More birds, plants and life in Costa Rica

We can't believe the variety of birds we are seeing here right from our balcony! You just look up and you see a bird in the distance and once you zoom in with your camera you discover that it's a species you haven't yet seen. I love it!

Great Kiskadee  - they are everywhere!

The cute swallows (called Blue & White Swallow here)

Every morning I watch the swallows fly gracefully while catching bugs.

The first time we saw Toucans we were so excited! Right there from our house!

But each new bird we see brings joy. And if I can identify them it's even better!

Lots of Kiskadees! 

Blue-gray Tanager 

This is the national bird of Costa Rica

A beautiful Lineated Woodpecker

Too cute not to post!

Unidentified

Our neighbour invited us to go through his property to get to the river. It's a nice walk down and there are many different trees and bushes down there. We even cross through a small coffee plantation! Once there I normally sit on a makeshift bamboo bench and just watch the river flow and listen to its song. Water always brings me peace.

This is our neighbour's driveway. The trail to the river starts from there.

Rio General

We have no idea what this fruit is. Fairly large.

Plant a coconut and get a tree! Everything grows in Costa Rica!
The leaves are ridged until they get bigger and split apart.

These could be oranges or lemons or even limes. They all look alike.

This beautiful flower grows on a vine. 

Flowers from the coffee bush. They later become the coffee beans.

This flower feels rubbery. Weird.

Unfortunately, the walk back is less pleasant for me as we now have to climb a few fairly steep hills which leave me breathless and tired even while using supplemental oxygen. Glen has had to carry me piggyback a few times!

One of the neighbours throws food over the fence (on our side) and I don't know what they throw but the birds love it. On one of those feeding, we saw our first Motmot. Wow! It's not a good picture but I hope you can see the long tail with the lone feather at the end.

Sometimes when you're looking for birds, any movement or colour in a tree is worth grabbing the camera and zooming in to see what it is. What a surprise to see an Iguana way up high in a tree!

We also see some pretty interesting things on the road in front of the house. This is a noisy, busy road (that's why we're moving soon) and there is no shoulder.

Yet, this guy has been seen twice leading his horse while he rides his motorcycle. That's what I call a bombproof horse!

The mail in Costa Rica is hit and miss. Just to mail a letter you have to go to the post office and wait forever in line. There are no mailboxes anywhere nor can you buy stamps at a store. And have you seen the addresses here? It's always in reference to something of importance like a store (200 m. west of ....) then the city, the region, the province and then the country. The mailman is a guy on a motorcycle with a lockable box behind his seat. Since many houses are not accessible from the road, he honks a few times and if nobody comes he leaves. You might never get that letter!

The mailman

People work very hard here. Everything is done by hand. Right now they are harvesting the sugar canes. A portion of the field is burned (we were once told it was to get rid of the snakes) then the canes are all cut by hand with machetes. Everything is loaded on trailers that are then hooked up to a tractor or a truck two at a time.

The piece of land behind our place is being prepared for the construction of another house like the one we live in. It was a rough terrain with rocks, etc. and that was leveled by 2 guys with shovels and a wheelbarrow. They did a splendid job!

This is now a level field free of all debris.

The vegetation along the road is also cut by hand with a machete. The guys work early in the morning because it just gets too hot in the afternoon.

We sometimes wake up to the crow of the rooster and the chop chop sounds of the machete along with the sound of traffic.

Our resident rooster. Isn't he gorgeous?

The neighbour's dog comes often for a visit and will sometimes spend the whole afternoon with us. Her name is Maddie and she seems to like our company. We keep our door open most of the time for air circulation. There are no mosquitoes so far and very few flies. We did get a HUGE grasshopper once in the bathroom. It was at least 3 inches long if not bigger.

Glen with his adopted dog.

When we move, we will miss the views we get from our balcony. The mountains are always beautiful, even at night when they get all dotted with tiny lights from the homes. We've had some pretty sunsets and in the mornings the clouds sit on and around the mountains like white ribbons.

These are the sugar canes across the street.

A few other visitors.

These lizzards make a kissing sound at night. 

Sorry for the very long blog with so many pictures, but there is so much that we find interesting and we want to share with you hoping you'll find it worth seeing also.

Buenas noches!