Costa Rica - Part 2

Bosque del Cabo is located at the south eastern tip of the Osa Penninsula in southern Costa Rica.  The Osa Penninsula is covered by tropical rainforest.

There were many flowers around, some familiar, some not.

These Golden Orb Spiders were very common.  Some spanned nearly 3 inches!

There were lots of diiferent kinds of butterflies.

We could not hike any of the trails without frequently encountering leaf-cutter ants carrying their bits of harvested vegetation back to the nest.

We frequently saw both Spider Monkeys ...

... and White Faced Capuchin Monkeys.

This toucan is a Fiery-billed Aracari.

A Black Hawk

a Great Tinamou

Costa Rica - Part 1

On February 26th 2013 Barbara, Nick and I boarded a flight out of Los Angeles bound for San Jose, Costa Rica.  That night we spent at the Hotel Irazu in San Jose.

The next morning we boarded a small commuter plane for the 45 minute flight to Puerto Jimenez on Costa Rica's Osa Penninsula.

After landing in Puerto Jimenez, we were driven over dirt backroads in a four wheel for about 30 minutes to our first destination, the Bosque del Cabo Nature Lodge.

This was our "cabina" named La Palma, complete with mosquito netting and a "garden" shower.

This is the outdoor dining room.  Every meal was fantastic.

And finally, the bar and swimming pool.

Animation Experiment

While working my way through images from our 2012 Alaska trip I found a burst sequence of a brown bear fishing in Katmai National Preserve.  I wondered what it would look like to turn that sequence into an animation.  I cropped and reduced the images and turned them into an animated GIF.  Click on the image to display the animation.  Warning the animation file is nearly 6MB in size!

Raptor Portraits

The Ojai Raptor Center had their fall open house on November 10.  To get some experience with my new Canon 5D3, I paired it with my 100-400mm telephoto zoom and went to the open house.  Below are some of the images shot during that visit.

Lucy (Western Screech-Owl)

Riley (Eastern Screech-Owl)

Kramer (Swainson's Hawk)

Newton (Great Horned Owl)

Shytan (Golden Eagle)

Hitch (Bald Eagle)

Lucky (Red-shouldered Hawk)

Avalon (juvenile Bald Eagle)

Kira (American Kestrel)

Spooky (Barred Owl)

Canon 5D Mark III

When we travel I like to have a second camera body.  This gives me a backup if I have a problem with my primary camera.  It also allows me to have two cameras set up with different lenses (e.g. wide angle zoom and a telephoto) when I might need to quickly switch.  Recently my primary camera was the Canon 7D and its backup was my old Canon Rebel XTi.  I just upgraded my primary camera to a Canon 5D Mark III.  The 7D will become the backup/alternate.  I've only been able to shoot a few test images around the yard, but from this small sample, I think I'm really going to like this camera!

These are some of the sample images.  Many of these are heavily cropped.  These were all shot with my 400mm telephoto lens mounted.