When I was selling photos under the name “Nature As Art” I would say that I paint with my camera and always tried to formulate in my mind through the camera lens an idea with simplicity, leading lines, contrasts, shapes and balance creating a type of “painting” with many of my photos. Yesterday’s “Melodious Morning” is a good example and in someway today’s photo of the Tropical Kingbird (eBird) sitting on a branch of the tropical Bougainvillea is another. I prefer the first image with the bird looking at us, making it more dynamic in that photo, but both images can be my tropical paintings for today! 🙂
Whether at home or at one of the many forest lodges of Costa Rica, all of my mornings are melodious with bird songs waking me gently. And one of those singing is the Melodious Blackbird (eBird) photographed here at Guayabo Lodge, Turrialba. See more of my photos of this bird in my Melodious Blackbird Gallery.
A Singing Melodious Blackbird, Guayabo Lodge, Turrialba, Costa Rica.A Posing Melodious Blackbird, Guayabo Lodge, Turrialba, Costa Rica
This second image is my preferred photo as a “painting” or work of art. 🙂
The Great Egret and the Cattle Egret (both links to eBird) are very common all over Costa Rica around water and these two were seen at CATIE, the Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center in Turrialba with both egrets nesting on an island in CATIE’s lake. And of course I have lots of photos of both in my CR Birds galleries:
Though I’ve never seen that cartoon, my first sight of this bird made me think “Angry Bird” for some reason, maybe the slant of his eye or something, but he is a Common Tody-Flycatcher (eBird link) and my several shots in my Common Tody-Flycatcher Gallery are all from different places, so maybe that makes him “common.” 🙂 Not my favorite bird, but certainly interesting and another found only in Central and South America.
Common Tody-Flycatcher, Guayabo Lodge & Gardens, Turrialba, Costa RicaCommon Tody-Flycatcher, Guayabo Lodge & Gardens, Turrialba, Costa Rica
I photographed only 20 species of birds at the combination of Guayabo Lodge and CATIE Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center in Turrialba. I will not post all 20 species because frankly some of the photos just aren’t worth sharing and after my two-day’s-ago post of the toucan in my garden, nothing from the Guayabo trip compares! 🙂 But all birds are important to me and be sure to see my Guayabo BIRDS Gallery.
And I do like these four shots of my most commonly seen sparrow all over Costa Rica, the Rufous-collared Sparrow (eBird link) found only in Central and South America. Locals call it “Come Maíz” in Spanish (it eats corn). I have a pretty good collection of this bird in my Rufous-collared Sparrow Gallery including one from my first trip to CR in 2009 of a mother bird feeding her child a worm! 🙂
A quiet morning walk, a special breakfast, the songs of birds in my trees, and a bouquet of lilies in my house replace my old traditions of Easter Eggs for the children and a “dressed up” Easter Worship in a Baptist Church for most of my life. That old tradition is not me now.
Easter Flowers in my Home.
This majority Catholic country has both traditions and superstitions that I explored those first few years here. This week’s Tico Times online article Processions and Superstition Mark Easter Week in Costa Rica describe only some of those and my blog posts & galleries linked below describe even more.
Yes – that’s rather surprising! Especially this Irazú Volcano, the highest in Costa Rica and usually above the clouds as seen in one of the following photos or the feature photo at top. As the highest, it is the only volcano from which you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on a clear day, though not a clear day while I was there. 🙂
Irazú has two craters, one inactive and one occasionally mildly active, with sometimes both craters filling with water in the rainy season (not now) to form beautiful lakes. But the biggest surprise to me was the number and variety of flowers and other plants, even trees around both craters and “the beach,” a large, flat sandy, desert-like area above both craters with hills going above that, all with plants growing on them!
And as I will denote tomorrow in my post on the neighboring Turrialba Volcano, the land below an active volcano grows great vegetables with the soil enriched by the regular deposits of the rich volcanic ash! 🙂 When it erupts during the windy dry season (Dec-Mar) I get some of that rich ash on my garden and even as dust all over my furniture at less than a hundred air miles away! 🙂
Yeah, that’s the real common name for this butterfly, Blushing Phantom, (link to Wikipedia article with very little info), the Cithaerias pireta pireta (Mexico to Colombia, Ecuador) also known as the “Pink tipped Clearwing Satyr” and the “Rusted Clearwing Satyr.” It is my first one to see and also the only “clearwing” I’ve seen with an eye spot! It was in the jungles of the archaeological site Guayabo National Monument, Costa Rica, so maybe it’s a prehistoric butterfly! 🙂
Ventral Side of Mexican Silverspot, Guayabo Lodge, Turrialba, Costa Rica.
I spent more than an hour searching for the identification of this butterfly that I photographed from beneath or below in the Gardens of Guayabo Lodge, Turrialba last week. Then I suddenly realized that it is the same butterfly as yesterday’s, just the other side! 🙂 Dummy me! The closest similarity was the underside of the Dione Juno Heliconian Butterfly, but I am fairly certain that this one is Mexican! 🙂
I’m not sure if the wasp was challenging the butterfly for the flower or just happen to pass by. 🙂 But as usual, neither stayed long! This is a common butterfly and you can see one more in my Mexican Silverspot Gallery and how different the other side of their wings are; but the flower is what’s unusual and at Guayabo Lodge was my first time to see it. It is a “Red Vein Indian Mallow” (Abution striatum) sometimes incorrectly called a “Chinese Lantern” and one of the Ticos there called it a “bottle flower” in Spanish, “Flor de botella.” I will do a later post on just this flower with more information and better photos of the flower. 🙂
