La Ssssselva

For anyone who loves being around beautiful primary and secondary rainforest, abundant wildlife, and friendly researchers, we'd highly recommend La Selva Biological Station. We spent the past week there on our time off for Semana Santa (Easter Week, which is a big deal in Costa Rica).

The peccary herd spends a lot of time around the station, and we were able to observe lots of great social behavior: animals rubbing in greeting and grooming each other, which we hadn't known was a pig-thing.

We took an excellent guided walk our first day there. Ivan, our guide, is a graduate of a guide-training program the station began several years ago. On our walk, we found an agami heron (super-rare), eyelash palm viper, great green macaws flying overhead (also rare), and best of all, Ivan spotted a silky anteater, which is hardly ever seen. 

Silky anteater...terrible lighting conditions and heavily cropped.

About the size of a large, fuzzy grapefruit when curled up.

Ivan with flaming seed, locally referred to as a "kerosene seed"
because of its ability to catch fire

The reptiles of La Selva were very impressive. In addition to the eyelash palm viper, we found a parrot snake, bird-eating snake, boa constrictor, and not one, but two fer-de-lance (terciopelo: one of Costa Rica's deadliest snakes). One night, we'd left our headlamps in our room and were considering walking back after dinner without them. The paths to the rooms are broad and paved, and the moon had been bright recently. But as soon as we set out, we realized it was a very unsafe plan: no moon, and 1 km in the dark with so much wildlife is a bad idea. Our new friend Matt, whose blog is very cool (photography envy), was kind enough to walk his bike with us and light the way. As soon as we started walking again, a couple coming the other way told us to watch out for the fer-de-lance near the trail 700 meters along. Sure enough, the enormous snake was there (on the other side of the trail from where it had been originally spotted), and as we watched, it crossed over the trail.

These were taken with a telephoto zoom lens and further cropped;
don't worry, we didn't get close to the deadly snake.

It showed no signs of aggression; just wanted to do its hunting. Our other interesting fer-de-lance encounter came a few days later when we were hiking in a remote area of the reserve and came to a streambed. We're always on the lookout for these guys in their favorite habitat, but we've never found one on our own before. Do you see it?

We didn't until we were almost on top of it.

Other reptiles:

Eyelash palm pit viper: deadly but highly sedentary and non-aggressive.
Also extremely tiny.

Parrot snake on a bridge (non-venomous)

Basilisk, also known as the Jesus Christ lizard
for its ability to walk on water. How Easter-appropriate.

Green iguana...Duaro from our banding group tells us it's a subspecies
because of the neat double horns on the nose.

It's the breeding season right now, and we were lucky to see plenty of young animals and bird nests. Also lots of adults gorging on the fruit trees and cicada boom.

Female great currasow. This tree was super-popular: her mate,
toucans, oropendula, crested guan, and peccaries were all foraging here.

Rufous-tailed jacamar bringing a tasty butterfly to his chicks.

Clay-colored thrush nest on our balcony. These eggs appeared over several days.

Among the neat researchers we met were a group of Canadians banding migratory birds whose field station we visited for part of a morning, hummingbird researchers, several grad students studying ants, one studying chestnut-backed antbirds (we went out with a few of her assistants to look at a nest), and two German bat researchers.

Color-banded bats, sleeping.

One of the only downsides we encountered came in the form of the beautiful but evil common pauraque. Very common, in fact. They're nocturnal, they like to hang out outside the rooms, and they whoop and holler all night at frequent intervals. We had to chase them off at ungodly hours, but they came back almost immediately.

Evil. So evil.

We leave you with some scenery. This is the area in which we found the second fer-de-lance. Next entry, back to bird banding. Today was fantastic for new-to-Kekoldi birds.

Parque Nacional Cahuita

We've just spent a highly enjoyable two days in Cahuita, hiking in the national park and relaxing. Highlights included:

Boat-billed heron feeding chick

Juvenile yellow-crowned night heron...so many herons around!

Laughing gull, royal terns, and sandwich terns seen on our hike

Driftwood

Crab-eating raccoon cub

View from our hotel, Hotel National Park, right next to the national park
as the name implies 

And here we are, a little post-hike grubby, but happy.

Fauna... forever!

The past month has been an experience like none we’ve ever had. Sure, there’s been plenty of rain and we haven’t been able to go out as much as we’d originally planned, but we’ve also been out in the forest plenty and have gotten to see some fantastic things. Here are some highlights (and a few lowlights) since we last wrote:

Emily and night monkey. Photo by David Johnston.

