January 30, 2016

Only one or two more posts about Costa Rica. Unless we retire down there in the next couple weeks. Sigh.

I thought I would do a quick rundown on the wildlife. The animal kind, not the party kind. We really don’t do the party kind any more.

For a relatively small country, Costa Rica has some interesting ecological diversity. We hit two very different ecological systems, the higher elevation cloud forest at Savegre, and the sea level coast and wet jungle at Uvita. At least it’s wet in the rainy season. Everything was pretty dry when we were there.

Elevation makes a big difference. The Savegre Lodge was at an elevation of 7,220 feet. For reference, the highest point on the Appalachian Trail is Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina at 6,684 feet. Nights were quite cool, getting down to the upper 40s Fahrenheit. There were a number of species like the rufous-collared sparrow and the green violet-ear hummingbird, that are common in the upper elevations, but completely missing at the coastal elevations.

Rufous-collared sparrow.

Green violet-ear hummingbird.

Then there are species like the yellow-throated euphonia, black-crowned tityra, white ibis and the tricolored heron that are only found in the lowlands or tied directly to the coast.

Yellow-throated euphonia.

black-crowned tityra.

White Ibis.

Tricolored heron.

Pelicans.

Then there are the ubiquitous species like the great kiskadee or black vultures that were found just about everywhere.

Vulture tracks in the sand.

Great kiskadee with nesting material.

Great kiskadee with nesting material.

Ma and Pa Kiskadee.

All told, the official bird list for Costa Rica contains 857 species. Compare that to North America with a bit over 700 species. We got somewhere over a hundred species this trip, some of them lifers. Exact numbers will follow in another post.

Blue-gray tanager.

Yellow-headed caracara.

Acorn woodpecker.

Chestnut-sided warbler.

Scintillant hummingbird on nest.

Green-crowned brilliant hummingbird, sticking out his tongue at me.

Three views of the same white-throated mountain-gem to show what a little light refraction through bird feathers does. And why it can be hard to ID the little devils when the field guides only show the brilliant plumage.

Palm tanager.

Blue dacnis (female).

Molting western tanager.

Molting western tanager.

White-throated mountain-gem.

Either female scintillant or female volcano hummingbird.

Woodcreeper, probably streak-headed.

Resplendent quetzal.

Unknown hummingbird.

Dusky nightjar.

Ruddy pigeon.

Unknown hummingbird, probably magnificent.

Molting western tanager.

Philadelphia vireo.

Yellowish flycatcher

We were mostly birding but some critters of the mammal type were around. At Uvita we had peccary, agouti, howler monkeys, coati, and a few other critters wandering the grounds. When we did the horseback ride we had capuchin monkeys around the lunch stop. Lise and Stefan did a canopy zip line tour and had a very rare close up look at a sloth. I thought that would be a good day to go to the beach instead. Sigh.

Coatis

Capachin monkey.

Sloth. (Stefan Eichhorn pictures)

We had some herpetofauna too, mostly in the form of lizard like animals. Stefan saw one snake on the trail but that was about it for snakes. He found a couple different poison dart frogs too. Most of the herps did not cooperate for pictures. Usually I was set up to take pictures of big things like birds, not small lizards or frogs. By the time I switched over the subject was long gone. We saw some larger iguana type lizards near the beach area but I could never get a good picture of them.

Then I was trying to take some Norther Jacana pictures a crocodile popped up out of the water. Teeth with an attitude. While I was taking pictures of him I saw another set of eyes sticking out of the water and drifting down toward us. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and slowly backed out. This all occurred about 20 feet away from a couple huts with toddlers walking around. Nobody seemed to mind. Pura Vida I guess. Wouldn’t bother me too much to see it knock off a few Frenchmen though. Might make some interesting action shots.

Shedding lizard.

Lizard trying to impress the ladies by showing his dewlap.

Some kind of a whip tail I believe.

Dart frog. (Stefan Eichhorn picture)

Teeth with an attitude.

Finally there’s the invertebrates. There were some stunning butterflies but they just would not cooperate. Dragonflies were pretty sparse too. I only saw two species and they also would not cooperate much. Then there’s the ants. Like Stefan said, “ants rule the jungle.” There are species of birds that specialize in following the army ants to grab the bugs and animals trying to get out of the way.

Butterfly

Honking big caterpillar.

Paper wasp nest. From a safe distance.

Unknown dragonfly species.

Bottom side of an unknown spider. I think there are something like 1,800 spider species in Costa Rica. There was one just like this on the deck.

I don’t know what was in these shells but now they’re bigger and probably hungry.

Ant trail through the yard at the house.

Leaf cutter ants carrying leaves.

Leaf cutter ants carrying leaves.

Leaf cutter ants carrying leaves.

Leaf cutter ants carrying blossoms.

So that covers the out in the wild wildlife. Then there’s the in the house wildlife. In the tropics there’s a lot of energy, in the form of sunshine driving the system. In the tropical lowlands, where you don’t have the mediating effect of cooler temperatures, things can grow large. And kind of creepy. Combine that with having the house wide open for airflow and you get a whole menagerie of wildlife that you learn to live with in or around the house. There was a spider web by the pool that had seven different spiders of three different species living in it. There was a several pound cane toad that would come up on the deck some nights. We ended up with two different birds we had to shoo out of the house. In the early geckos would scurry around the walls, especially on the deck. Lots of smaller vermin too. Then there was the grasshopper. Not just any grasshopper, THE grasshopper.