My herp count did not include amphibians or reptiles that I wasn’t completely certain on their identification (or at least, fairly certain), like this Leptodactylid (rain frog). It’s certainly a different species from those that were included in the count, but I can’t provide a definite identification, and therefore I cannot enter it in my herp database.
The perch this frog is using in a small leaf’s petiole, just to give some scale.
Near the tide pools at Campanario, we spotted a Mangrove Black-Hawk after hearing its distressed call while sitting in a nest. The photos may not be all that sharp, but from as far away as I was, it’s good enough. Although I’m by no means an ornithologist (or really even a bird watcher), it seems like a good sighting given that the bird’s range is restricted to a narrow margin around the Pacific coast (Garrigues and Dean 2007).
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.
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.
At Campanario, in the Osa Peninsula, there were land crabs everywhere during the night. They were beautifully colored and I caught a couple of them consuming fallen, decomposing leaves near a stream, which is of course interesting to me. They were much more abundant this March than in January.