R. Doug Wicker's Blog, page 153

Fun Photo Friday — More Tárcoles River Expedition Favorites

Toothy Grin

Below you’ll find more of my favorite photos from our Tárcoles River expedition, but first I promised a rather exciting video depicting hand-feeding an American crocodile and otherwise getting even more up-close and intimate with this rather intimidating and very large fellow:

Today’s Fun Photo Friday shots:

Frigatebirds

Northern Crested Caracara

Tárcoles River

Tárcoles River

Next week I’m going to delay a continuation of this trip for a quick sojourn into Alaska. The reason I’m...

Tárcoles River Expedition — Part 4

Brightly Colored Crab

Today I’m going to post a slide show of some images from our Tárcoles River expedition. On this week’s Fun Photo Friday you’ll see some of my favorite shots as well as a nice little video, which includes a rather hair-raising clip of hand-feeding a very large American crocodile, and kissing it right on its very prominent, teeth-laden snout. Until then, click on any image below to enlarge the image and bring up today’s slide show:

Filed under: Photography, R. Doug...

Tárcoles River Expedition — Part 3

Finger Eatin’ Good!

The above picture should give a at least an indication of just how big these American crocodiles get along the Tárcoles River! This fellow was huge! But he was also very old and pretty slow, thank goodness. On Friday you’ll see a video of him being hand-fed, and even kissed on the snout.

Here, even the termite nests are incredible:

Termite Nest

You’ve already had a sampling of the great birding available to visitors of the Tárcoles River jungle, and here’s a shot of some p...

Fun Photo Friday — Some Tárcoles River Expedition Favorites

Jaws

Today I present some of my Tárcoles River expedition favorites (more next Friday, including a video featuring feeding a crocodile by hand):

Frigates in Flight

Safari

Wadin’

Cruisin the River

Filed under: Fun Photo Friday, Photography, R. Doug Wicker, travel, vacation Tagged: Costa Rica, Fun Photo Friday, photography, Puntarenas, R. Doug Wicker, Tárcoles River, travel, travel photography, vacation

Tárcoles River Expedition — Part 2

Great Egret

The Tárcoles River must be a birder’s paradise, from what we saw. There were many species of falcon, some of which I’ve been unable to identify, other birds of prey, and many types of waterfowl.

Falcon

But, as I’ve noted before, birds are not the sole inhabitants here. Animal life ranges from reptilian predators to farm animals grazing along the banks of the Tárcoles River.

American Crocodile

Brahman

However it’s the abundant and diverse bird life that really gets your attention h...

Tárcoles River Expedition — Part 1

Lurking Eyes

Our group of intrepid explorers loaded up into several boats and headed into the wilds of the Tárcoles River amidst the Costa Rican jungle. It didn’t take long to find a rather intimidating predator, as you can see by the lurking eyes gliding just above the water in the photo above. This is the potentially dangerous but not very aggressive American crocodile. But, while it may not have an aggressive reputation, it’s still something I’d prefer to avoid while in the water.

Big Fell...

Election 2016 — A Call to Arms

I call it the NOTAP. The NOTAP is the None Of The Above Party. And I offer up as NOTAP’s first presidential candidate . . . well, we’ll get to that in a moment.

NOTAP’s primary platform is the ultimate delegitimization of the eventual winner of this year’s U.S. presidential election, and the abject humiliation of a two-party system that foisted these two candidates upon us. That’s it. One issue. One objective. Everything else at this point is secondary to that one goal. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, w...

Election 2016 — But How Do We Fix This Year’s Mess?

The short answer is, we can’t. Barring a federal indictment, or someone being crushed to death in the tragic collapse of an enormous ego, or other unforeseen and unlikely circumstance, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are this year’s disastrous nominees. Get used to the idea. We can’t fix it . . . but we might, just might be able to mitigate the damage regardless of the outcome.

Why we can’t fix things this year: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were right about one thing — the system is rigge...

Election 2016 — Fixing This System Long Term

So how do we fix our broken nominee selection system here in the U.S.? The most expedient and cost effective solution is to go back to that clichéd “smoke-filled back room” I mentioned in yesterday’s “Decision 2016 — Why the Hell Did We Get Here?” But that genie is out of the bottle. We, the people, are not likely to express the desire to relinquish control of candidate selection, even if as I demonstrated yesterday that “control” is an empty illusion.

That leaves reforming what we have. Firs...

Election 2016 — Why the Hell Did We Get Here?

Election 2016 — Why the Hell Did We Get Here?

So, this election year the U.S. electorate has reached a fork in the road. Unfortunately, both forks lead directly off a very tall cliff with large granite boulders at the end of the long ride down. And regardless of which fork you — the individual voter — choose this year, we’re all forked. On Monday I described how we got to this Hobson’s Choice of deeply flawed candidates. Today I’ll touch upon why we got to this point.

Through 1968 candidates...