Bocana is roughly a two hour hike from the Palo Verde OTS field station where I am staying. Below are some screen shots from Google Earth of the dried lagoon my previous post was about and it’s relative position to PV
.
The little blue line is 0.5 km.
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Proof
I found the Laguna Bocana, or lack there of. There is an astonishing cliff face at and lots of vultures, but no water. I did manage to find some living, rooted Neptunia (a plant I’d like to study), but it’s abundance appears to be very low for somewhat obvious reasons. Eichhornia is also present, and thriving much better since it is relatively drought tolerant and the cows don’t appear to make it to Bocana as often. 
Dry forest leopard frog
There are calling leopard frogs here; Lithobates forreri.
Dead toad
Next to some snail shells I was collecting, I found a gigantic dead marine toad.
Banded cat-eyed snake
A new snake species for me: the Machete Savanne or Banded cat-eyed snake Leptodeira annulata.
American Crocodile
Yes, I did hold a crocodile and it just made me want more.
Bufo (Chaunus) marinus
New World Bufo have now been changed to several different genera, including Atelopus, Chaunus, Crepidophryne, Incilius and Rhaebo. It really makes learning these names difficult… good thing the animals themselves are so cool.
On the left, a cane toad attempting to hide underwater; notice the fish in front of her. On the right, Boa shows Daniella the toad.
For those of you who didn’t explicitly appreciate the end of yesterday
… I bring you; the sunset. This is my first attempt at time lapse photography, and, although this was the first sunset that I’ve seen in Palo Verde that was dominated by clouds, I think it came out well. The choppiness and appearance of upward movement of the sun is a result of cloud cover, so perhaps I’ll attempt this again sometime soon to get a clearer, more standard sunset.
My camera doesn’t have an automatic interval shutter release setting, so I sat in the wetland and pushed the shutter release every 20 sec for about an hour and ten minutes. Almost the entire time, a calf stood next to me and mooed loudly. Let me know what you think.