charliedoggett.net
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!
That’s right! I’m back to sharing photos from my Christmas Trip to Hotel Savegre in San Gerardo de Dota. I think I shared some shots of the grounds and a “broad look at the gardens” which are some of the best of any hotel in Costa Rica. Well now that I’m not as super-busy as I have been since Christmas, I’m going to finish the gallery for the Christmas Trip to Hotel Savegre! And this posts introduces the sub-gallery called: Savegre Individual Flowers where I just deposited 57 photos of individual flowers! And here is one of my favorite . . .
Enjoy the flowers and if you missed it, go to my photos of the Broad View of the Gardens of Savegre.
¡Pura Vida!
I’ve completed one more chunk of my Christmas Trip Gallery, the BIRDS Gallery with 20 species and some of my better bird photos including 5 species of Hummingbirds! You can click the gallery first page image below this one bird photo or just go to this web address: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2023-December-22-28-San-Gerardo-de-Dota/BIRDS
This is my last week (Jan. 8-13) in the Gallería Artenas! (At Plaza Calle 2 next to Linea Vital.) So if interested in any of my photos there or the Floral Accent Pillows, this week is your last opportunity to shop for them in person, in town, except the Photo Greeting Cards which starting next Sunday, January 14, will be available at Hotel Colinas del Sol, with everything else available only online through my Gallery, – – – Bookstore, or – – – CafePress Shop.
From now on I will consider my nature photography as my fun and for this daily blog post, with any online sales and the Colinas del Sol greeting cards as “incidentals” to my fun hobby! No more gallerías, arts & crafts shows or physical selling for me! (Which, by the way, has always been tiring and at a financial loss for me.) Now I photograph only for fun! :-)
¡Pura Vida!
To me, every bird is a work of art and thus I try to make each photo of one a work of art, though I do have some ugly photos just to document seeing a species! :-) This common Rufous-collared Sparrow was seen a lot at Hotel Savegre this trip and I have a trip gallery of Rufous-collared Sparrows that will soon become a part of the Trip Gallery for this 2023 time at Savegre. And of course in my big birds gallery there’s a larger Rufous-collared Sparrow GALLERY with birds from this and other mountain lodges and even one at a hotel in San Jose and it includes my very first photo of this species from my 2009 trip to this same hotel (then a smaller mountain lodge) which is interesting, of a mother feeding her chick a worm, if you don’t consider that gross! :-) And you can read about this tropical bird on eBird. It is found only in Central and South America. The scientific name is Zonotrichia capensis.
¡Pura Vida!
Indigenous to Central America, this colorful Tanager is found only in the mountains of Mexico to Panama, from 1000m up to the timberline, on both slopes, Pacific & Caribbean. Read about him (red-orange) and her (yellow) on eBird. And you can see all my photos of this species in my Flame-colored Tanager GALLERY. I’ve seen them only in San Gerardo de Dota (3 locations) on the Pacific Slope and at El Silencio Lodge in Bajos del Toro on the Caribbean Slope. Here’s one male and one female photo . . .
¡Pura Vida!
This distinctive little woodpecker is one I have seen only one other time, in 2015, and it too was in San Gerardo de Dota, that time at Mariam’s Cabinas, now called Quetzals Cabinas. You can see that shot and all my decent ones this year from Savegre in my Acorn Woodpecker GALLERY. It is found only in the mountains above 1500m, from California south through Central America to Columbia.
¡Pura Vida!
From across the river and the road, Batsu Gardens looks back on the Savegre mountain. Here are 4 shots from the other side looking back on the Savegre mountains. They have feeders and a lot of birds which I go over to photograph once during my stay at Savegre.
The Spanish word “Mirador” is translated to English as a lookout point, vantage point or viewpoint to see a “vista” which in several languages is a view or sight. With a 2.5 km hike up the hill or a 4×4 jeep ride from the Hotel Savegre you can see the hills on the other side of the Savegre River that runs through the hotel property. After our hike through the cloud forest, we saw the views and then like sissies, rode back down the mountain in the jeep! :-) I did walk it the last time I was there! :-) Here’s five photos below or see them in the gallery: Savegre Mirador.
After the jeep ride up the mountain (yesterday’s post) going past the mirador (Spanish for a vista overlook platform), we stopped at the trailhead for multiple trails. Me and the 3-generation Tico family chose the shorter trail through the forest down to the Savegre Mirador. Just one experience here, so be sure to see the others in the Hiking the Pioneers Trail Photo GALLERY.
And for more pix on the trails at Savegre, click the linked blog post below titled “Trails and Trees” where Marino Chacón (a different son of the founder than this year) took me on a longer trails hike for the early morning bird hike back in January 2021, just the 2 of us.
¡Pura Vida!
While the male is more “showy” with his very long two green feathers that really impress when he is flying (that I can never capture in the camera), the female is just as colorful and maybe more “stately” in my opinion. Only one shot here, but you can see my other photos in this trips “Trip Gallery Sub-gallery”: Resplendent Quetzal Female.
And you who have visited the tropics might look at her tail and say that she looks like a Trogon – and you would be basically correct, in that the Quetzal is in the Trogon family, just a little more colorful and showy than most Trogons, though some of them are pretty colorful too! Just no long green feathers like the Quetzal Male. :-)
Today is the day I leave San Gerardo de Dota to return to my home in Atenas, Alajuela Province, but I will continue sharing images from these beautiful mountains over the next week or so and be developing a new trip gallery, so keep reading! :-)
¡Pura Vida!