Category: Monteverde

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Today’s Nature Photos

Blue-crowned Motmot
At the Monteverde Butterfly Garden, Monteverde, Costa Rica

I had narrowed them down to 8 photos to share and the internet connection here just could not handle it, so I will share some butterflies and a sunset vista from my cabin grounds after I am home with more upload ability. I’m in the boonies this weekend! But one thing I can share indirectly. I emailed my photo of an unknown brown, blue & orange butterfly to them. They identified the unusual butterfly using a Costa Rica University book. It is in English a Blue-winged Euyrbia, one of the lycisca butterflies found only between Mexico and Ecuador. So glad of that! Click the linked name above for my photo gallery image of it. Or a very brief article on Wikipedia. 

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Planning a Weekend Trip

Reserva Monteverde

The Birding Club is going to Monteverde this weekend and I responded early enough to get to be included in the group of only 15 because of limited cabin space available. And as usual, I am going a day early to explore on my own Thursday and Friday before the club activities Friday afternoon until Sunday morning.

You can check out the links to see my plans for my first trip to Monteverde, originally a Friends Community of mostly dairy farmers, thus the cheese capital of Costa Rica in one set of mountains.

THURSDAY

  • I take bus to Alajuela  to get a rent car at San Jose Airport, early. 
  • I drive by my house for bag and camera. Then a 2.5 to 3 hour drive to Monteverde. As my Spanish gets better I will go places like this by bus, usually going through San Jose. But everyone in the club has a car and it usually works better to have rent car, though much more expensive. 
  • Check into Los Pinos Cabinas for my first night only in the edge of a forest preserve and rated internationally as a Sustainable Tourism location. 
  • I have made acquaintance with the owner and director of the Monteverde Butterfly Garden,  so that afternoon I plan to visit it. It is supposedly one of the best in the country. We will see!
FRIDAY
Butterfly Garden at Selvatura Park
  • I plan to spend the morning through lunch at Selvatura Adventure Park which will not includ zip-lining which I’ve already done and once is enough for a 75 year old!  🙂   But I may walk

    the canopy bridge of 2 miles and will see as many of the animal gardens as time allows: Herpetarium & Frogs, Hummingbird Garden, and another Butterfly Garden. Lunch at the park and 20 minutes back to Monteverde and . . . 

  • Check in to Cabanas La Pradera where the birding club has reservations. I plan to look for birds on their property that afternoon and meet club members for brought appetizers before going to dinner. Then we have a . . . 
  • Night Hike  into surrounding 14 hectares of forest belonging to the cabanas for owls, bats, and frogs + who knows what else!  🙂  We have a local guide for that tour. 
SATURDAY
  • 6 AM Breakfast and . . .  
  • Morning hike/birding in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve which I’m expecting to be very good with hopefully some new birds for me!
  • Lunch at Caburé, an Argentine Restaurant and Chocolate Shop. 
  • Afternoon birding at Curi Cancha, a private reserve near the public Cloud Forest Reserve seen in the morning with usually different birds we are told. This will be a full day of birding in some different mountains than the Talamanca Mountains I have visited three times and I may also get a photo of the Resplendent Quetzal here too! Looking forward to a new place! 
  • Check our birding lists with guides and have evening bocas at Janelle’s house who lives nearby.
SUNDAY
  • Early morning birding around the cabins with one of the authors of our Costa Rica birding guidebook, Bob Dean, before breakfast. 
  • Drive home to dump bags, then to airport to drop off car and back on foot, bus, and taxi!  🙂
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Slowing Down in Atenas + March Birding Trips

I’m beginning to take palms for granite!
These are by the church at central park.
Like steeples they point to God!
Uplifting!

I’m slowing down after a busy schedule during Reagan’s visit here though still having to learn how to truly rest!  🙂  I’m back to just one Spanish Class again since Zaray got a high school teaching position and can no longer teach our Tuesday night class at the church. And my conversational tutor Jason has moved to Liberia to live with his sister for awhile. So I’m on my own with Spanish and have a little more time to catch up on some work here at home.

But two great trips planned for March!  🙂

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Click to see the YouTube Video  from Cornell Lab of Ornithology showing the joys of birding.

Birding is an incredible hobby! Here Cornell says “Thank You” to all who helped with the 2015 Christmas Bird Count around the world. Watch the birds where you live! They will give you an incredible sense of joy and peace. And it is even more fun for me to capture many of them in photographs! My growing gallery of Costa Rica Birds now has photos of 161 species and growing monthly plus I’m getting some better images to replace or supplement older ones. Plus I’m about to add a pretty good collection from Nicaragua and already have one from Panama. Fun!

Lynn Thomson

“I think the most important quality in a birdwatcher is a willingness to stand quietly and see what comes. Our everyday lives obscure a truth about existence – that at the heart of everything there lies a stillness and a light.”
― Lynn Thomson, Birding with Yeats: A Memoir