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Green-browed Skipper – A Lifer!

Yesterday was a new species of birds for me and today a new species of butterflies for me, the Arita Skipper or Green-browed Skipper, Arita arita. No link to my gallery because this is the only photo in it now. 🙂 And no good article online, though there are 2 other photos on butterfliesandmoths.org and 5 more sightings from Costa Rica on the iNaturalistCR site. Not a spectacular butterfly, but one more species which brings my CR Butterflies Galleries up to 320 identified species now! 🙂

Green-browed or Arita Skipper, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~Henry David Thoreau

¡Pura Vida!

2,000 Blog/Website Visits in January! THANK YOU!

One of the services provided by my WordPress blog/website host is a monthly report of page visits on my site and it has been typical for the last few years to have around 2,000 page views of my blog/website at charliedoggett.net each month!

And though my photo gallery is a menu item on the website, it is actually separate and hosted by a different business, SmugMug.com, and they started in February 2022 counting my gallery visitors with several galleries now having had over 1,000 visitors in 2 years! And the shocker for me, as I typed this (yesterday) is that I’ve had 1,957 views of the gallery “My Home Gardens.” 🙂 Flowers are more popular than birds?! So I express my THANKS to all of you who read the blog (with more pictures than words)! 🙂 And then go on to look at my photos in the gallery! 🙂 Maybe “A picture is worth a thousand words” is a true statement after all! 🙂

Moving to Costa Rica 10 years ago and immersing myself in the incredible nature here was definitely one of the best decisions I every made! And I’m thankful for the many people who have joined me in my adventures vicariously by reading the blog posts and looking at the photos! ¡Pura Vida!

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Lifer Bird Just 3 Blocks from Home!

It makes 379 species of birds photographed in Costa Rica and with that many it is becoming rare to find a new species anywhere, especially so close to home. Hotel Colinas del Sol is just about three or four blocks from my house and while my BC Canadian friends were visiting in January I was over there 2 or 3 times. One of those times when I had my camera, Margaret noticed first this Blue & White Swallow, Pygochelidon cyanoleuca (eBird link), on the wall of a carport by one of the houses they rent out. It was overcast, no good light, and thus not a good photo, but useful to say that I added one more species to my collection! 🙂 AND NOTE that this is a South American bird that gets no further north than Costa Rica! 🙂 There are so many birds here that you never know what you will see next or where! And though my CR bird count will continue to grow much slower than in those early years here, I believe it will continue to grow with who-knows-what coming next! 🙂

Blue & White Swallow, Hotel Colinas del Sol, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
I tried to lighten the shadows of above pix so the blue would show, but it’s grainy! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

And oh yeah, if you are interested in swallows. there are three others that I see here with the Mangrove being the most common. See those in their photo galleries at:

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Wall Crab Spider

The fairly common Wall Crab Spider, Selenops mexicanus is not poisonous to humans (a bite can cause allergies in some people) and does not normally bite humans anyway. Like all spiders, he is a part of the total ecology of the world and I generally leave them alone in my house just like my geckos! I don’t always photograph when seen in my house, but did this one and online discovered his identification. For those in Costa Rica, the Spanish Common Name is “Araña de Pared” which translated to English is simply “Wall Spider.” I tend to photograph spiders more when outdoors or in a forest, thus I have a few photos of different spiders (about 20 species) in my Spiders gallery. Always interesting even if scary looking! 🙂 And remember, most are not poisonous!

Wall Crab Spider, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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Gray-headed Chachalaca

The only “regular” (almost daily) large (Turkey-sized) bird in my garden is the Gray-headed Chachalaca, Ortalis cinereiceps (eBird link) which is found only in the southern parts of Central America or from Honduras to Columbia. When a whole flock of them swoop into one of my trees they are sort of “pests” because of their constant chatter. But lately it has only been 2 to 4 at a time which is less noise and more interesting to watch. See my many photos of this unique bird in my Chachalaca Gallery. Just one shot here.

Gray-headed Chachalaca, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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A Fave Flower Finally Identified

My Costa Rican gardener has always called this flowering shrub “Once de Abril” as a local name honoring our one war hero who fought off the North American Rebels trying to turn Central America into another slave state in the 1800’s. Thanks to Google Lens & iNaturalist, I’ve discovered that it is “officially” . . .

Duranta erecta, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

Scientific Name = Duranta erecta

Common Names in English

  • Golden Dewdrop
  • Pigeon Berry
  • Skyflower

Nombres comunes en español

  • Coralillo (iNaturalist CR)
  • Tala blanco (en Argentina)
  • Flor celeste
  • Fruta de iguana (I like this because my iguanas eat those yellow berries) 🙂

So there you have it for all the “official” names I could find! 🙂 Which like pretty much everything in nature, the only sure name is the scientific name and sometimes even that changes! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

See all my flower photos in the Flora & Forest Galleries.

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Red-billed Pigeon

This colorful, purpleish, dove-like bird is not as common in my garden as the White-winged Dove, but I like him just as much! He is the Red-billed Pigeon, Patagioenas flavirostris (linked to eBird) and found only from Costa Rica to Mexico. Just one more of the many birds unique to this part of the world! The best place to go birding! 🙂

Red-billed Pigeon, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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Tropical Greenstreak

This is not the most common of the Hairstreak Butterflies, but I have seen it 3 other times before these two in my garden the other day. These photos of two different individuals show the variations in shades of green they can have. And yes, there are other species of green hairstreaks that are different in design from this one and their IDs are also not based on the shade of green which seems to vary in all the green ones.

Tropical Greenstreak, my garden, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Tropical Greenstreak, my garden, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

See my Tropical Greenstreak, Cyanophrys herodotus Gallery for more photos and more shades of green! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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My Iguana Neighbor . . .

The Black Spiny-tailed Iguana,  Ctenosaura similis (my gallery link) is called “Garrobo” in Spanish and lives only on the Pacific Slope, which is also where I live. Here’s just two shots from one recently in my garden (living there or nearby) and the only neighbor I have who walks on my roof! 🙂 See more of this interesting fellow in the above-linked gallery.

And what about the Green Iguana? Well, he lives on both slopes, but I’ve not seen one in Atenas, I see many in the Caribe.

Black Spiny-tailed Iguana, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

My Favorite Quote Today . . .

“Hitching the evangelical wagon to Donald Trump has meant unhitching it from the life and teachings of Jesus. It’s a bad trade.” –Peter Wehner, Writer, The Atlantic

Thanks to Ellie for sharing that article in The Atlantic! It is at:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/evangelicals-trump/681450/?gift=qFEJ9LdWpG_UQ02zpyrhX2xpGq7ImcdmeknHDgHmMlk&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

And a Related Bible Verse . . .

From last night’s devotional . . .

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy. Colossians 2:8