Blog Archives - tropicalbats.com

Travels

8/31/2014

To catch up, with some bits missing in the middle, we headed home and all is good. Connor and I left the FCRE just before 1am local time in our vehicle and mostly followed McFarlane and the students in the other vehicle. The overnight drive was, happily, uneventful.
The students made their early morning flight at the airport and Don, Connor and I hit the Denny's for breakfast. The Holiday Inn found an open room for Don to check in early (like at 6am) so we all got some time to relax, brush our teeth, and I got one hour of sleep in the recliner chair before it was time to return my rental vehicle at 8am.

Soon enough it was time to head to the airport. Connor and I had no troubles at the airport even with a full search of our bags. The flight to Miami was rough, with the seatbelt sign on almost the whole way, but otherwise fine.

In Miami we had a couple-hour delay, but the plane eventually left and we got home around 3am. 42 hours of transit with one hour of sleep for me.

So just to put up some photos, I am going to use my pics of poison dart frogs. I took no decent shots of either of these. Great frogs, but pretty average pics.

The granular dart frog (Dendrobates granuliferus) from the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology

Black and green dart frog (Dendrobates auratus) from the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology

A favorite bird

8/29/2014

We are getting ready to head out, and so there will be a bit of a lag before my next posting. But I leave you with a photo of one of my favorite birds, a sun bittern that I saw this morning along the Rio Cacao on the Firestone property.

I got to see the awesome wing display, but it stopped before I was able to get a nice photo. Still, the sun bittern is a beautiful bird from any angle

student blog

8/29/2014

And don't forget to check out the student's blog at:

costaricathesis.wordpress.com

as I am not working with them much and they are having some fun times.

Scorpion troubles

8/29/2014

Just as we were about to go turtle watching, some folks came up saying that there was a scorpion in the dorm. I headed down there expecting to find a critter on the floor. But no, this scorpion was on the ceiling right above Anna's bed. Not so comforting, and it needed moved to a better place (we don't kill anything here)

I collected the scorpion and here is a shot of it in the container I caught it in...

One of the bark scorpions, Centruroides bicolor, which Wikipedia notes that... "medical literature provides no data on the effects of C. bicolor venom but warns that its sting "is probably very painful."[2]

A correction and a few night pics

8/29/2014

Seems like only four of us have been feeling poorly, so not quite "most of us." And several chicken-eaters had no problems. So the source of the troubles remains a mystery. But boy do the troubles hurt.

Last night I finally got back up to speed enough to take a short night hike after spending the day mostly in bed. And some pics from that bit are worth the wait.

An anole that was sleeping until I came along

This thing is amazing. I have no idea what it is so will need more time for an ID, but worth posting

Connor holds a Truando toad (Rhaebo haematiticus)

Another sleeping butterfly.

A "tink" frog, but don't have time to ID it

This looks like a small tarantula, and a spider I have not seen here before. Will take a bit of work to ID this one

A tailless whip scorpion (Amblypygidae)

Not sure if I got this species of owl butterfly on the blog yet, so here it is (Caligo sp.)

And, as a final test of my ID skills, I present what appears to be a terrestrial planarian. Which, I note, I have no clue about it other than it appears to be a planarian and is pretty cool.

This looks like a terrestrial planarian (flat worm), but certainly a critter I can't find and place easily.

One hardly notable final bit

8/27/2014

For dinner, Don and I have been putting most of the meal together from various scraps we grabbed at the store, and yesterday evening Don was busy preparing a chicken curry. This dish is a tradition here.

Chez McFoodland prepping the chicken curry

Now this is just another unrelated factiod about things happening last night. Apparently nearly everyone randomly decided to head to the various bathrooms in the middle of the night and take meds for severe stomach cramping. Just one of those things

Day three at the FCRE in Costa Rica

8/27/2014

Today was a long hike across most of the property to set up some trail cams. Others were working on getting their frog call recordings from the frog loggers and most were off getting their feet wet doing water sampling.

So only have pics of my bit, the trail cam hike, but should be a lot of pics on the student's blog about their activities.

On the way up the hill, we saw some peccaries but couldn't get a photo as it was too brushy. But got this...

A frog, or maybe a toad

This frog, or toad, was maybe a quarter inch long. Very tiny animal. I will have an ID on it shortly. But near the top, saw this unusual fungi...

A coral fungi, probably. Likely Genus Clavaria in the old records, but this whole bit has been a scientific wonderland and really couldn't figure out the species by most any means. Not that I won't post a more clarified name if I have one, I just haven't seen anything that clearly identifies this.

And while sitting in the leaf litter taking a photo of the maybe-named fungus above, I saw a scouting party of leaf-cutter ants working my way. But they had to contend with this predator first...

This assasin bug, nearly an adult, has taken down two ants

But the project was to get up ten trail cameras to record the things that wander around the property that we don't see.

Connor setting a trail cam to the "record" position to see what comes down this trail in the Bamboo forest

While putting up the last trail camera on the top of the property, we saw this wonderful woodpecker which was sounding off on a bit of dead bamboo. Looks like a lineated woodpecker to me, but I am no expert on them

We ended the day with a long hike up and down the beaches of Hacienda Baru, but didn't find any sea turtles coming in to lay eggs so got back here just before midnight.

And thus, I am mostly caught up with the blog. It is really, really late and I will have to get up again tomorrow morning and get to work. Work I love, but I am pretty tired right now, and my alarm is set for five hours from now.

Last pics from the night hike

8/26/2014

At some point I have to stop posting things from the night hike, but we saw a lot of great critters. So here are the last two.

A sleeping butterfly (with a little caterpillar in the background)

One of several toads we saw along the road

Insect farmers

8/26/2014

On one of the bushes near the studio, we encountered a neat little bit of ecology. Ants farming leafhopper larvae. Essentially the ants protect the leafhoppers and the leafhoppers secrete a honeydew that feeds the ants.

For a whole lot about this and other cool ant ecology and photos, check out this website: http://www.morning-earth.org/Graphic-E/SymbiosisAnts.html

A leafhopper laying eggs at the farm

Ants tending their crop of larvae

Now isn't that cool!!!

Snake!

8/26/2014

Toward the end of the night walk yesterday, we finally ran into a snake. Usually we see at least two or three near the ponds, but it wasn't until we got down to the studio building when we saw one. Right on the gravel floor of the structure Martha came reasonably close to stepping on:

An orange-banded snaileater (Sibon dimidiatus) in striking pose. It apparently did not enjoy being photographed

And here is a shot of Martha and her snake.

Martha and the orange-banded snaileater (Sibon dimidiatus) that she nearly stepped on