Rio Tarcoles & Punta Leona Day Trip Gallery

Our January 7 day trip with 6 Canadian friends from British Columbia to Rio Tarcoles & Punta Leona Beach was a fun trip with lots of nature photo ops! And I now have the “Trip Gallery” finished! Click that link or the image of the first page below or this web address: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2025-January-7-Rio-Tarcoles-Punta-Leona In many ways, these trip galleries are my “base galleries” from which I glean photos for subject galleries like Birds! While photos made in my home garden go directly into the subject galleries if they even make a gallery. 🙂 But I love these trip galleries because I always make more photos on a trip!

CLICK this image of the first page to go to this gallery.

¡Pura Vida!

My needle biopsy went well yesterday and now I just wait for their report that I will receive in my February 12 appointment. And my sister Bonnie learned that her “colon cancer” was primarily an ovarian cancer that spread to her colon, and now they are about to begin chemotherapy after one more procedure. Our mother and brother both died of cancer and now it looks like the rest of us may go the same way. Only Dad never had cancer. The doctors said he died when his heart just stopped, not a heart attack. And Bonnie and I will both look for the positive while we fight our different types of cancers. Thanks for your prayers!

Xandari Gallery is Ready!

Christmas 2024 @ Xandari

Click this image of the first page or go directly to this web address: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2024-December-24-26-Xandari-Resort-Tacacori-Alajuela

CLICK this image of first page to go to the gallery.

Yes, Xandari is expensive, but it is worth it for me as I think the photos tell. Enjoy my “Nature as Art” photos that are different each time I visit there.

¡Pura Vida!

The Savegre Trip Gallery Finished!

It took longer after this trip to put the gallery together with a lengthy flurry of activities and first of year requirements, but my Christmas Trip of 2023 December 22-28 — San Gerardo de Dota, Hotel Savegre is ready to visit with all my birds, other wildlife, flowers and landscapes ready to view!

CLICK this Gallery Image to go visit it.
Continue reading “The Savegre Trip Gallery Finished!”

Chachagua Trip Gallery

Though I still have another week’s worth of blog posts about my visit to Chachagua Rainforest Hotel, I have also completed the photo gallery on this trip for anyone who wants to see all the shots from this trip together in one place. 🙂 CLICK on the image of first page of gallery below which this time is all in just 3 folders: Birds, Other Wildlife and Hotel Grounds.

First Page of this “Trip Gallery” – CLICK to visit the gallery.

If that image click doesn’t work, try this new SmugMug Gallery Address URL: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2022-May-16-21-Chachagua-Rainforest-Hotel-San-Ramon-Alajuela

¡Pura Vida!

Back Home with Butterflies

I’ve been back from Villa Caletas for a couple of days and my most obvious wildlife observation has been the butterflies, some repeats here from earlier posts but the Yellow-rimmed Skipper is a new one for my gallery and blog. There are soooo many different skippers!   🙂

Remember to CLICK an image to see it enlarged plus see the link to my butterfly gallery below the images.

4 Butterflies Today

 

See my growing Butterfly Gallery! Bueno!  🙂

 

For friends in Costa Rica, I have found that the best book for identifying butterflies (though still not 100%) is A Swift Guide to the Butterflies of Mexico and Central America by Jeffrey Glassberg. I’ve been using the first edition but just ordered the Second Edition which is improved and for those who prefer electronics, it is available in a Kindle Edition. I’m still a little partial to paper wildlife guides, though I do use Merlin on my phone for birds!

For just Costa Rica Butterflies there is a little less extensive book by Carrol Henderson titled Butterflies, Moths, and Other Invertebrates of Costa Rica which is also available in an electronic  Kindle Edition. It is good for the most common butterflies & moths here and okay for maybe most people, but I like having many more butterflies to choose from in the Swift Guide, though I actually use both books. Because it is also more work digging through more choices!   🙂

See all my photos from this trip at 2019 Villa Caletas, Jaco Photo Gallery.

¡Pura Vida!

