Frogs for Africa
Trip Start
Sep 28, 2007
1
24
33
Trip End
Ongoing
Santa Elena,
Costa Rica
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
There are two towns that service the famous Costa Rican mountain cloud forest reserve of Monteverde. We stayed at Santa Elena. Costa Rica owes an enormous debt to quakers who fled the perceived militarism of the United States in the 1950s to settle in Costa Rica, which had recently abolished its armed forces. The quakers protected the Monteverde area. This seems to have been an important first step in Costa Rica developing its comparatively outstanding conservation ethic, with the result that tourism is now the country's biggest earner, and Costa Rica is now the richest country in Central America (other factors such as the absence of civil war have also helped).
Costa Rica is entirely anomalous in Central America. It has been a democracy without coups for around 60 years. It has had no civil wars in that time, no genocide, no foreign interventions, no 'disappearances'
A fly catcher
. I don't know how any of that was possible, but not having an army must have helped. Some people refer to the ever-present vultures as the 'Costa Rican air force'. No doubt it is cheaper than most and self sustaining.We arrived in Santa Elena in driving rain and strong winds. It was decidedly cold, and in our five minute walk to town my trousers were drenched and feet soaked. It had been like this for three days. This seemed a bad omen for experiencing the outdoor wonders of Monteverde.
There is no end of things to do here. Walks in the cloud forest, riding a zip-line (high tech flying fox)above the canopy, horse trekking to waterfalls, a frog nursery, reptile zoos, orchid houses, hummingbird feeders are all available and priced in US dollars. I was very torn between visiting the cloud forest and going bird and frog watching. The latter won out in the end on advice that the cloud forest would not be at its best given the cold weather they had been having. We had also spent the day in primary and secondary cloud forest the day before on volcan Madera. But I still felt guilty for coming to Costa Rica and not going to the forest.
Warning: from here on the log is about birds and frogs and may be of little interest to anyone
Blue grey tanager
. Birds
Went on a bird watching tour around the town of Santa Elena, hoping that this would see more than going to the famous rain forest nearby. I had actually thought that this might be the best way of seeing things besides birds, like sloths, because their would be a group of people aiming binoculars in trees. As it happened Nancy and I were the only ones to go. I had also assumed that we would be in forest most of the time, but actually we were wandering around the local lanes. It was surprising how much there was to see, even though although the sightings dried up towards the end of the morning when we were actually inside a wooded area, so we finished on a bit of a quiet note.
The sightings included:
- blue crowned motmot, a gorgeous bird with a blue stripe on its head and very long tail ending with two feathers shaped rather like love hearts;
- emerald toucanet, a beautiful bird with dark green plumage changing to blue around the throat and a beak in the same shape as a toucan's but not so oversized;
- an olive wood pecker which has dark green feathers and a deep red head (the hoffman's woodpecker we also saw has a much paler red head and black and white check wings);
- a grey blue tanager, a small sky blue bird similar in shape to a budgie, as well as a creamy brown tanager which I think is called a palm tanager;
- big black birds related to crows called great tailed grackles;
- a very large dark bird in the tree tops called a black guan with a body shape something like a pheasant;
- a couple of hummingbirds: one stripe tailed hummingbird was green and red, and the other was a brilliant green-blue;
- a grey heron, which was grey but had a red eye stripe and white mottling on his wings - apparently a very rare sighting and a bird that I could not find mention of in guides to wildlife in the Costa Rican highlands;
- a wide range of little birds - white eared sparrows (with yellow and white spots by its ears), yellow-faced grassquits (golden spots on its cheeks and forehead), dusky crested flycatchers (a pale bird with a grey head and yellowish belly), white fronted robins, the very ordinary clay coloured robbin (the national bird) and so on;
- black vultures and turkey vultures;
Later on Nancy and I came across some bright red birds that we haven't been able to identify although they may be summer tanagers or more probably flame tanagers
Summer tanager
.The day is probably more memorable for two sloths curled up like old vacuum cleaner bags in the tops of trees. Remember, this is not buried deep in a reserve but just around town. I was thrilled to see them but in reality there is nothing much to see. From below they are just scruffy balls of fur, and they are very hard to spot (Freddy gets all the credit for spotting the sloths which would never have noticed and would probably not have recognised even if I had). The first one was just a dark circle in the tree above and not really identifiable as a sloth at all. in fact this whole sighting business might be a hoax, I only have Freddy's word that it was a two-toed sloth, rather than, for example, an old mop. The second one was definitely some kind of animal but the comment about mops applies here too.
