Caves Branch Night Walk

 Night walks looking for wildlife can be a mixed bag. Sometimes you have incredible encounters with all sorts of creatures of the night and other times you walk for hours, lose out on sleep, and see a handful of bugs or sleeping birds bums overhead.

Caves Branch was a mixed bag with a few highlights below but not as rich an outing as we'd hoped for. Still this helmeted iguana is undeniably a neat little character, and the only one of his species on this particular trip. He was also content to stay still and cling to his branch, so we had a good opportunity for pictures.

Cuban tree frogs were quite common in Belize - Steven routinely catches them on his condo grounds - but this one looks a little more naturally posed on the side of a tree than it does in a bathroom sink.

We also had a valuable lesson in learning how large a spider has to get before we do request housekeeping to extract it (they had a good net and this was clearly not their first time with the ask). While the macro perspective does undeniably make this Tiger Bromeliad Spider look a little larger and more dangerous than you'd want to share a room with, it was still a comfortable hand span across and a little more than we wanted to have crawling about overhead as we napped.

Red-Eyed Tree Frogs

The red-eyed tree frog is one of the most popular and recognized animals in Costa Rica and even on the Earth. Apparently people go to Costa Rica just to see these little animals, which is a task made all the harder by the fact that (1) they are tiny (2) they are nocturnal (3) they get quiet when you get close. There are, of course, places that have these frogs in captivity, but we think that counting animals you see that way is cheating, so we made sure to come see some of our own.

This is no easy feat mind you, based on the 3 reasons given above. However, I did have an ace up my sleeve given that Kathryn is incredibly sharp-eyed AND passionate about seeing everything she possibly can on holiday. It is still beyond me how she managed to find the frog below though. This was about 40 feet in the air, among the leaves and in the pitch black. The photo below was taken with a 400mm lens and has all the flashlights in the group on it, but to the naked eye with a fraction of that light it looked like a slightly lighter leaf.

 Our sighting the following night was a little more co-operative, as this fellow was maybe only 15 feet away and perched at a more reasonable level (the one below is the same one as the top photo, just from the side rather than the front). I particularly like how its legs dangle down below where it gripped on with its feet.

Aquarium Amphibians which Act Awesomely

Frogs are fun and cute.  Sounds like the title of a kids book. I mean look at that little self-satisfied expression on this Waxy Monkey Treefrog (yes, you read that right).  The amphibian exhibit at the Vancouver Aquarium is pretty good, but I prefer going out and finding my own. Though there's lots of stuff that we don't get up in Canada.  Poison dart frogs for one.

Axolotl's are another. Apparently they taste like chicken but I would be really really hungry before I grilled one.  They look made for kebabs though.  They have very wide mouths and pretty pink frilly things around their gills.

These poison dart frogs pictured below are super tiny. They are about as big as your thumbnail.  You need a macro or really good zoom to get a reasonable focus on them.  They bounce up and down a bit sometimes. I am not sure if its mating display or a territorial display. Or maybe they are just bouncing because they are happy pretty red froggies.

Amazon Amphibians

 Frogs were incredibly hard to spot in the dense shadow of the jungle canopy. I did our guides Marco and Omar proud when I spotted this Ecuadorian Ruby Poison Dart Frog resting on a leaf. Regular Ruby Poison Dart Frogs from Peru do not have those yellow limb spots. Poson-dart frogs have varying levels of toxicity. This one is low.  It is also threatened by habitat loss from deforestation. We were lucky to spot it.

 This one's eyes showed up lovely in the flash photo. This one I think is  a Peruvian Poison Frog (also threatened) but I am happy to be corrected. If the one I think it is, it is VERY toxic.This poison destroys nerve cells and sends powerful impulses, resulting in extreme pain. A Peruvian poison frog will contain around one milligram of poison, enough to cause severe pain in humans, but not enough to kill. We looked but didn't touch.

 Allow me to intruduce Señor Frog. Señor Frog is a frog of excellent size as you can tell by the hand gently holding his back legs. These fellows have the extremely disconcerting habit of crying like a baby when they get caught. This one was content to be gently handled and didn't make a sound even when Geordie and I petted him. Quite gentlemanly of him really. The size of frogs we saw ranged from about this big, O  (a baby tree frog), to the monstrous fellow below.