Friday, March 14, 2014

Birds and Animals Eating

Our ship last week made a stop at a beautiful botanical garden in Costa Rica maintained by an American family who have lived there for some time. In front of their house,  called Casa Orquidea, is a bird feeder, where we saw a number of birds. Many other birds perched and nested in the garden. Len had his long lens, so these are his photos:
Golden-naped woodpecker eating a papaya
Cherrie's tanager at the bird feeder with a banana
Funny little tanager, same banana
Red-legged honeycreeper eating pink berries
At Manuel Antonio National Park, also in Costa Rica, we saw many animals including these:


A raccoon foraging for crumbs in the picnic area.
We heard that some other raccoons had been eating Fritos a while earlier.
A wasp eating a cicada.
We could hear cicadas singing as we hiked through the woods.
A few days later, at the mouth of the Taracoles river, we made our last stop before leaving for the airport. A brief tour on a small flat-bottom boat was intended for watching crocodiles. Luckily we only saw a rather sluggish one along with some ibises and other shore birds looking for food:
White Ibis digging for shellfish
The crocodile, around 18 feet long -- luckily not eating anything or anyone

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