Way back on Valentine’s Day, we were in town. Here’s how we spent the day: Mike – at the house with a stomach bug; Emily – machete-wielding with the group to clear the trails of a few trees at Anaconda Lodge. ¡Que romantico! The night before, the group had gone to La Balsa, an open-air disco next to the river, a pretty neat place. Our last day in town was spent at the Amazon Shelter, building and improving enclosures for the animals they take in. One owl monkey in particular took a special liking to Emily and had to be pried off her shoulders. Dave's picture of it appears in a cool interview with Fauna Forever leader Chris Kirkby.

Praying mantis.
Photo by Naun Amable Silva.

Next came Casa ITA, run by Reserva Amazonica on the Madre de Dios river, which has all the access to RA’s trails, but with considerably more rustic accommodations a mile or so away. The trails themselves were a bit worse for wear because of four straight days of rain while we were there, and more before we’d arrived, but among other things, we saw a sleepy porcupine at eye level a few feet away, saddle-backed tamarins (cute, tiny monkeys), and a quick glimpse of peccary (wild, hairy forest pigs). We also found a fantastic leaf-mimic praying mantis. The insects in general are out of this world.

Our mist nets were in between thigh-deep pools of water, which we’d been dreading, but which didn’t turn out to feel as horrible as we expected. Especially since one of the birds we netted was the very large, very cute black-fronted nunbird, one of Emily’s favorites.

Mike with whip snake caught by
herp team. Photo by James Spence.

The best part about Casa ITA / Reserva was the canopy walkway, which we took advantage of with Naun whenever possible. There were some truly amazing birds, and the view of the forest was incredible.

Because our next destination unexpectedly closed for a month, we ended up back at Sachavacayoc Center for our last part of the program, which was fine with us. We were able to go out bird netting/banding most days, and the herpetofauna (snakes, lizards, frogs) team took a lot of night walks and other excursions.

Trails were in overall better shape, and we saw tons of mammal tracks including tapir, deer, and peccary. We briefly saw some peccary through heavy foliage, and Naun—lucky Naun—actually saw a tapir at the mist nets, then, later in the same day, an ocelot! We were just far enough behind to miss out. Years waiting to see an ocelot while traveling in the tropics: 7. Moral: walk right on your leader/guide’s heels.

James, putting his trust
in Emily, who is in the
process of making him
unintentionally bald.

What we did see, in the morning before we came back to town, is the rather rare harpy eagle. It flew across the field at Sachavacayoc, landed in a tree for long enough to get a good look, then took off again before we could call the others. Think about a giant bird…maybe a red-tailed hawk for those of you back home in the States. Now double or triple it in size and give it a cool crest (with a color change to shades of gray). Awesome.

Now, we're in Lima for a few days. Then, time for Costa Rica. More to follow. Anyone have any favorite animals you’d like us to try to see for you?

Many thanks to Dave, Chris, Naun, Brian, James, and Tania for making our time with Fauna Forever Tambopata memorable and enjoyable!

Emily oohing and ahhing over black-fronted nunbird.
Photo by Naun Amable Silva.

Mike with green-and-rufous kingfisher.
Photo by Naun Amable Silva.

Musician wren. Photo by Naun Amable Silva.

A little background

A little over 10 years ago, we started dating. Maybe 9 years ago, we started talking about taking an extended trip to do something interesting abroad some day. This year, we realized it was time. 

We've been enjoying hiking vacations in the rainforest for a while now, and recently started learning to mist-net and band birds for population studies, so we found volunteer programs that combine the two, and are leaving on a six-month trip tomorrow (Boston weather permitting...).

We're hoping to post our trip photos here, and maybe write a little (but not too much) about what we're up to. Our internet access will be spotty at best for the first month and a half, when we're in Peru with Fauna Forever Tambopata, but should become more regular when we go to Kekoldi in Costa Rica.

The basics: we're helping with bird and rainforest conservation with these two organizations, hoping to see some other neat animals as well, and toward the end of our six months, we're taking some time to travel in Costa Rica on a budget.

Eyelash palm pit viper, from previous trip to Costa Rica

Excited about:

• Wildlife
• Meeting new people
• Eating good food
• Seeing new rainforest

Nervous about:

• Meeting new people
• Getting sick from bad food
• Theft and other travel perils

More to follow once we get there...