Female Black-throated Trogons (Trogon rufus) are colored differently than the males of the species. Instead of a green hood and a black throat, the females are a lovely brown. Although pairs of these wide-eyed birds are never far apart, I’ve rarely seen them sitting together.
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With the discipline of a yogi, this Bare-throated Tiger Heron holds its pose and warms its wings in the evening sunlight near Tortuguero.
Bare-throated Tiger Herons (Tigrisoma mexicanum) are distinguished from other tiger herons by the yellow skin below their long beaks. These striped birds are common in the low wetlands, marshes, and mangroves, of Costa Rica, especially on the Caribbean side.
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Central American Spider Monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) are found mostly in Costa Rica’s protected areas of primary rain forest. Their arms are longer than their legs, and they have no thumbs on their hands, which makes it possible for them to brachiate, or swing branch to branch with only their arms. They have an incredibly strong prehensile tail with a palm-like pad on the end. When these primates maneuver through the forest canopy looking for ripe fruit, they often get all five limbs in action, and truly look like spiders in a web of branches.
This Central American Spider Monkey demonstrates its full arachnid-like range, using arms, legs, and tail to travel through among the slender branches of the rainforest canopy.
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A Brown Pelican takes flight over the Golfo Dulce on a sunny day in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula.
With their large, distinctive bills, Brown Pelicans (Pelicanus occidentalis) are easy to identify on the Pacific coast, where they are most prolific. They soar a few feet above the waves, scan for fish, and dive head first into the water to scoop up a meal.
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The Central American Agouti (Dasyprocta punctata) is a rodent that looks like a cross between a rabbit with short ears and a giant squirrel with no tail. When frightened, the fur on its hind end stands out straight to make a bushy rump. Apparently this agouti feared neither people nor cars as it simply stood still in the yard of Bosque del Cabo as we slowly drove past and snapped its picture.
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This Chestnut-mandibled Toucan (Ramphastos swainsonii) is one of the first birds I photographed during my first trip to Costa Rica back in 2002 with my first digital camera. I was thrilled, and I felt so lucky to have gotten a clear snapshot of such an exotic-looking creature! The Chestnut-mandibled Toucan is the larger of two toucan types in Costa Rica, and the only one on the Osa Peninsula.
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Northern Tamanduas (Tamandua mexicana), also called Collared Anteaters, are the most common of the three anteater species in Costa Rica. These fuzzy mammals eat termites and ants that they find in trees or in the ground, where they use their long front claws to tear open insect colonies.
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Yellow-headed Caracaras (Milvago chimachima) are part of the falcon family, but are not swift hunters like their falcon cousins. They eat mostly carrion, along with some insects and small vertebrates I’m not sure why this one was pecking at the inside of a broken coconut shell. Perhaps there were some delicious bugs in there. The Yellow-headed Caracara is most common in the south Pacific region, where I photographed this one in 2006.
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A patient Golden Orb-weaver waits for flies, moths, butterflies, or beetles, to be caught in its large web.
At around two-and-a-half inches including legs, female Golden Orb-weavers (Nephila clavipes) like this one are among the largest spiders in Costa Rica. Males of the species are only about one-quarter inch, legs and all. Golden Orb-weavers build their strong webs fairly low to the ground in open forests where there is enough sunlight to foster plenty of insects to eat.
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A basilisk poses on a stump near Tortuguero.
Every time a guide has pointed out one of these reptiles, it has been described as a “Jesus Christ Lizard” for its ability to run on the surface of water using only its hind legs. I just learned from my new reference book on amphibians and reptiles in Costa Rica, however, that there is actually more than one basilisk species capable of “bipedal locomotion across water.” The particular species in this photo, Basiliscus vittatus, while it can run on water, tends to be more terrestrial, and is commonly spied near the ground and further away from water than other basilisk types that frequent trees.
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