This will be the last post until after New Years as I head to Connecticut for Christmas and then on to Yellowstone in search of winter wildlife. Until then, enjoy this red eyed tree frog from the rainforests of Costa Rica. I figured with the reds and greens it was about as Christmasy a post as I could find in my collection. Happy holidays.
This is an agouti photographed in Costa Rica. Not quite squirrel, not quite rat — a little of both but quite a bit larger.
Here’s another one inspired by the Discovery Channel’s “Life” series. In the episode “Challenges of Life,” they highlight the strawberry poison dart frog and the Herculean effort the mother goes through to ensure that her young survive. She carries each of her tadpoles on her back, one by one, from the rainforest floor to the tops of trees — big, jungle trees — in search of suitable nurseries (in small pools of water that form in bromeliad leaves). Each tadpole needs its own nursery so that they don’t eat each other. Then the mother goes from nursery to nursery dropping unfertilized eggs into the water for the tadpoles to eat (apparently it’s good eatin’ for a young tadpole and they need more than just one, so the mother must continually return to each tree and nursery to drop another, and then another). She pretty much is traveling constantly while the tadpoles are growing. The first time I was in Costa Rica I saw this happening with a tadpole on the mother’s back but wasn’t able to get any good shots. Here’s a strawberry poison dart frog from my second trip to Costa Rica. There are many different varieties and colorations of this frog — this one being the appropriately named “blue jeans” morph.
I photographed this coati at my favorite spot in Costa Rica — Tiskita Lodge in the town of Pavones, which is located on the Pacific coast by the Panama border. This guy was sneaking into the fruit orchards of Tiskita looking for some lunch. Coatis are members of the raccoon family and are sometimes even referred to as hog-nosed raccoons. They are quite widespread, ranging from the southwestern US all the way to northern Argentina, and have adapted to many different habitat types.
This was the only granular poison dart frog that I saw while in Costa Rica. He’s also known as the green jeans frog. I’ve also photographed the much more common blue jeans frog, which is very similar, only with blue legs. What I like about both of these species is that they are active during the day (most tree frogs are nocturnal) and I can photograph them without a flash. I shot this guy from all angles, and this is a rare exception for a frog where I think I like the back view better than the photos I got from the front.
This is a female shining honeycreeper at a place called La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica. The male is purplish blue with black wings. A lot of biological research goes on in the rain forest of La Selva and there are always a lot of researchers and college students hiking around the many trails. Fortunately, they also allow tourists to the area (mostly to help fund the research) and it’s one of the best place in Costa Rica for birds.
Here’s one that I haven’t yet been able to identify. For any of you entomologists out there, suggestions are certainly welcome. I was hiking in Pavones, Costa Rica, near the Panama border when I came across this little guy crawling up the stalk of a plant.
Every evening, just after the sun went down, the red eye tree frogs in Tortuguero National Park, Costa Rica came down from their daytime resting spots high in the trees. The males croak to establish territory and to attract mates. I often will go out spotlighting alone, and finding the frogs in this particular location wasn’t difficult. The hard part was aiming the headlamp on the top of my head at the frog while at the same time looking through the viewfinder. Luckily, tree frogs tend to be patient subjects.