costa rica: wow i wish i had my camera with me today......

[Gato Moteado]

i went to a beautiful rain forest today called "la carpintera" walking distance from my house in the san jose area. this is an amazing place because it's so close to the big city, yet so much of the mountain is primary rain forest.

aside from the usual hummingbirds and things, we saw some gems today that i was unable to photograph because i didn't have my camera. plus, i heard so many more birds that i didn't see because we spent most of our time rescuing orchids from the fallen trees in the areas that had been deforested. the soil in these areas is very eroded and soft and so many large trees that would be OK in heavily forested areas had fallen over. all of these trees were loaded with orchids and bromeliads....more than i could have imagined. we removed the orchids from the fallen trees and reattached them to thriving trees deeper in the forest.

anyway, we saw a masked tityra feeding it's young, which were in an old woodpecker nest in a dead tree. here's what the masked tityra looks like:



we saw some large motmots, a type of motmot i don't think i'd ever seen before. we also saw a lot of hawks. but the gems of the day were the emerald toucanets....we saw several at extremely close range. i really wish i had my camera. here's what the emerald toucanets look like:

[blindpig]

1. Motmots.

Could it have been a Rufus? Saw one in Panama a few years ago, a bit bulkier than the Blue-crowned.

When you were doing your orchid rescue did you run into many herps? I've been told that those situations are an excellent way to find arboreal species which otherwise seldom come to ground.

[Gato Moteado]

2. we were at a pretty high elevation....

...not a lot of reptiles up between 1500 and 2000 meters i imagine.

i saw a few small frogs and a couple of lizards that looked like anoles. but that was about it. a lot of birds there, though.

i have a property in sarapiqui....lowland humid rainforest, all of it. dendrobates pumilio everywhere, and about a jillion other species of frogs. also have plenty of snakes there. crocs and caimans in the rivers and streams. big iguanas and lots of basiliscus plumifrons.

[blindpig]

3. Sarapiqui.

I visited a lodge there for lunch while on a canned day trip, it was covered up with Strawberry Dart Frogs.

I think you might be surprised by the herpetofauna at those elevations. Besides frogs and lizards I'd expect a few plethodontid salamanders and a few snakes to eat them and the frogs and lizards. I found a alligator lizard at 6500 ft in Mexico last year and have gotten Scerloperus(spiney) lizards and rattlesnakes at higher elevations in southern Arizona. Not many species but they're often numerous, the parallels to island fauna are remarkable.

[Gato Moteado]

4. yeah, i really didn't search for reptiles on yesterday's trip.....

...so only saw a few. i imagine the greatest diversity at that altitude will be frogs and possibly salamanders. i plan on doing a night hike through the same trails soon, so i'll get a better idea then. i did see a couple spiny lizards (irridescent green) at the house of the owner of the finca up there. i live a short distance down the road at about 1350 meters altitude and i have these same spiny lizards in my yard.