A Few More Videos... Costa Rica, Part 6

Then the pictures will start in earnest...


We did the hike to the waterfall at the hanging bridges. It was a LOT of uphill and we moved very, very quickly. Oy.

 Oh, and by the way, while flipping a still shot is easy enough with this camera, the video remains in landscape orientation. So when you turn the camera 90 degrees to shoot in portrait, what you get is a waterfall that goes from right to left when you download it. I flipped it back in Quicktime, but if it still looks a little whackadoodle, that's why.

Here's one from the J.W. Marriott grounds.  It wasn't on the schedule, but the two Caravan tour guides very kindly offered to get up and do a 7:00 a.m. nature walk with those of us who were interested.  It was probably my very favorite part of the entire ten days.  We didn't leave the hotel grounds.  They're something of a gated community with a fair chunk of the rain forest right in their gates.  After snapping a bazillion stills of the butterflies it occurred to me that the best way to really illustrate just how insanely many there were of them would be to video a random bush.  This wasn't an intensely densely populated bush.  There were many, many flowering bushes that actually *moved* with the power of all the take offs and landings.




And then, of course, there was my last hotel.  It was the Quality Inn in San Jose.  WAY less upscale than the first San Jose hotel and, of course, a huge step down from the Marriott, but it was a lot more like the hotel rooms I'm used to renting for myself. :)




Alrighty then!  That's it for the videos.  Tomorrow I should be able to start posting all six billion photos!

All the videos in the world. Or at least in Central America. So far.

Okay, I'm in Guanacaste now and I have *real* high speed internet which means my videos are finally uploading.  So here are all the videos I've been trying to post for the last week...


Tortugero hotel.  Otherwise known as "What would happen if we dropped Camp Dean in the Rain Forest."


These are the monkeys that were hanging out in a copse of trees at the end of my row of cabins.

Howler Monkeys [006-2013]

By contrast, this was my hotel in Arenal/La Fortuna.  Same set up - little individual cabins - less in the middle of the rain forest.

And then we went to (and are still in) Guanacaste at the J.W. Marriott hotel.  Here's the room there:


And just for fun, have a sloth eating! :)
 
[Three-toed Sloth [005-2013]

Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve - 4.15.12 - Post 2

So here we go with the first set of spottings from Fullersburg...

White-Breasted Nuthatch (025 - 2012)

Here's my one new bird for the walk.  I saw a lot of birds, got some good shots, but I think this was the only one that was brand new for me.

This is a White-Breasted Nuthatch.

Nuthatches and creepers are really similar birds in both shape and behavior.  The easiest way to tell them apart - mostly - is by watching them on the trees.  Creepers will *always* go head down and around in a circle.  Nuthatches will travel in any direction, their heads going the way they're going.

So, of course, I happen to catch a nuthatch that's going down the tree, head-down.  Which led to me researching creepers for far too long before I realized it wasn't one.  *sigh*

Virginia Bluebells (026 - 2012)

 I didn't realize we had wild bluebells in Illinois.  I think I've mentioned before that I love seeing blue in nature.

 One of the nice things about Fullerton, besides the indoor chart, is that they have a cultivated area where they've put in a few of each wildflower and a sign that tells you what they are.  I know I've advocated shooting the signs before.  All these shots are from places I found them outside the cultivated area, but it was really nice to get shots of the signs and the planted bits, because it makes identification so much easier when I get home.

So, the rest of this post will be about the Common Snapping Turtles I found courting when I was walking near the river. 

Putting this spotting up at ProjectNoah.org was awesome, as there were some people there who gave me some great information.

Common Snapping Turtles (027 - 2012)

Neil Dazet told me, "Those 3 ridges that you see in the 2nd picture are common in this species, but they tend to smooth out and be less defined in older individuals. Also, female snappers are slightly bigger than male snappers. So it looks like an older male snapper attempting to mate with a younger female."

 Which, just... how awesome is that?  I know which species I've got, which one is which gender and their relative ages!  So cool!

 They were in the water the whole time and most of the time (and I was watching for about 15 or 20 minutes), they were 'hugging' - carapace to carapace with their legs holding on to each other - most of the time.

 During this time, I saw more soft parts of turtles (no, not like that!  Well, not that *I* could recognize anyway) than I ever have before.




They were so unconcerned with me that I was even able to sit and take some video of them.

 So you can start to see why my accidental walkabout (due to the broken bridge) wasn't the worst thing that's ever happened to me. :)  More animals tomorrow!


Total Identified Species Sited for the Year: 27
Total Unidentified Species Sited for the Year: 1
Total New Species: 14

White-Breasted Nuthatch*
Virginia Bluebells*
Common Snapping Turtles*

December 28, 2009 - the I'm not dead yet post...

Wow, my life got away from me for a few months there.  I had an art show, where I sold my photography for the first time.  I went to Nashville a couple times to see my nephew (hopefully the next time I go down it'll be decent enough out to go shooting). And I went to Washington D.C. for the "Rally to Restore Sanity."

Very quickly, the Rally was a huge blast.  I stayed with a friend while I was in D.C. and she helped me (and the rest of the visiting public) navigate the D.C. Metro.  There was an insane amount of people there, but even with that, it was a wonderfully fun, calm event where no one felt it necessary to be completely stupid.  I think Sanity was Restored.  We were shoved up against (I think it was) the Library of Congress, so we couldn't see much of the actual Rally, but we could hear most of it.

The best shooting for that was the signs people carried.  I literally shot over 900 different signs.  I put some of them to music, since, really, who can stare at 900 pictures of signs with out losing their sanity a little bit?




In the next few posts I'm going to start posting the photos from the trip.  I'm typically pretty *bored* with architectural photography, but come on, it was Washington D.C... There's some pretty impressive buildings out there.  But I also looked for all the nature I could find.  :)