July 29, 2007
While I was busy entering last night's frog data, Tim, Ed and Charley went to take the little glass frog back down to the stream at the end of Canyon's trail and then they headed down to Senor Tim's trail to collect the infrared camera card. We were excited to know that there were more images than just wet gringos. We had captured the photo of a brocket deer. This small skittish deer has been seen by a few of the visitors to RLG but never had we put our eyes on one. This was a very exciting moment. Jane then decided that we could use several more of the cameras to place at different sections of the property. Hopefully we could then see spectacled bear, mountain coati, bats... maybe a kinkajou! Our plan for now if to move our cameras around the property every couple days and see what we get. We will have to set up a database of recorded creatures in the future. So exciting!
This afternoon we headed down Peccary Trail to the Santa Rosa River. Along the trip we positioned another infrared camera near a water hole. We will collect this card and see what cool creatures are inhabiting this side of the mountain. On our way to the river, the plan was to stop by the Common Pond Frog (Dendropsophus carnifex) breeding pool, but to our dismay, it appears that when the neighbors cows broke into the property and they have royally destroyed the pond. When we head back down this way on Tuesday night, we'll have to sample the water and analyze the quality after this destruction. It was a very nice, clean breeding pool.
At the river we ate our dinner and examined dobsonfly eggs and crane fly larvae. I think Ed is enjoying the diversity of insects as I am the amphibian life. Upon nightfall, we began our survey following the river trail back up the mountain towards the house. We found a total of 49 frogs including a pair of the endangered species called the Dink Frog (Eleutherodactylus eugeniae), males of the common pond frog (Dendropsophus carnifex), juveniles and adults of the threatened Large Snouted Cutin frog (Eleutherodactylus appendiculatus), many (Eleutherodactylus parvillus) as well as a couple of one of the unknown Eleutherodactylus spp. of which we have already collected a specimen for describing purposes. Having Ed with us, we also saw countless amazingly beautiful and cryptic katydids and walking sticks. One of those walking sticks even "pooffed" a smelly cloud of stink from the back of its head... I guess that this is some kind of defense, and it did truly irritate the nose. At the top of the River Trail, we were noticing lots of this yellowish seedy "poop" and Tim looked up and discovered a kinkajou mother and baby! Maybe we'll get them on our hidden camera. The apple cores that we placed in front of the camera should help with that. |
