Another giant insect from last night. This long-horned beetle is about 3 inches long not counting those long antennae.
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We have a lot of very large butterflies at the Firestone Center, but as the name suggests this one is even bigger than most. Pretty when sitting and colorful when flying and the tops of the wings can be seen.
Because the sleeping sloth on yesterday's blog post was right next to the Access Road which I use to come down the hill, I checked on his progress at waking up from what was clearly a deep slothy slumber. So just after noon I was passing by and found that he had finally woken up and was looking around. Now that's a long sleep! And when I went back up the Access Road around 3pm to take care of a small project detail, he was gone. And thus endeth the tale as who knows if I will see him again.
The Firestone Center has a moderate squirrel population. This is a red-tailed squirrel and a super cute little fellow. Mostly blackish with red highlights on the tail and a bit of tawney under the chin. He was on the South Loop Trail this morning.
Just headed off for a couple hours to cover a few minor project details but generally looking for wildlife. Saw a ton of things and some I was able to photograph. I started on the Rio Cacao trail, headed up the North Loop trail, then up into the bamboo and past the Mudd Pond, and finally back down the Access Road. A hike like this covers a lot of elevation, about 1,000 feet from the Rio Cacao to the top of the Bamboo forest, and a lot of habitats. But much of it is rather thick and even when I see something there can be no chance for a quality photograph. Or I see a lizard or poison dart frog and know that chasing it around for a photograph will take a lot of time and likely end up with nothing as they disappear under a log before any decent photo can be taken. But I rather enjoy seeing all these things, and photograph what I can. Here is a set of photos from today's hike. And finally, some bats. Not handling bats makes it hard to get them to species. I am putting these up as Artibeus phaeotis as that is what they look like, but haven't really done the dirty work to make sure of this ID. I will change or confirm this ID after I come out of the field and have some time to look at the photo closely.
I was asked to take sort of a "postcard" kind of photo of the waterfall on the Rio Cacao. So here it is.
The most common venomous snake at the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology is the Fer-de-Lance. But it is not the only one, as here is a Central American Coral Snake found on the North Loop Trail today. I was hiking alone and found him just lounging around on the trail. Extremely attractive snake.
As anywhere in the tropical forests, bird photography is a challenge. I do not use electronics to call out birds into the open, so am at the mercy of seeing the birds in a way that I can get a photo while they are going about their normal activities. Not so easy. Today I was able to photograph a few birds. The first one was the toughest. An almost all black bird (has a blue crown) that hangs out in brushy stuff in the deep shadows of tropical forest. I did my best to show you a... The next bird would seem easy to photograph, as it is big and sits up high in the light and all. But there is just so much vegetation that getting an angle to see the whole bird is tricky. I lucked out with this... My what a big beak you have! The only other bird I got a good look at was this...
This year there is a big pack of white-nosed Coati (Nasua narica) on the Firestone Center property. Lots of adults and juveniles and babies all trolling around together. When up in the trees feeding, they make quite a racket. I got a chance to spend about 10 minutes watching all this until they decided for one reason or another (maybe they spotted me) that it was time to head down and move on. These are very good-looking animals, and happy to have had a chance to watch them doing their thing in the trees. As a side note, these are in the same family as raccoons, Procyonidae, and a large pack like this (likely 20 individuals) is composed of females and all young up to about two years of age. Older males are mostly solitary.
At the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology, we have a pond called the Duck Pond. It is called this because for many years it always had a least grebe living on it. Sadly, when we arrived this year the grebe was gone because, well, the pond was gone. Almost totally overrun by vegetation So, like in other years when we have spent some time clearing out the hyacinth from the Basilisk Pond to keep it open, an effort was made to at least open up a patch of water and see if it is reasonable for us to just go in and pull out the plants to keep our pond. It has worked remarkably well with the Basilisk pond, but this is a different trouble altogether. I wasn't there for the completion of this work, but will post a photo of the weeded pond next time I am up there. But having been around to watch the start, this was hard work.
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Keith Christenson Wildlife Biologist Archives
September 2021
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