This guy is worth the post for the name alone. From the front, these birds appear uniformly black, but when at the right angle, and if they move their wings out of the way, that flame rump can be spectacular. Photographed in La Selva, Costa Rica. Nikon D800 with Nikkor 200-400mm lens (at 350mm) ISO 800, f/4 at 1/125th of a second.

Depending on how you look at it, this is either a really small monkey or those are really big leaves. I suppose it’s a bit of both. Not sure of the exact species of tree but they looked like giant oak leaves. The monkey is the smallest of the four species found in Costa Rica. Including the tail (which is slightly longer than the body) squirrel monkeys only grow to about 26 inches in total length. Nikon D200 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (at 200mm) ISO 400, f/5.6 at 1/60th of a second.

I’ve only spotted a few of these green and black poison dart frogs in my Central American travels — this one in Costa Rica. They are considered on the lower end of toxicity but still have enough poison to stop the beating of a human heart. That said, they need to really feel threatened to release any toxins. Interesting fact: they lose their toxicity in captivity leading scientists to believe they get their poison from a diet of mites and other insects in the wild. Nikon D200 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (at 200mm — with Canon 500D close up filter) ISO 100, f/8 at 1.5 seconds.

Not all Panamanian white-faced capuchin monkeys are found in Panama. Like this one that I photographed in Costa Rica. In fact, they can be found in much of Central America and into the northern regions of South America. These monkeys are highly intelligent. They’re also very common. They are the traditional organ grinder monkey, the monkey that is most often seen in movies (like Pirates of the Caribbean) and they’ve even been known to assist paraplegic humans. This particular white-faced capuchin kind of looked like he was brushing his teeth with a palm frond. Nikon D200 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (at 135mm) ISO 500, f/4 at 1/100th of a second.

I’ve encountered tamanduas about five times in the wild. This was my first, years ago in Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica. I was on a solo, day-long hike and it was fun to sit quietly for about an hour as the tamandua eventually descended from high up in a tree and foraged on the ground briefly before disappearing deeper into the forest. Northern tamanduas are medium-sized anteaters that live throughout the Neotropics from southern Mexico to the extreme northwest of Peru. There is another species, the southern tamandua that lives in the bulk of tropical South America. Nikon D200 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (at 86mm) ISO 400, f/3.2 at 1/30th of a second.

It’s been about five years since I posted a shot of my one and only encounter with a Mexican hairy dwarf porcupine. No doubt, one of the great names in zoology, right up there with yellow-bellied marmot, rufous-sided towhee and dusky-footed woodrat. Until I meet another, enjoy this shot from Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica. Nikon D300 with Nikkor 200-400mm lens (at 400mm) ISO 800, f/4 at 1/50th of a second.

Only about 4,500 Baird’s tapirs remain in the wild, a thousand of them in Costa Rica where I took this photo. It is the largest mammal in Central America and the threat to its survival is twofold — both habit loss and poaching. I was able to get some pretty good looks at this rather large, but difficult to see animal. By sitting still for hours I got very close and most of my shots were with my wide angle lens, but for this exposure, I put on my longer lens for a ground-level portrait. There wasn’t a lot of light in the deep forest so I had to jack up the ISO for a useable shutter speed. Nikon D700 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (at 98mm) ISO 3200, f/2.8 at 1/160th of a second.

The granular poison frog is also known as the green jeans frog (for fairly obvious reasons). It’s found only in Costa Rica and Panama in a relatively small range. Habitat loss in that range has landed the frog on the vulnerable to extinction list. I found this one near a waterfall in Pavones, Costa Rica. Nikon D200 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (with Nikon 1.7x teleconverter attached for 340mm) ISO 100, f/8 at 6 seconds.

I believe this guy to be of the species Heteragrion erythrogaster — a flatwing damselfly. He/she was being very cooperative, so I used a tripod with a very slow shutter speed of nine seconds. Photographed by the side of a waterfall in the town of Pavones in southwestern Costa Rica. Nikon D200 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (at 200mm with Canon 500D close up filter) ISO 100, f/22 at 9 seconds.

A coati emerges from an opening between a few fallen trees in Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica. I spent a good deal of time with a large group of these guys and was able to observe their behavior. Lighting and visibility in the forest was a challenge but I was able to get several good looks before they moved deeper into the park. Nikon D800 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (at 160mm) ISO 1600, f/3.2 at 1/1000th of a second.