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La Selva
Arriving at La Selva Biological Station, I was greeted by a vast diversity
of life. Iguana iguana basked outside our cabin. He
was at least 2 feet long although it was not possible to see his tail.
He was dark blue and had a sagging red chin flap. In the trees were
a myriad of hummingbirds often moving too quickly to allow species identification.
Flocks of scarlet rumped tanagers and mealy parrots were all around.
All the new sights and sounds were too many to record. Just as you
noticed a beautiful heliconia, you realized there was another bird lighting
on the guava tree.
It is impossible not to love this place. It contains a great deal of intact primary lowland rain forest.
Our first walk in the forest took place at night through the Cantarana, a swamp filled with singing frogs. I saw many different species of frogs, spiders, snakes, beetles and ants. It was already becoming apparent that in order to make observations about this place, one must choose something to focus on. The enormous number of species creates a kind of sensory overload.
The next morning we walked the trails with a La Selva guide. She was extremely knowledgeable and we discovered even more delights within the rain forest. A chestnut mandibled toucan called to us from above. On the ground we discovered the strawberry poison dart frogs that plaster all the Costa Rican tourist literature. I was surprised to discover that they are only the size of a thumbnail. Their cute little blue legs have earned them the nickname "Blue Jeans" frogs.
We discovered mansera whose leaves grow plastered to a tree trunk, possibly to prevent being eaten by tapirs. We learned about the walking palm which constantly puts down new roots as its old ones die off. It can move up to 1 meter a year as its roots seek out soils with better nutrients. We saw many tall trees with fantastic buttresses. Leaf-cutting ants carried their cargo alongside the trail.A morpho butterfly crossed our path and we discovered monkey ladder vine, an indicator of primary forest. A wedding veil fungus had emerged just at the edge of the forest and flies were busily feeding on it.
The following day we began work on our research projects. I worked on a project involving bats.
This
is Carollia brevicauda.
On our last day at La Selva, I went on a long hike into the deep primary
forest with a small group of people from our team. It was peaceful
yet so alive. The humidity covered our bodies in sweat almost instantly
and yet I felt cool. At the end of the trail we discovered a beautiful
waterfall--a great place to stop after slogging through mud for 2 hours!
Las Cruces
From La Selva, we crossed the Cordillera Talamanca and headed to Las
Cruces, a bus ride that lasted more than ten hours. At the summit,
it was quite cold--we wished we had our sweaters!
Las Cruces is a beautiful place. The wonderfully manicured Wilson Botanical Garden contains over 2000 tropical species. We were treated to a guided walk through this wonderland. The fantastically colored flowers attract all sorts of hummingbirds, so my research project here focussed on feeding habits of hummingbirds.
This
is Costus stenophyllus. It is one of the flowers visited by
hummingbirds in our study.
One of the highlights of my time at Las Cruces was when we discovered
a common tody-flycatcher nest. The parents were busily capturing
insects to feed to their nestlings. One of the parentsw captured
a huge fly and was whacking it against the tree so it could feed it to
the young ones. When it tried to feed it to the little ones, they
didn't take it so the parent went back and whacked the fly some more.
This time the fly disappeared quickly when the parent returned to the nest.
This
is one of the beautiful plants in the Wilson Garden.
Palo Verde
After two days of travelling along the Pacific coast from Las Cruces,
we arrived at Palo Verde. Palo Verde Biological Research Station
is located in Palo Verde National Park. There is some primary tropical
dry forest, some secondary forest and a lot of wetland areas. We
were lucky to see lots of different bird species here. Some of the
highlights were: roseate spoonbills, jabirou storks (there are only
80 of these in all of Costa Rica!), northern jacana, nightjars, black vultures
and tiger herons. Perhaps most memorable of all is the carpet of
black iguanas that lines the road and paths.
Palo Verde has been impacted in many ways by humans. Much of this land has been used for cattle grazing (and some of it still is). There are lots of rice fields surrounding the area which have a significant impact on the wetlands. For this reason, my project at Palo Verde focussed on water lilies in the Palo Verde marsh.
I'm all saddled
up, ready to ride into the primary forest!
This
is a crested caracara perching near our bunkhouse.
Here's a bunch of us at the top of La Roca, a beautiful overlook atop
the white limestone cliffs surrounding Palo Verde.
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