Firestone Center - Mosquito Trap and Wildlife on Our Transition Day

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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A blue morpho (Menelaus sp.) with harvestmen at the Firestone Center, Costa Rica

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.

Collared peccary at the Firestone Center

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.

Northern cat-eyed snake (Leptodeira septentrionalis) outside the Ecology Cener at the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology in Baru, Costa Rica

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.

Battery-operated Dynatrap catching mosquitoes in the forest near the Rio Cacao.