The
following day we took some photos of snakes we found the night before. After the Fer-de-Lance we had made the
unexpected find of a Rainbow Boa crossing the road. Although not considered rare, they’re
nowhere as common as their cousins, the Boa Constrictors. Even Quetzal was surprised and delighted!
While
hiking earlier in the evening we had picked up a pair of Sibons, each a different species.
These thin, nocturnal, arboreal snakes with rounded heads and big eyes
have specially adapted jaws designed to scoop out snails from their shells,
earning them the attractive name, Snail Suckers.
On
the drive back to Dominical we saw a woman standing alone by the side of the
road, staring up into the dense canopy of trees that covered the coastal
mountainside. We pulled over to ask what
she was watching, and she pointed to some dark shapes that were shaking the
leaves.
Nearby,
a large male Iguana moved along a branch, too obscured by leaves for a
photo. Curiously enough, this was our
only Green Iguana of the whole trip.
Although extremely abundant throughout
That
afternoon we experienced our first tropical downpour, three hours of torrential
rain that washed out bridges, flooded fields, and blocked highways with
tree-felling mudslides. We learned
that virtually every village, no matter how small, has its local bulldozer
and driver, and in a matter of hours debris was cleared, mud moved aside, and
roads were restored. Just a routine
day in the rainy season.
Went
for a brief hike up a slippery mountainside that night. Army ants were on the move, transporting
larvae as the colony traveled bumper-to-bumper, whizzing past a leech in the
slow lane. Smokey Jungle Frogs waited
by their holes, hoping to ambush something bigger than an ant and smaller
than a herper.
Up in
the trees herps were either sleeping or having sex. Well, at least what passes for sex between
consenting amphibians. In the case of
frogs and toads there’s no actual intercourse, just a tight embrace called amplexus. The much smaller male climbs on the
female’s back, gives her a squeeze, locks his arms in position, then holds on
for hours (sometimes days!). As the
female lays her eggs, the male deposits his sperm externally and the two
ingredients mix together for fertilization.
Usually this is done in water,
but some species of tree frogs lay their eggs on leaves above the water,
where the emerging tadpoles will drop in to begin their aquatic
existence. Or maybe this unidentified
romantic couple was just looking for some variety?
A
herp of the sleeping kind. This lizard
had the longest tail of any Anole I’ve ever seen, and transitioned
beautifully from lime green in the leaves to rusty green in our hands.
Next morning
Ron and I were on our own for a few hours, so we crossed a swinging bridge
and took a short hike down a local streamside trail.
Not
too many critters to report, just the usual sights of anoles and ants, but in
We lingered and looked out over the
rainforest, its rushing water still fleeing from yesterday’s monsoon, then
turned from the jungle and made ready for our trip to the north, to the dry
forests of Guanacaste.
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