Sometimes these guys wake me up in the morning. They are scattered throughout the dry forest, but one likes to hang out by the field station. I’ve also seen a Blue-crowned motmot, but didn’t have my camera with me as I was in San Jose on the UCR campus. The bird diversity right on campus was pretty amazing, although I was usually afraid to bring my camera along because so many folks warned me of muggings.

I saw and capture on ‘film’ two birds of prey today. Both were sighted while I wandered around looking for Laguna Bocana. I thought the Roadside Hawk might be something cooler than, well, a Roadside Hawk, which we saw on our CR trip last year, since the sighting was deep in the dry forest. It was still a cool bird and it perched nicely for me. The Spectacled Owl was the second one I have seen; the first was yesterday, while trying to find another large laguna that I never found. Mark’s bird book has come in handy (that said, I hope I have my identifications correct).

While walking to the wetland, I saw an Ocelot; my first wild cat sighting… ever. It was slowly walking down the road toward me and I thought it was a coyote (which I had seen a couple of days ago… along with two very young looking pups who were unable to run in a straight line away from the vehicle I was in). When it was about 75 meters away, I saw it’s long tail and immediately knew it was a cat. Unfortunately, my first reaction wasn’t to get my camera out, but to see whether or not I could get closer. I did, and at about 40 meters it noticed me, turned sideways and jumped into the dry forest. Here’s a poor picture of a dusty footprint.

I saw angry monkeys.

When I arrived at my current field site today, I started chopping a branch with my machete and found this larva with a gigantic head, presumibly housing huge muscles for chomping through bark/wood. My guess is a beetle larva.