Travels with Gunther and Kara

Well…the Democrats in Congress have gone even further off the rails since my last post…and not for actual they want to change things reasons but strictly for political gain.

While I agree that term limits for both the SCOTUS and Congress are a good idea that should be reasonably compromised on…instituting either would take a Constitutional amendment. Similarly…enforcing an ethics code on a separate branch of government isn’t in the powers authorized to the legislative branch so that again needs a Constitutional amendment. Similarly…now that the SCOTUS has stated that a President has some degree of criminal immunity…and left how much up to the lower courts to hash out first…and their opinion stated that this problem could not be legislatively fixed…again an amendment. And with that as background here’s what happened late this week. 

One amendment was proposed to reverse Presidential immunity. While I agree with the court that official acts confer absolute immunity and he has presumptive immunity for other acts but not for private acts…I think it’s too early in the process of hashing out the details in the lower courts to make a reasoned (i.e., non partisan) evaluation of this issue. Regardless…this amendment is being proposed as prescribed and it will either garner the required 2/3 majority in both houses and 3/4 of the states or it won’t; and I’m happy if it receives approval under the constitutional requirements.

The remaining issues have been proposed to be solved by legislation…and at this point all of the legislative people involved simply have to know that (a) there’s insufficient support to get them approved in either house of Congress, (b) they’re unconstitutional anyway, and (c) they’re just making these proposals to make political hay in the last 3 months of the election season.

Legislation has been introduced to (a) enforce an ethics code on the SCOTUS but strangely not on the legislative or executive branches, (b) add term limits to the SCOTUS, and (c) overturn Presidential immunity. As I said above…all of these are doomed to failure due to both insufficient votes to pass and unconstitutionality and even if the Democrats win the Presidency, keep the majority in the Senate and take the majority in the House there will still be insufficient votes since they won’t have a 60 vote majority in the Senate and they’ll still be unconstitutional. So…they’re just political muckraking. And the funniest part of it all is the Presidential immunity law…entitled the No Kings Act and introduced by Chuck Schumer. This legislation actually has a paragraph in it stating that the law cannot be ruled on by the SCOTUS…yep, it’s right there in the text. Apparently he thinks that Congress can by legislation simply declare themselves instead of the courts to determine the constitutionality of legislation without any possible review by the courts. Yeah…right.

Anyways…let’s get on to the afternoon images from day 4 in Costa Rica. But first a quick comment on Tropical Depression 4 which is currently passing over Cuba near Havana and heading northwest. It looks like it will continue on across or near Key West then curve northward and then northeast passing us about 100 miles or so off the coast, making landfall somewhere west of Cedar Key and exiting out into the Atlantic near the FL/GA border before continuing northeast out into the open ocean. It’s forecast to remain a tropical storm all the way through landfall and heading back out to sea although it could possibly reach hurricane status before landfall. It’s forecast to be 40ish mph winds as it passes our area with 8-12 inches of rain depending on where you’re at in FL and which prediction you choose to believe. So…pretty much a nothing burger for us as local winds are forecast at 20ish with gusts to 35 and some rain. We’ll pull in the light stuff from the lanai today as it will pass us in mid morning tomorrow but other than rain and some wind it’s not gonna be much it looks like.

As I said before, after lunch we headed further east on the Osa almost to the end because…Scarlet Macaws and I did put a couple of them in the previous post.

Scarlet Macaws are parrots about 30 inches long but half of that is the long tail and like eagles they mate for life, so the shots that have two individuals in them are very likely a mated pair with essentially no plumage difference between the genders. They particularly like to eat palm nuts as seen in these photos and will fly to the fruit to pick out a nut then over to a perch to eat that one before repeating the process…and a particular individual tends to always go to the same perch to eat. So…as photographers you pick out a good spot to set up your tripod with a view of the fruit and use a long lens but with enough space in the frame to get nice flight shots as they arrive and depart the tree…then swing around to get eating shots on their perch. High shutter speeds and frame rates are required to freeze the wings and get nice poses. And yes…there are a lot of these but they spent going on 3 hours at this location and there are probably 8-10 individuals at least represented here…there were 50 or more in the area but some were going to less conveniently placed palm trees. I’ve also tried to include a variety of wing positions so you can see the differing colors on top and bottom of the wings as well as interesting poses. And although several of them would probably be deemed lousy shots since the eye isn’t visible…Neil liked them so left them in anyway, particularly as some of the obscured eye shots are part of a several frame sequence of flight.

