Wildlife Utopia in Santa Rosa

Camping in the Santa Rosa nature reserve in the north-west of Costa Rica in 1994 there were iguanas around the campsite:

I didn’t know if it was wise, in the days before the great Steve Irwin, but after inspiration from legendary David Attenborough etc, and knowing it would be a great photo:

Night-time was a raccoon party:

Howler monkeys sounded like lions:

As MIST (Midwinter Ideal Sunrise Times: November 21st to January 21st) enters its second week in Blighty (now after 8am, with the latest around December 21st) and the Northern Hemisphere, and is joined by Advent Calendarists since yesterday, here’s a POP (PinkyOrangePurple) sunset photo (one I made earlier [than the POP MIST theories], remembering Blue Peter!):

Americas Bird Photos

Ben Fogle recently joked about watching birdlife with a double meaning of women on his programme New Lives in the Wild, so it must be okay, but I have no need to do it in this blog post, as it just features birds of the flying kind.

These photos were taken in the Santa Rosa park in Costa Rica’s north-west. I think I just found out twenty-three years later it’s a white-throated magpie jay, and a cover star of the park’s speciality birds. The name reminds me that I also saw beautiful blue jays and redolent red cardinals in North America.

These were taken in Peru’s Colca Canyon, near Arequipa, below Lima. I stayed in a village near the canyon the night before, as the condors emerge early, getting a memorable view of the night sky in all its glory from the Andean mountains with little light pollution; the village didn’t have electricity, just using candles and torches for light. I saw this bird of prey first and thought it might be a condor:

But when the condor arrived, it was so much bigger, I knew it was the real thing:

These photos were taken in the Brazilian Pantanal wetlands. The first photo features parrots, and I think the second does too.