We also saw a couple of agoutis - one crossing the road and another in the little forest that we visited last and which had the least birds - and a coati. He was a pretty big animal and was in the branches above us, moving around very agilely. He may have been on the ground originally, but a dog was following us around and got very excited about something and I reckon it was the coati getting out of the dog's way in a hurry.
Squirrel
There were squirrels too. We saw three or four eating guavas in a guava tree. One was a pigmy squirrel and the others the variegated squirrel which has reddish fur on its lower half. The difference between them is not great except that the pigmy is a lot smaller. Both species are particularly cute. Although, I should note that our northern hemisphere acquaintances dismiss them as rats with fluffy tails.
Frogs
We were back from the tour at around 10.50 and we had a break for a couple of hours before heading out for the ranario or frog pond, where some 20 or so species of amphibian are kept for breeding and research. The ticket provides for a guided tour and allows you to return in the evening to see the nocturnal frogs. Some of the stars were:
- obviously the red eyed tree frog (light green eyes and toes, yellow and blue legs);
- red and green dart frogs (red top halves and green legs);
- black and green dart frogs (a sort of bubble gum blue with black blotches);
- brilliant tree frogs (an ordinary green frog with bright yellow spots on its hind legs, only visible when the legs are stretched out and apparently dishonestly proclaiming this frog to be poisonous);
- glass frogs (various species but all small green frogs that apparently are transparent enough to see their organs
red rumped tanager
. It didn't look like that to me, but the one that sat on the glass in the evening was transparent enough that you could see his heart beating);- tiger frogs (large frogs with a yellow stripe down their flank and their legs);
- enormous bull frog which I think they said could get to 2 pounds in weight (but perhaps that was the cane toad and this frog only got to one pound; either way it is a big frog) and whose Spanish name is rana come pollos or chicken eating frog);
- beautiful brown and caramel coloured milk frog (named for its poisonous secretions), and the crowned tree frog who has a row of funny bumps across the top of his head;
- strawberry dart frog who never emerged from under his vine all day;
- the flying tree frogs that can glide for 10m but did not move an inch all day;
- cane toads! Only because it was such a shock to see them being treated as ordinary animals and not as devils in toad form;
- gladiator frog, so called because the males fight over females (and stick claws in each others' eyes and ears. The display model appeared to have a damaged eye);
- red eyed stream frogs(small frogs with hardly any red around their eyes at all);
- Lancaster's tree frogs (a beautiful metallic green colour and perhaps the most beautiful of the frogs there, despite others being more exotically coloured)
Crowned tree frog
.We got to see the stars of the place, and the national frog, that is, the red eyed tree frog, walking right in front of the glass. These are pretty big frogs and quite gorgeous. In addition to their red eyes and toes they have outlandish blue and yellow colouring down their flank and legs.
It was also impressive to see how many of the frogs, even quite large ones, were quite happy sleeping on a vertical surface as some of the red eyed and flying frogs did, and also how compactly they can huddle their limbs together so that they look like they form a perfect seal against the leaf. It was very interesting, especially at night when the frogs were active. Nancy and I spent two and a quarter hours there on the night visit, which I imagine is more than is normal. But one sight which I was happy to miss was the feeding of the bigger frogs. Between our visits, extremely cute white mice had mysteriously appeared in the aquaria with the bigger frogs and toads. If you have ever seen a frog eating something biggish you will understand why I did not want to see the inevitable fate of these white mice. Especially at the hands of a cane toad. I don't know what it is about cane toads,but I think they are the only animal that I really dislike.
During the day the ranario is frequently raided for its old bananas by raccoons and we caught a white faced coati in the act on our afternoon visit. The girl called this a raccoon, so I assume that this is what usually raids the place.
