Really, there were just so many beautiful trees

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Some middle-range shots: not closeups, not full views.

In fact, this was a little like trying to photograph birds—partial views through thick greenery.

And still more trees

Some more standard tree views, taken with the shorter lens.

And trees

These are from the birdwatching tour in the Curi-Cancha reserve.

And now some trees

Trees don't flee when you try to photograph them, so I was able to get some good photos in the Cloud Forest.

The biggest limitation was my equipment—I needed to bring so much stuff for the San José program, like books and art supplies (along with three weeks worth of clothes and personal stuff), that I ended up only taking one camera with me. I had two lenses, a 400mm zoom for birds and wildlife, and a shorter zoom for people and scenery and basically everything else. This meant that I had to either carry both lenses with me while I was hiking in Monteverde and switch as needed (assuming it wasn't raining and that I could switch lenses), or decide in advance what I was going to be trying to take pictures of and bring only that lens.

So on the birdwatching tour, for example, the pictures I took of the trees with my 400mm lens were basically closeups, like this photo. It just wasn't possible to get far enough away to capture more of the tree. So my tree pictures are a mix, and I could happily have spent another week there and still not taken all of the pictures I would have liked to.

Random houses I saw in Monteverde

I like beautiful houses, and interesting architecture, but I'm always more fascinated by houses that are a little less polished, a little slapdash, places where it's obvious that human life, in all its messiness, is in residence.

So I much prefer whatever is going on with those green boards to the neat chalet on its right.

Monteverde

The town of Monteverde was a fifteen minute walk down the mountain from the hotel, and I only went there once. It's touristy, with lots of restaurants and tour companies and a few souvenir shops, but pleasantly low-key. I had lunch in a cafe, and accomplished my main purpose, which was to pick up something for my itchy bug bites at the farmacia.

It was hot the day I was in town and most people were wearing shorts. I was amused to see that every single one of them had the same red bumps on their legs that I did. There are no mosquitos that high up in the mountains, but plenty of other biting and stinging insects, and despite long sleeves, long pants, and plenty of insect repellant, I think I was bitten by all of them.

Some bananas to have with your berries

The flower on a banana tree, and the resulting bananas.

Flora

One of the women in our group in San José took wonderful photographs of some of the plants and flowers we saw, and she inspired me to take more of them myself. Which I forgot about as soon as I got to Monteverde and started hunting for birds (although I did take many pictures of the trees there, which I will be posting.)

But even I noticed this plant, and stopped for a picture. I love the way the leaves look like little bowls holding the berries. I want to pour milk over them.

Astronomy Tuesday

M94 is a fairly typical spiral galaxy, but this image from Hubble ignores the spirals and focuses on the center, including that beautiful ring of young blue stars around the galactic nucleus.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA

Sunday bird blogging

A word about photographing birds in the Cloud Forest: it sucks.

On the birding tour I took, often the best look we got at some of the birds was by using a setup like the one in the photo; the guide would locate a bird in his or her scope and then we'd either take turns looking, or the guide would attach a phone so we could all look at once. And though you can, and we did, take photos using the attached phones, they were useful more as souvenirs and a record of what we saw than as photographic art. The canopy in the forest is too thick and it's dark even when it isn't raining, which it mostly was.

So while I did actually see more than one orange-bellied trogon (the bird on the screen there) you'll mostly have to take my word for it.

Saturday reflections

Speaking of magical ponds—here are some abstract reflections of leaf and tree bark.

Critters of the Cloud Forest in close-up

I'd also seen leafcutter ants in Panama, but had honestly forgotten all about them. You can't really see the ants underneath the leaves unless you look closely, so my initial impression was that a chorus line of small leaves was somehow dancing along the edge of a pond.