A couple students at UCR had an entomology examine Friday on Coleoptera (beetles). They identified a couple beetles I had taken photographs of but I forgot to show them this one. Perhaps I’ll ask Monday, but they may have already put Coleoptera out of their minds by then.
Two crabs peeked out from their respective homes in the intertidal zone near Campanario. The hermit crab (right) was pulled from an intertidal pool.
Another marine decapod, this crab hunkered down while I moved the camera closer to get a shot. Fascinating camouflage.
We may have found a new cichild species for the Osa during a trip to Rio Claro. The book Mike used for identification appeared to recognize only one cichlid as inhabiting the Osa, and picture are two distinct species we caught in Rio Claro. I currently don’t have their full IDs, but I believe the one on the right is A. sajica, which was previously known from Osa.
I haven’t seen all that many birds yet and I’ve captured even fewer with photographs, likely because I am usually preoccupied with ground dwelling herps. Here are two that I’ve gotten photographs of though. One is a fly catcher that I have yet to identify (mostly because I’m writing in a bed and the bird book is in the closet…. I guess I’ll call it a Great Kiskadee, although it’s a bit small for that), and the other is a Cherries tanager. Maybe I can get some help on the identifications… Update – it´s a great kiskadee…lame.
A fish caught in Río Tortugo with a hilarious common name.
Allison and Erin handle one of their first freshwater shrimp out of Rio Drake, a river draining agricultural land on the Osa Penninsula that Mike wanted to sample for fish.
Maybe I’m feeling crabby this morning.
Monstrego, my male red ear slider (Trachemys scripta elegans), comes up to breath in his 55-g tank. Monstrego and Barzini are currently in the same tank, and Monstrego is constantly courting Barzini, although I haven’t seen him successfully breed this year. Barzini has laid three clutches that I’m aware of, none of which had any hatchlings emerge. Luckily though, these turtles can live upwards of 30 years if well cared for, and both of mine are about six. I’ll get a hatchling one of these times…
While collecting stream insects for some lab rearing I was doing, I ran into this water snake. Of course, I immediately picked it up and, astonishingly, was not bitten. After a futile attempt to calm the snake, I set him down and snapped a few pictures of its aggressive, flatten stance. The scale across the snake’s eye is blueish, indicating that it will likely molt soon. Indeed, a couple of days later, I caught the same snake (well, presumably the same one, given that it was under the same piece of bark), and it had a fresh, shinning layer of scales. Further, its aggressiveness was reduced the second time around, adding to evidence, at least in my experience, that snakes get kind of angry when they are close to molting.