Wednesday 20 November 2013

Coral Snake....Night life on the jungle floor

The view with a light beam....
The Cano Palma forest...... where we have 16 net rides.
The following is a night-time wander with Joan and David, herpetologists from Spain, visiting the station and joining us for banding,... birds will follow !
The day-time beauty of the forest hides .....
  Tarantula sp. were not hard to find.....thankfully they are impossible to find during the day !
Different frogs appear at night too...this species of tree-frog, an unusually dull looking, but smiling one.
This Norops lizard - one of 150 species of Norops lizards. He must think he is rather smart when he inflates his throat ?  Below features a species of web-casting spider, it builds a mobile web....and uses it like a racket to catch prey...
A close up....amazing lines as ever with a spider....
Joan and David  wanted snakes..!!..This one from the night before...a Coral Snake.
 A very colourful example of this deadly snake....and our trio of night time trackers take a closer look in  daylight.
(left-right) Joan, David, and Manuel the expert local tracker based at Cano Palma Research Station.
This a Tree Boa, not the crushing power of the Boa Constrictors we found recently...but these are around too.
Just a couple of the c170 species of snake found in Costa Rica, and a tiny sample of life in the Caribbean Lowland Rainforest.
In the morning and banding at Cano. Interesting as ever, with Western Slaty Antshrike, Chestnut-backed Antbird, and this, Chequer-throated Antwren, one of two caught.
A young juvenile, seems likely to have fledged outside the known breeding period..?

Today we finally caught our first Gray Catbird of the season !!
Hopefully not our last migrant species of the trip.....

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