A frog from the FCRE
granular poison dart frog
|
This frog was in a streamlet below the dam at Lake Fairfax. Seems like a green frog (Lithobates clamitans)  Green frog, Lithobates clamitans at Lake Fairfax Park Mark Jenkins, a writer and adventurer whom I admire, wrote an article in the Washington Post about how postcards are in decline. It is interesting to those of us who travel a lot, in that this was the historical way we sent back our thoughts to loved ones while traveling. Today it is more about Facebook and social media and instantly obtainable photos sent to many without physical substance or a personal message. I have live blogged three of my trips, so I get it. The article can be read here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/are-postcards-a-thing-of-the-past/2015/02/26/a243909a-b945-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html But, I will add this. Personalized postcards can be sent while on trips, using your own photos. Instead of posting something to your blog, you just make your own postcard and send it via email to a specific person. It is not so hard, and still arrives almost immediately. One example of this, is an e-postcard I sent to my son, while on a trip to Costa Rica. 
An e-postcard of an Olive tree frog (Scinax eleaochroa) from Costa Rica.
It would seem that paper post cards are on the way out, but digital postcards can still be useful, pertinent, and personal. If you take the time to make such.
I am usually pretty good at identifying frogs. But this one eludes me.  The Jade tree frog (Rhacophorus dulitensis) from Mulu National Park, Malaysia, Borneo  A cool frog (the three-striped poison frog) from Suriname, Epipedobates trivittatus now with the new title Ameerega trivittatus. I made some edits to this post after Mr. Wallace's comments. Always looking to be more accurate and comments are read and evaluated.
A cool critter from Venezuela 
Tepuihyla edelcae A frog from the tepuis of venezuela
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
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.
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. 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
|
AuthorKeith Christenson - Wildlife Biologist Categories
All
Author
Keith Christenson Wildlife Biologist Archives
September 2021
|
RSS Feed