Blooms, smiles – Greeting me – Happy!
¡Pura Vida!
See photo gallery More of My Garden or . . .
The Flora & Forest – more Costa Rica flowers
Garden Walk
Haiku Clouds
Mountains – Mist, fog, cloud – Shrouding
El bastón de emperador
Yeah, that’s the Spanish name which I like better than the English name of Torch Ginger – but by either name this morning I noticed that one plant off my terrace had flowers in three stages and I liked that picture of progression. There could actually be an earlier stage with a tighter bud, but not this morning. 🙂
Tropical flowers continue to be a part of the magic of my retiree life in Costa Rica, both in my own gardens surrounding my little rental house and in my travels around the country. Click either above link for more of my flower photos – what a joy to live in paradise! 🙂
Torch Ginger Bud 
Torch Ginger Opening Torch Ginger Fully Opened
“A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.”
– Zen Shin
¡Pura vida!
Banded Peacock
As I continue to see more butterflies than birds in my garden, I found this one yesterday morning after breakfast which I haven’t seen in awhile, the Banded Peacock. He is very common all over Costa Rica and I was seeing more in May and June here. I do have better photos than these in my Banded Peacock Gallery, if interested.
And if you like to read more about butterflies, here’s a Wikipedia article: Anartia fatima, Banded Peacock and/or the Butterflies & Moths.org Map shows them mostly in Central America and Mexico.
Remember to CLICK image to see larger:
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
-Maya Angelou
¡Pura Vida!
Xandari GALLERY #4 Published
The “4” can mean my 4th trip to Xandari or the 4th Gallery on Xandari or the fact that I was there for 4 days this time! 🙂 The featured photo is on my walk to the restaurant from my villa.
It is a magical getaway every visit and I tend to photograph many new things or the same things in different ways each time, like this time I didn’t even hike to the waterfalls but spent more time with flowers & butterflies and a feature on the bamboo forest. So if considering a visit to Xandari, check out each of my photo galleries from 4 different trips there with 4 different perspectives:
- 2020 August 21-24 – A Weekend Retreat during a World Pandemic with masks & solo activities in nature. Most butterflies & flowers this time.
- 2020 January 12-16 – Five days when I installed my photo books library and photographed all kinds of nature with more birds than above.
- 2019 July 1-6 – My birthday week with them providing a cake and great celebration and me making another different set of nature photos all over. A very good week! Or see the Photo Book, Brilliant! My Birthday Week at Xandari!
- 2018 July 14-18 – My first trip to Xandari and maybe my most photos as I was thrilled with the discovery in every way! Or see the Photo Book, Xandari – Enchanted by Nature
¡Pura Vida!
Central Valley Vista
Xandari is on a hill overlooking the great central valley of Costa Rica between the mountain in all four directions. My last morning here had maybe the clearest sky of the weekend and thus this expansive view of our Central Valley. Atenas is located somewhere in the right side of the photo or west of Xandari which is pretty much in the center of the valley.
¡Pura Vida!
For more Costa Rica vistas see my gallery with a long name:
Bewitching Birds
Merriam-Webster defines “bewitching” as “powerfully or seductively attractive or charming” which well-describes the effect of over 900 species of birds in Costa Rica on me, along with my love of alliterations! 🙂
I usually photograph more birds than this at Xandari, but with rain and fog blanketing that mountain most of the time this past weekend, I got usable photos of only 9 species, but as indicated yesterday, I made up the difference with butterflies and flowers! 🙂 I’m never without something to photograph at Xandari! 🙂
No new species this time, but as always, I love trying to get a different view, perspective, or activity of a bird to make my bird galleries more interesting. CLICK image to enlarge.
Melodious Blackbird 
Rufous-tailed Hummingbird 
Keel-billed Toucan 
Rufous-naped Wren 
Turkey Vulture 
Lesson’s Motmot 
Great Kiskadee Keel-billed Toucan 
White-eared Ground-Sparrow 
Gray-headed Chachalaca
Meet some of the Xandari family . . .
¡Pura Vida!
I return to my home in Atenas today but will have more posts about this weekend trip to Xandari and a gallery of the best photos from the weekend posted by the end of the week. In the meantime you might be interested in some of my other Costa Rica Travel galleries at CR Trips. Some of my Tico friends tell me that I’ve seen more of their home country than they have. I love it all!
🙂
Bountiful Butterflies
This trip to Xandari I photographed more butterflies than birds, which I think is a first for anywhere I have visited in Costa Rica. Xandari has always given me a lot of butterflies, partly because of their lush gardens, but today I have photos of 16 different species, a new record! Multiple are new species for me, bringing my butterfly collection up to somewhere near 120 in my Butterfly Gallery. Check it out! Quite a variety!
The only WordPress inline Gallery that now allows labels, which I want to include, is their “regular” gallery which crops each image to same size/shape, meaning you need to click on an image to see the full-size presentation of each and I prefer my framing than their boxes. Clicking one also can start a manual slide show of all 16.
Heart-spotted Heliconian 
Guatemalan Ithomia Glasswing 
Malachite Double-white Satyr 
Erato Heliconian or Postman 
Mottled Longtail or Silver Spotted Skipper 
Unidentified 
Blue-winged Sheemark 
Unidentified Skipper 
Carolina Satyr 
Yellow-tipped Flasher 
Actinote Anteas or Doubleday’s 
Black-bordered Tegosa 
Lemon-patched Oxeo 
Variegated Ticlear 
Unidentified Eyemark Butterfly
A part of the “Colourscape” of the place:
¡Pura Vida!
Flowers Close
My first afternoon at Xandari was mostly in the rain, but I managed get these close-ups of a few of their many flowers plus a toucan and a butterfly which I will share later. For now enjoy the beautiful art of flowers! CLICK image to enlarge . . .
Some of the best gardens I’ve visited and you can meet one of the gardeners in this video:
¡Pura Vida!
Breakfast Butterflies
This was yesterday at breakfast and today I will be leaving by noon today for Xandari where I expect a lot of different types of butterflies along with the birds.
I apologize that I cannot give an exact ID on all these guys, but as frequently happens there is not an exact match in my two butterfly books and the Skippers are particularly difficult, but still fun to watch! 🙂 CLICK image to enlarge.
Brown or Teleus Longtail Skipper 
Ridens Skipper Maybe 
Banded Peacock 
Green or Emerald Flasher Giant White 
Unidentified Skipper
Expect some “X-factor” Xandari Nature as Art the next few days! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
2 minute introduction to Xandari, my “Oasis!”
GALLERIES FOR MY 3 PREVIOUS VISITS TO XANDARI:
AND MY TWO PHOTO BOOKS ON XANDARI:
Find out why I like Xandari so much – check out the above video, galleries & books.