After finishing up all our work with the bat and sea caves in the southwest of Costa Rica, we spent our last night in that region back at the Firestone Center.  Not the least of the reasons was for access to a washer and dryer, as another day and you'd know we were coming before we entered the room and know we had been there long after we left.  

So here are a few more photos from the Firestone.  The first is an interesting scene on a leaf.  This blue morpho (Morpho sp.) was patrolling a trail when I saw it and I was able to follow it until it landed.  And when it landed the leaf was occupied by obvious predators of butterflies, harvestmen.  But I think in this case the butterfly would be just a little on the large size for these guys to go after.  Side note, the species of this butterfly is likely Morpho Menelaus, but the pattern is quite similar to Morpho didius which I do not believe to be found in Costa Rica.  Anyway, when they close their wings the blue disappears and they have the brown with eye spots pattern on the ventral side of the wings.
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At the Firestone Center we have a lot of peccary.  They are notoriously near-sighted and even when pretty close can't seem to discern exactly what is going on unless you wave your arms or something.  But they also have a reputation for being grumpy leaning toward aggressive when you get too close.

I saw these collared peccary along the trail and they just kept getting closer and even when I was moving they just kind of shook their heads and didn't run off.  I took a photo and then took a little detour around them lest I get chased up a tree or something else less than heroic.

At night, I had to go into the forest to check on the mosquito trap.  It was hanging in a tree down by the Rio Cacao and pretty close to the Ecology Center.  On my way there, I spotted this Northern cat-eyed snake on the ground in the yard outside the Ecology Center.

They are fairly thin snakes, but when I got close it puffed itself up to probably more than twice its normal width.  And while not a dangerous snake, they are rear fanged and do have a venom, but even so you can pretty much pick them up and move them out of the way if needed.  Of note, this image looks a little odd since it was taken with the wide angle lens I had on my camera to photograph the mosquito trap.  I was only a few inches from the snake taking the pictures, which gives it an unusual look.

And finally, one of the things we have been working on at the Firestone Center is to figure out what mosquitoes we have and which species are in which habitats.  This has been a struggle as catching them in homemade traps hasn't been very successful.  

Here you see the latest model of the Dynatrap, a neat little thing that was a light and a fan (sucking inward) to attract and suck in mosquitoes.  The old model had to be plugged into an outlet, which unsurprisingly are not readily available out in the jungle.  This model was designed to work with an external battery, and early results are quite promising that this will be our go-to mosquito catcher in the future.

The weather on day 1 was just so excellent that after dark I couldn't resist taking a short walk down along the Rio Cacao.

​These are known as Heliconia bugs, and are, not surprisingly, true bugs that live and feed almost exclusively on the plant Heliconia.  I see them every year in one patch along the river and they were there again this year.  Attractive bugs that are territorial on the plant and males will defend their turf.  If another bug approaches things can quickly escalate into a weird reverse wrestling match.  The two bugs turn around and grapple backwards using their strong rear legs.  Not sure how the winner is determined but something about who can jam their legs spines into the other one's belly the hardest and make them give up.

Tink frogs, so named because they make a very loud "tink" sound, are super common.  But we have a number of species of them that require handling the animal to ID them so I will just show a photo of one without guessing at which one it is.

Harvestman aren't really true spiders, but have those creepy 8 legs and sure act like spiders.  A tiny body and very long legs give these the common name "daddy long legs."

Okay, so let's get real creepy to finish this up.  Another non-spider in the 8-legged category is the tail-less whip scorpion (Amblypygidae family).  Latin factoid:  amblypygid means "blunt butt" hence the "tail-less" part of the name.

​There are two genera of these here, Phrynus and Paraphrynus, but you have to put the front spiny part (the pedipalp) under a microscope just to see a little obscure almost spine in order to figure out which genus it is.  So no ID other than family on this character.

​The body is about two inches long, so not a particularly huge one but decent sized.  However the legs are very long and this animal would easily be 10 inches from leg tip to leg tip.

But these are WAY creepier looking that I can show in a full animal image, so here is a close up of the head area.  Those spines are used for spearing insect prey, and although it looks nasty is essentially harmless to humans.

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.

This from Melrose Caverns property in Virginia, USA

On 3-11 I posted a photo of a Harvestman (daddy long legs) in Grand Caverns, Va.
Bill Shear was kind enough to send along a proper ID after project coordinator Carol Tiderman sent my pic to the specialists.  I thank Bill and Carol for helping me out with the species ID. 

Identifying photos is worthy science

This is a Harvestman (Erebomaster weyerensis), photographed in it's type locality (that means the original site from which it was found).  Grand Caverns used to be called Weyers Cave before it was commercialized and hence the name.

Pretty cool find and hope you enjoyed the background info.

Mostly I am interested in animals.  But plants and fungi at the FCRE can be interesting...to a point.  A couple pics of such.

And that's all I have on that for now.  So next up is a more interesting exercise.   You have thirty seconds to figure out what this is...

So do you have it figured out?  I'll give you another moment.

This lump is...

Another planthopper (two more obvious ones have been posted recently). This is one furry critter, and is facing right.  An eye can just barely be seen at full size.

So, after that, time to see some millipedes, more obvious than the previous.

A while back I published a pic of a bee looking out of the nest.  And to continue that bit, I have found more similar pics.

And now just a few more pics

And to finish tonight.

Harvestman spiders, mostly known as daddy long-legs, are very efficient predators.  Harmless to humans, they take an amazing amount of prey given their small body size.

Photo from Ohio, US.  With luck and time, I will open my first US galleries from some work I did recently in Ohio and Pennsylvania.