I can honestly say that the hummingbirds of Costa Rica are the most beautiful birds I have ever seen and I will share them with you in this post. Hummingbirds are from the New World and constitute the family Trochilidae. They are some of the smallest birds in the world and have the greatest metabolism […]
When I visited Costa Rica recently, on several occasions we ran across groups of White-Nosed Coati (Nasua narica). These curious creatures are related to raccoons although they have many idiosyncratic differences. The White-Nosed Coati (Nasua narica), also known as the coatimundi is a member of the family Procyonidae which includes three other species of Coati, […]
When I was in Costa Rica for a bird photography tour recently with Tropical Birding, I had an opportunity to visit Frog’s Heaven, a place that specializes in catching wild frogs for photography. The frogs are subsequently released back into the environment. These tiny frogs are getting harder to find, even in the optimized environments […]
Throughout the 2nd millennium BCE there existed in Costa Rica small, disperse villages, non-nomadic agricultural communities that used ceramic bowls and utensils, and tools made from wood, bone and stone for agricultural tasks and food preparation. The oldest of these agricultural village communities (2000–500 BCE) has been found in the province of Guanacaste. More recent […]
Since I am visiting Costa Rica for a bird photography tour, I thought I would write a post on the pre-Colombian cultures of this area. Costa Rica appeared to be a dynamic, fluctuating frontier zone between two major spheres of pre-Columbian cultural influence: Mesoamerica (central Mexico through El Salvador) and northern South America, primarily Colombia. […]
Sculpture
Small sculptures as personal possessions go back to the earliest prehistoric art, and the use of very large sculpture as public art, especially to impress the viewer with the power of a ruler, goes back at least to the Great Sphinx of some 4,500 years ago. The Western tradition of sculpture began in Ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith. The revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelo’s David and The Pièta. Modernist sculpture moved away from traditional processes and the emphasis on the depiction of the human body. I personally love sculpture.
