers found throughout Central America and in most of South America, standing out with their bright red head of hair! Here he is often confused with the less frequent Pale-billed Woodpecker, found only in Central America and southern Mexico, but his black face and the white neck line running all the way to his bill quickly distinguish him from the Pale-billed which cannot be identified by the bill because both have pale bills! 🙂 My Lineated Woodpecker Gallery shows that I’ve seen him all over Costa Rica including more than once here in my garden where this one was photographed in my Cecropia Tree last week, my favorite bird tree! 🙂
CLICK this front cover image to see a free preview of all pages!
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! 🙂
Semana Santa is Spanish for “Holy Week” or “Easter Week” if you prefer and my most memorable and colorful one since moving to Costa Rica was 8 years ago (2016, my 2nd year here) while on a birding tour of Nicaragua and during Semana Santa I was for 3 days in the historical colonial town of Grenada where from my old hotel across from the oldest church I could watch the nightly processionals that along with architecture and the later 87 species of birds photographed made it my most colorful and memorable Easter Week here! (Linked to my photo gallery of that week.)
Easter Week Pageantry, 2016, Granada, NicaraguaSunset over Granada, Nicaragua 2016.
Though I have another week+ of blog post photos already scheduled, I have now also got my “Trip Gallery” completed for the two-night visit to Villa Lapas Hotel (hotel link) in Tarcoles and it was a productive trip! 🙂 You can see all the photos from that visit last week by clicking the first page of the gallery below or go to this address: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2024-March-11-13-Villa-Lapas-Tarcoles-Carara-NP
CLICK IMAGE above to go to the gallery.
And the FYI about why I re-visited this older local hotel in Tarcoles now (2015 was my other time) is that next year (2025, Q4) Villa Lapas (hotel link) will become a Marriott “Signature” hotel, whatever that means, and of course the prices will increase significantly as they modernize the very old rooms and restaurant. So it will be interesting to see what happens! 🙂 It is adjacent to Carara National Park and across the highway from Tarcoles Village with the Rio Tarcoles Boat Tours, so a lot to do there for the nature lover like me, including on their own significant chunk of forest on the hotel grounds. I recommend it if you can put up with older facilities, often needing maintenance. Lots of nature there! See the gallery! 🙂
But ALSO NOTE: even though I’m glad I revisited Villa Lapas, my favorite hotel in the area is still Macaw Lodge on top of the mountain above Villa Lapas and Carara Park for much more nature on the lodge grounds! I encourage you to try Macaw Lodge (lodge link) even though the drive up the mountain, partly on a gravel road, is much more difficult. It is worth it!
I had a good birding hike this morning with Vicktor as my guide and got a lot of birds but haven’t had time to process all the photos yet, so here’s just one – the Turquoise-browed Motmot, Eumomota superciliosa (eBird link), one of the two main motmots in Costa Rica and this one is only found in Costa Rica north to Southern Mexico!
Turquoise-browed Motmot, Hotel Villa Lapas. Tarcoles, Puntarenas, Costa Rica
I will eventually share the photos of the other birds photographed this morning and eventually some photos from the Sky Way Bridges and Trails (a lot of steps!) from the 2 km mountain walk with a family of 5 from the states (the Mom born in CR) and our guide Stephanie. It was a nice, brisk, hour and a half mountain walk with pleasant people and I was hot and sweaty when we returned. 🙂
Tonight is the night hike for hopefully some good frog pix and in the morning I changed from the jungle wagon to another birding hike, this time in the Carara National Park when they open at 8am. Then leave for home at noon.
Because I no longer print my images to sell through a galeria or seasonal shows here, I will make it a little easier for you to order Wall Art or other art image by narrowing down the possibilities some. Every image in every gallery is available but this new gallery includes both the images I’ve sold before and some I think would possibly make good art! And remember that in the buying process menu you can crop the images more or differently than I have.
SmugMug (my gallery host) uses the very best printers for each type of art and I recommend for wall art high gloss metal prints to stand out or for a softer look, try photos printed on canvas (and I prefer the wrap-around canvas). They have many other items you can print any of my photos on from greeting cards to coffee mugs, etc. Have fun exploring! Just click the shopping bag pix on any photo or the BUY PHOTO button on an enlarged photo and follow the menu! Easy! 🙂
And for COSTA RICA CUSTOMERS, you will need a shipping service that provides you a U.S. address like Atenas Webshop or Costa Rica Shipping with both getting the package to Atenas and if picking up in Alajuela is no problem, Aeropostis a little faster because they have their own daily planes. All three of these give you a Miami Address to use on your orders.
Now it is not me writing, but it tells a lot about life for one expat from the states living here, and of course not everything applies to me! I do not have a car, I don’t drink alcohol, and though I like beans and rice I don’t eat them every morning for breakfast! 🙂 But it is still an interesting article supposedly about the life of one North American expat living here and the relaxed culture that many Americans adopt here! And one thing that is like him, I too live in T-shirt and shorts all day every day! 🙂
It’s fun to “REDISCOVER” what you already have! A new collection of photo galleries has been created in my big main gallery, to display butterfly photos I made in other countries before moving to Costa Rica, especially during my last 10 years in the USA, where I found that I had old photos for 64 species! Not as many in other countries visited, particularly since I was not focused on butterflies back then! 🙂 There is a main “folder” Gallery for “other countries” with country galleries in that or in the case of the U.S., another folder with Taxonomy Family folders for a lot more butterflies! These new galleries are organized as follows . . .
I’m guilty of impulse buying when I got this at the supermarket, mainly because the pot was the color of green the lady originally decorated the Living Room and Dining Room in. :-)
