Our travels next led us up to the Osa Peninsula, home to Corcovado National Park, and our departure point for Isla del Caño. After a night in Puerto Jimenez, the team split up for separate mini-expeditions. While Yann, Marie and Laura went for a three-day hike into Corcovado from the south, Jenn and I headed up to Sierpe to take a boat down the Sierpe River to Bahia Drake. In Sierpe, we found some critters, including an elephant beetle.

The trip down the Sierpe River took us through the Terraba mangroves, which are the largest in Latin America. These (and the ones we had kayaked earlier in Zancudo) were truly amazing. In addition to covering huge areas of land, the mangroves are perhaps fifteen meters tall or more.

Playa Zancudo is the other big surfing town near Pavones (not that it is a big town, of course). We went there to try our hand at surfing. It’s also a great place to barely avoid drowning. After our surfing expedition we went to a nearby pier near the mouth of a river (the Zancudo River, perhaps?) to look for crocodiles. It was low tide and we got to see a number of them in the water and one on an exposed mud bank. In the water were some checkered puffer fish, or at least something very similar, as well as schools of fish with what I think are semi-see-through heads. On our way back, we stopped to take photos of squirrel monkeys crossing the road.

We also visited Yann and Marie’s land, which is located nearby. Only a small part of the land is accessible by path, while most of it is made up of a jungle valley and hillsides. The most amazing thing I saw was a giant buprestid beetle (Euchroma gigantea), although I also saw a truly amazing multicolor grasshopper. Future plans for the area include creating trails in the jungle area and building a camping platform protected by chickens.

Due to a rather unlikely turn of events, a photo of mine is in The Economist this week. They happened to do a very interesting article about the mating habits of a particular spider, and I happened to have some photos of that exact spider mating. Not something I would have predicted, and perhaps the last time I have a photo featured in The Economist, but I thought it was neat.

The Tiskita Jungle Lodge is a hotel on 800 acres of jungle (with an orchard with over 100 kinds of tropical fruit). We went with Yann and Marie one morning on a tour with Clyde, the son of the owners, and it was wonderful.

The trail began near the lodge, and one of the first things we saw was a small boa on a branch right beside the trail. We continued down a small valley with a stream, stopping by a particularly moist spot to see if we could find a poison arrow frog. It’s actually quite amazing to think that think that one should avoid touching leaves in a certain area because a tiny frog might have been on one. We in fact did see a poison arrow frog after some searching, I believe it was Oophaga granulifera.

Another interesting sight was an agouti that was sitting rather listlessly in the stream, apparently injured or sick. An agouti is a rather large rodent that looks a bit like a long-legged guinea pig. We also spotted a pug-nosed anole (Norops capito), which is apparently a lucky find. As you can see from the photos below, there were also plenty of strange and wonderful insects.

Exiting the jungle, we passed through the orchard to eat some starfruit, cacao, pickle fruit, and a variety of other unusual fruit. We also stocked up on lemons, including one that was the size of a grapefruit. Our last stop was one of the cabins where a white bat (I think Ectophylla alba) was roosting under the eaves.

While it would have been fantastic just to walk around there by ourselves, having Clyde as a knowledgeable and passionate guide made a huge difference. In general, Costa Rica was amazing because so many people there have studied biology and ecology. Some, of course are foreign scientists who have come there to do research, but many are locals who studied these subjects in university in Costa Rica. Clyde had the added bonus of knowing first-hand the history of the land we were on, having grown up there. I would guess there are few places in the world where so many people are so knowledgeable about their country’s natural history.

As we headed to the car, we were also blessed with a final gift: a large group of squirrel monkeys crossing between trees in the parking area!

Here are a whole mess of photos taken in the Pavones area during our Costa Rica expedition. Highlights from the first set include leafhoppers that look like storm troopers and a really amazing leaf-footed bug.

In the second set, there are some interesting flies and, in what is a recurring theme, a wide variety of strange and delightful leafhoppers and planthoppers.

On our first night with team members Yann and Marie at their house near Pavones we had many guests. There were some surfer friends, and lots of insects attracted to the porch light. There were also plenty of geckos around to eat the insects. One, as you can see below, was a pirate gecko with only one eye. We also made a jaunt through the night down muddy dirt roads where the calls of frogs and insects in the dark changed every few meters creating a continuous, but ever-changing chorus of science fiction sounds.

Aside from the pirate gecko, my favorite critter was the young praying mantis that lived on the trunk of a tree in their front yard. It actually stayed on the same section of tree trunk the whole time we were there, mostly hiding with its marvelous camouflage, but also scampering around the trunk with lightning speed if approached too closely.

This first post about our Costa Rica expedition features mostly photos taken from the window of the small plane we took from San Jose to Golfito. As you can see, Costa Rica is very green and has many muddy rivers. The first shots are above San Jose, and the last ones show the Golfito area. Golfito is the biggest town in the southern Pacific coast area. It served as the port for the area when it was a major banana producing region. Nowadays it’s pretty quiet, although a pseudo-duty free zone brings some folks from around the country to buy appliances and such. There is also a photo of a cowboy and a boy on a bicycle crossing a bridge since I didn’t have a better place to put it.

I only photographed a few, but they were nice. The great egret was near the trailhead of the Sandy Cruz Trail. When we were on Saba last time in October, several locals mentioned the stray great egret that had come by in a summer storm and was hanging out. Perhaps this is the same one. A lack of ponds and mangroves makes Saba a less than ideal habitat for this bird. We also saw the Antillean crested hummingbird and I saw a small flock of scaly-naped pigeons in Windwardside. These pigeons are also seen on St. Martin, but rarely, because they were hunted close to extinction on the island.

On most of the Lesser Antilles, there are one or two species of Anolis lizard per island. In fact, these lizards have been studied frequently as a great example of adaptive radiation. On St. Martin, there are two species (A. gingivinus and A. pogus). On Saba, there is just one (A. sabanus). The male Saban anole is quite striking, with a pattern of dark spots. The female is more plain, looking much like the A. pogus found on St. Martin, although apparently A. sabanus is more closely related to A. gingivinus.

Just looking at them for the day, it seemed to me that there was quite a difference in size between the males and females, although I couldn’t be sure if I was comparing adults of each. If so, however, this would make some sense. On islands with two species of anole, usually one species is larger than another. On islands with just one species, the sexes are more likely to exhibit more sexual dimorphism in terms of size. This allows more lizards to share the same resources as they can target prey of slightly different sizes.

I would love to know if there is more diversity of insect species on Saba or St. Martin. On one hand, St. Martin is larger and probably has more invasive species. On the other hand, Saba has a wider variety of terrestrial habitats, including rainforest and elfin cloud forest (although it does lack mangrove wetlands). One would guess that many of the species found on St. Martin are also present in the lower elevations of Saba, while the upper regions of Saba may be more likely to harbor species that aren’t found in St. Martin. Hopefully someday I will find out the answer.

For the time being, I have a relatively small sample size of Saban insects. For starters, I’ve only visited a couple times. I’ve also spend most of my time in the wet forest habitats. In these areas, insect density actually seems to be lower than it is in St. Martin, probably because walking a trail primarily means exploring the undergrowth, which is relatively sparse due to lack of light. Surveys of the canopy or the leaf litter would probably be the most fruitful.

For the spiders of Saba I have much the same story, a lot of questions and not too much experience to go on. There are definitely some familiar spiders, but there were a couple that I’ve never noticed on St. Martin. Perhaps we need a wildlife guide for the Unspoiled Queen.