Villa Caletas Photo Gallery

I just uploaded the last photo I’ve chosen to share from a very photogenic resort! I’m pleased with a lot of the photos and you can see them in the gallery at:

https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2019-July-28-31-Villa-Caletas-Jaco

Or it may be more fun   🙂   to click the image of the first page:

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Click above image to see the gallery.

Villa Caletas Website

¡Pura Vida!

Guarumo Bird Gallery

“Guarumo” is the Spanish name Ticos call a Cecropia Tree (English name) and about 4 years ago I asked my gardeners to plant one in my front yard because I had heard that they attract toucans for the easy perches and the food of the flowers. I would be patient, not really knowing how fast they grow!

In just 4 years it is the tallest tree in my yard, more than twice the height of my little house and my favorite “Bird Gallery” or place for birds to land so I can photograph them because it is such an open tree with a limited number of large leaves. See in the tree photos below what it looked like when we planted it and how big it has grown.

No telling how many birds I miss that land in the top of the tree!   🙂    But the lower limbs are what I watch while eating breakfast every morning and where I photographed from my terrace the birds in the birds photos below, including two kinds of toucans! I love nature’s gallery of birds that helps me grow my own photo gallery of birds!   ¡Pura Vida!

Birds in Tree

CLICK photo to enlarge or start manual slideshow.

The Tree

CLICK photo to enlarge or start manual slideshow.

 

“Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish.” 

― Munia Khan 

¡Pura Vida!

Macaw Lodge Photo Gallery

I completed my “Trip Gallery” of the 6 nights at Macaw Lodge, Carara National Park, Costa Rica. It is another fabulous nature retreat in Costa Rica and I hope you check out some of the photos I have posted. You can click the print screen image below or this web address:  https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2019-06-18-24-Macaw-Lodge

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Click gallery page above to visit it.

“A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels.”
— Ansel Adams

Macaw Lodge Website

¡Pura Vida!

Monteverde Gallery Completed

Finally, all the photos made during a week in Monteverde, Costa Rica have been sorted, culled, labeled and organized into the few best in each category as one of my “Trip Galleries” labeled as:

2019 April 7-13 — Monteverde, Costa Rica

Now I will start working on the photo book about Monteverde and making more photos around here as I report on things in Atenas like the progress on our central park remodeling and the climate fair here next week with our annual oxcart parade – always something happening!    🙂

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

~John Muir

¡Pura Vida!

44 Species – 16 Lifers – Monteverde BIRDS!

Now that I am wrapping up the photos from my week in Monteverde last week, I’m better realizing how good a trip it was! It was one of my best birding trips in recent years with useable photos of 44 different species of birds, 16 were first-time sightings for me or what birders call “Lifers.” See the 44 birds in the gallery:

2019 Monteverde BIRDS

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Emerald Toucanet with an attitude!

My Lifer List This Trip

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Golden-olive Woodpecker

  1. Coppery-headed Emerald
  2. Magenta-throated Woodstar
  3. Ruddy Pigeon
  4. Buff-fronted Quail-Dove
  5. Golden-olive Woodpecker
  6. Paltry Tyrannulet
  7. Black-headed Tody-Flycatcher
  8. Long-tailed Manakin
  9. Azure-hooded Jay
  10. Ruddy-capped Nightingale-Thrush
  11. Swainson’s Thrush
  12. White-throated Thrush
  13. Lesser Greenlet
  14. Gray-crowned Yellowthroat
  15. Rose-breasted Grosbeak
  16. Black-thighed Grosbeak

The featured photo at top is of a Wilson’s Warbler. And I am now working on the other parts of my trip gallery like other wildlife, the hotel, flowers, etc. which will go much faster than my huge collection of bird photos!   🙂    It’s at  2019 April 7-13 — Monteverde, Costa Rica  which the birds gallery is just one part of.

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Collared Redstart

I am thankful that when the Quakers came from the states and founded the little mountain farming town of Monteverde they also had the foresight to start preserving the virgin forest around the town and that other ecologists came and continued the effort with some of the largest forest reserves in the world! Nature is the main attraction of Monteverde!

My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.

~Claude Monet

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Three-wattled Bellbird close to the ground in search of food – A 1st for me!

 

¡Pura Vida!