They really are pretty birds, aren’t they?

They finally headed back for the resort about 1630 as it was 2 hours drive back. Dennis’s stated intention was to not stop for anything at all but then about halfway back we stopped again at his almost in-laws place for a bathroom break and a monkey break he didn’t tell us about. Turns out that Squirrel Monkeys have 5 different sub-species and the Central American Squirrel Monkey which is only in Costa Rica on the Pacific coast are listed as vulnerable which is the first of the three categories recognized (vulnerable, threatened, endangered) that scientists recognize. Anyways…there is a troop of them on the family’s land and they’ve been feeding them for a couple of decades. I’m not going to get into the “feed them or not” debate…generally I come down slightly on the don’t feed them side but hey, not my country or land. They only feed them bananas so at least it’s part of their normal diet and they don’t do it daily so the troop isn’t really tame but is pretty habituated as these photos will show. Most were taken with his shorter 100-400mm lens rather than the 600mm. Strangely enough…this species can only sweat through the palms of the hands and feet and the feet are really more of a second pair of hands rather than what one normally thinks of as a foot. They’re also one of the few monkeys that doesn’t really have a prehensile tail…infants use it as one when very young but mostly it’s used by any that are past infant stage as a balancing mechanism very similar to the way the cheetah uses the tail. 

This one isn’t a newborn but isn’t quite to the teenager stage of development…they’re really a small species. The other members of the party were taking bets whether this one would climb up his leg.

Tightrope walk.

Next time…macro day with frogs and snakes galore.

Cyas.

Well…now that the the Democratic has essentially canonized Ms. Harris…we’re seeing an awful lot of political BS from one side about how she is a DEI hire and a lot of political BS from her side calling the other side racist and misogynist.

Well…both sides are partially correct here…and then both sides are partially incorrect…especially when you consider the facts.

Generally speaking…voters don’t really give a damn who the VP candidate is…they are usually chosen for whatever political advantage then provide based on being from a particular state or providing expertise in a particular area that the presidential nominee might be a little weaker in. In President Biden’s case though…this general consideration was ignored in favor of political only reasons.

Back in March of 2020…in the middle of primary season…then Mr. Biden said that he would “only select a black woman as his running mate”…instead of saying he would pick the best candidate. Now surely there are qualified black women as well as Asian and Indian and whatever else women on both sides of the aisle…and if he had just kept his mouth shut and done vetting on a slate of potential VP candidates including black women then ended up selecting one as the best qualified then he would still have had the political benefits of picking a black woman. But…no…instead he announced ahead of time and well before he was the presumptive nominee that he would *only* consider black women period. 

So…we have a potential presidential candidate promising to make his VP selection based solely on gender and race and not on qualifications. I dunno ‘bout you…but the way I learned things growing up was that using race and gender to make a selection in any capacity is…well…racist and philogyny/misandry (those are the opposite of misogyny in case you don’t know, I actually had to go google to see w hat the right word was).

Again…women and people of any race are certainly eligible for the office and there are certainly many people of whatever protected class you want to define that are qualified and ready to assume the office. But the issue is that whoever is chosen should be picked because they’re the best person for the choice and not because of being a member of a protected class. I seem to vaguely remember a quote from some famous person on the lines of “not the color of their skin but the content of their character”. Unfortunately in the world today…racism seems to be a one way definition rather than a two way street and that’s simply sad and just not right.

Anyways…on to day 3 of our recent Costa Rica trip, it was the first full day of the workshop. After an early breakfast, Neil and the photographers headed off with Dennis and our drivers and didn’t return until just before dinner so it was a long day. Connie spent the day by the pool instead. The primary goal was to head east on the Osa to the Lagos Rios Lodge area which is known for being a prime location for the Scarlet Macaw which they hoped to find. On the way…they would scout for whatever they could find and have lunch at a restaurant owned by Dennis’s fiancé’s parents.

