Pitahaya, Costa Rica.

This week, our challenge guest host is Karina of Murtagh’s Meadow. In issuing her challenge, she writes in part, “Your special place may be a certain room in your house, it may be a place you like to visit, or it may be a building such as a library, museum, or church.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

I could have certainly picked many special places in my home state of North Dakota or many places in the great western United States where I have spent much of my retirement time. Instead, I chose a special place that I have only visited once in a country where I have spent less than 48 hours.

Natuwa’s focus is on the conservation of the Macaw through the auspices of the Macaw Conservation Sanctuary. The sanctuary provides a home for Costa Rica’s macaws with special needs. The Sanctuary rescues, rehabilitates, and releases the macaws back to the wild. Many birds are confiscated from poachers by Costa Rica’s Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) and brought to Natuwa for care and treatment as needed.

The opening photo features a healthy Scarlet Macaw that happened to be on the sanctuary grounds. Birds that are injured, being nursed back to health, or being prepared to be returned to the wild are kept in large cages for their own protection.

The blue and gold macaw is one of the larger parrots native to South and Central America. The sanctuary provides very tall cages to allow the birds that are able to fly around inside their protective environment. You can see the chain-link cage in the defocused background in this image.

These scarlet macaws are gathered around a feeding station. From the Natuwa website, “The conservation of Costa Rica’s macaws is important to keep intact the functions performed by these wonderful birds in the ecosystem.”

I discovered a trick for photographing these caged birds. Using a long lens and focusing on a distant subject causes the chain-link fence to virtually disappear. If you look carefully, you can see a section of the fence that is visible in front of the macaw. Ideally, it would have been nice to be able to put the lens in front of one of the openings in the fence and avoid the foreground fence altogether. Unfortunately, the lens was too big to fit.

Also from the Natuwa website, “NATUWA, does not reproduce these birds in captivity. Rather, it conserves the parrots devoting efforts in combating the looting of nests and the illegal trade of chicks, works with the local communities in the installation of artificial nest for the wild scarlet macaws”

Illegal trade in these beautiful birds is a major problem, especially for those raised in captivity from chicks. “For the confiscated macaw chicks that have been victims of illegal trade, our Macaw Management Program provides adequate conditions for these parrots to learn the survival skills of adoptive parents.”

This juvenile sloth was “hanging around” the sanctuary. It was not in a cage, so I don’t know if it just happened to be on the grounds of the sanctuary or if it was an “invited guest.” In addition to the macaws, the sanctuary also cares for animal wildlife injured in the wild or confiscated by local authorities. “Therefore, the NATUWA Wildlife Sanctuary, in addition to scarlet macaws (Ara macao) and great green macaws (Ara ambiguus) and other exotic parrots, also gives sanctuary to mammals of great biological importance for the ecosystems that need to be conserved.”

I conclude this virtual visit to my special place with this final quote from the Natuwa website. “

This fauna of Costa Rica is supervised and cared for by a team of specialists in order to provide them with the following freedoms: -From thirst, hunger, and malnutrition.  -Of discomfort.  -From pain and illness. -To express normal behavior.   -From fear and stress. 

Thanks to Karina for this week’s challenge, and thanks also to Sarah of the blog, “Travel With Me.” Her post about Costa Rica here reminded me of Natuwa and I realized it is a special place worth sharing for this week’s challenge.

I have many more images of the wildlife homed in Natuwa on my Flickr site in the album here. I invite you to visit and check them out.

John Steiner