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Tomorrow (Friday the 14th) is a one-day photo trip, my only planned trip for January, to get photos of two special waterfalls. The first is . . .
The Llanos de Cortes Waterfall I caught from a Sansa small plane flight between Liberia and San Jose Airports in 2019 and finally tomorrow I get to photograph it up close! Llanos de Cortes Waterfall is . . .
Continue reading “From Overfly to Up-close”
I think the 4 maintenance men for the Country Park Department are doing the new construction and that means it will be very slow with other duties. It seems like only another wall built in the last month.
The nest that was being built yesterday now has the mother sitting on the nest and I don’t know if there are eggs there yet, but she never left it the whole time I was out there watching at breakfast and afterwards. Thus I assume that it is the male still bringing sticks/twigs to the nest in the third photo below. I think it is unfortunate that she chose to build the nest inside the palm frond with the possibilities of high winds through February, but nothing I can do about it. In an earlier year an Inca Dove built a nest in a smaller tree’s palm frond and she lost her eggs, but this one is more protected, so maybe safe. See the linked blog post at bottom, “Mother Dove Abandons Nest in Wind.” You can see it all in nature!
The books say that the male chooses the neighborhood and the female chooses the tree and does most of the building with sticks, so I’m guessing this is the female (they look alike). This one is building in the crotch of a small ornamental palm tree which I hope will be secure during the Jan-Feb winds. Below are 4 photos of this most common and widespread dove in Costa Rica, found from the southern half of the states down through Panama. This one is building a nest in my garden in Roca Verde, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
Continue reading “Nest-building Dove”
It’s blooming now! Just not as much of it as some past years. Maybe it is because I haven’t been fertilizing? Or enough water? But anyway it is still a beautiful flower for January & February as a vine on top of my back wall. Here’s 3 shots I made on New Year Day! And here’s a shot of it when it was thicker in another year.
He/she (male & female identical) was unfortunately in the tree shadows, but this very common bird all over Costa Rica was in my Cecropia Tree the other morning for breakfast and I tried a photo capture. Read about the Great Kiskadee on eBird or see better photos in my Great Kiskadee Gallery from 18 different locations in Costa Rica!
Before I left on my Christmas trip to Uvita, I planted this year’s Poinsettia in my garden to possibly give it a longer life outdoors! As a specially created with light/darkness houseplant it will not continue to grow in the garden but is a nice temporary addition of color! Just one more joy of living in the tropics! 🙂
My Flora & Forest Galleries
¡Pura Vida!
Of course there’s more photos and even more wildlife I haven’t shown like the White-nosed Coati and more butterflies, but I have them in the Christmas Trip 2021 Gallery, so check it out if you want more! 🙂
This was another favorite rainforest shot from Cristal Ballena that also includes the sea, so I just had to add it as my last post on that trip. As you can see, the rainforest not only surrounds the hotel, but flows all the way down to the ocean and the national park beach. It’s a beautiful place that I enjoy visiting and will probably go again someday. Now back to shots from my garden, the neighborhood and the little coffee farmers’ town of Atenas. For awhile anyway! 🙂 I’m trying to schedule a one-day waterfall trip and then in February I’m back to a tree house at Maquenque Lodge, Boca Tapada. 🙂
“If man doesn’t learn to treat the oceans and the rainforest with respect, man will become extinct.”
~Peter Benchley
Tico Times article: Costa Rica Tourism in 2022: Demand is back
I finally figured out how to get to historical statistics on my WordPress Blog/Website, wanting to see what kind of nature photos more people are interested in. Well, it was not my nature shots in 2021 but the posts labeled “Cancer Update” that all had over 200 readers or “hits” with none of my nature posts over 200 except the weird exception of an old one on a Truck Centipede. So THANK YOU for being interested in my health! It has been a long slow recovery still in process but I am so much closer to “normal” now and I was quite active on the last trip. I see my oncologist tomorrow and hopefully not many more times needed after that. 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
I have a whole gallery of flowers from the Cristal Ballena trip but here’s just five favorites to help brighten your day! 🙂
Some manufacturer here is depicting Central American Indigenous People in concrete garden art that is not necessarily accurate of what the early people looked like or blessed by the few indigenous people still left here in Costa Rica. And I’m pretty sure not made by the indigenous people. Yet I like the historical or almost archaeological “look” of this garden art found in several hotel gardens like these 4 photographed at Cristal Ballena Hotel in Uvita which are similar to what I saw at Bosque del Cabo on the Osa Peninsula in July and even the one piece I’ve added to my garden. They remind me of what you see more of in Guatemala and Mexico where the indigenous had bigger cities and left more archaeological ruins & art than the simpler, early agricultural peoples of Costa Rica who are still very important to the history of this country. I will be visiting one of the indigenous people city ruins in April as noted in yesterday’s post, Guayabo. And in my earlier writings you can find several articles on visits to different Bribri villages on the Caribbean Slope or see links at bottom of post.
Uvita is in the South Pacific area which is where the Boruca People lived and still have at least one traditional village. Their Boruca Artisans are famous for the brightly colored animal masks available in all the souvenir shops. They are too bright and unrealistic or “touristy” for me, but I like the “antique” or archaeological look of these concrete depictions of indigenous people, especially when older and weathered or covered in moss. Here’s 4 such “statues” in the gardens of Cristal Ballena Hotel in Uvita . . .