First up…a Crested Caracara which although it looks like a hawk is actually a falcon. They’re pretty much located in South and Central America but a small part of their range extends into southern Texas.

Brahman cattle…the predominant species grown in the country…they’re particularly adapted to high heat and humidity being the reason I guess.

Next up…a mated pair of Fiery billed Aracari which is in the same family as the Toucan. Guess how they got the name.

Meanwhile back at the resort…Connie spotted this Bananaquit out on the balcony and it was the only one anybody on the workshop spotted until the last day.

Mexican Spiny Tailed Iguana

Then this…and I kid you not, this is the actual name…Roadside Hawk.

One of the drivers spotted a Barn Owl and after pulling over the two drivers walked around to see if they could flush it out of the brush it was hiding in. Good news bad news though…they were successful in flushing it but it flew away from the waiting photographers so this was the best view they got. It’s the same bird as the barn owl we have in the US.

Hookbilled Kite…again, guess how it got the name.

Here’s a closer screen capture to help with the guess on the name.

Then…the first of the four monkey species located in the country…Spider Monkey.

Black Bellied Whistling Duck…again the same as we have at home. Very funny to see ducks in a tree.

Yellow Headed Caracara.

Starting to launch…unfortunately the post launch shots were obscured by the tree limb.

Technically…these last two would be considered “bad” images as the head and eye aren’t visible…but as it launched again to another branch it displayed a beautiful flight shot and one of the fully spread feathers for landing. Neil really liked these as they show off the plumage so I put them in anyway…not bad shots by our definition.

Capuchin (technically the White Faced Capuchin as there are multipole species but this is the only Capuchin in the country)…the second of the four species here.

A different individual in the Roadside Hawk species…amazingly enough again found just on the side of the road.

And launch.

And the third of the four monkeys…the Howler.

Next up…and Neil has no idea how this one was spotted by the driver. It was about 20 feet off the road and 40 or 50 feet up and him spotted it looking up and out to the side after they had passed it…

Common Po-too also known as…a Stickbird. Very similar in behavior to the Tawny Frogmouth from Australia…it has coloration identical to the trees it perches in. The minor difference is that the Frogmouth perches on a branch and crouches down so that it’s disguised. The Po-too finds a limb that’s broken off and perches at the end extending the same direction as the branch itself…they’re almost impossible to see and it took Neil and the photographers several minutes to actually find it despite knowing exactly where it was from the drivers. That was partially due to the dense branch coverage…they had to use their tripods because of low shutter speeds required and also because there were very tiny windows of visibility…they kept taking turns using the two small windows they found and only one person could use a window at a time because they were small 2 foot by 2 foot open areas halfway between the camera and the bird.

A shot out the front windshield…this was one of the better of the non-roads they kept going down. As I said in the last post, the roads themselves are actually better overall than the ones in Africa but the much worse ride provided by the Mercedes Sprinter van instead of the off road modified Toyota Landcruiser made the ride much worse overall.

Rounding out the monkey species…Squirrel Monkey.

Reaching for some leaves to eat.

And the final wildlife spotted before lunch…Yellow Throated Toucan.

With that we pulled into Dennis’s fiancé’s home and had a delicious lunch prepared by her mother…chicken, rice and beans and some fried plantains and then Costa Rican ice cream for dessert…basically frozen coconut and sugar but it was mighty tasty as was the entire lunch. Here is her mother cooking by the outside fire…Neil promised he would make her famous in the blog. He walked through the kitchen as he headed for the dining area and there was no cookimngequipment there…she does it all outside over a wood fire.

That’s it for today’s photos…part II of day 3 coming up soon will feature the Scarlet Macaw…a lot as that was our afternoon destination.

Interesting things found on the net.

The banana was domesticated about 7,000 years ago…here’s an example of today’s version as opposed to what it was developed over the years from.

Cyas.