Quick update for Tuesday 13 August 2013 – we all survived whatever virus, bacteria, etc that we all got yesterday (Monday 12 Aug). Nate was the least affected – although he also was hit pretty good with fatigue, aches, and fever (same stuff I had but he had it to a lesser degree). The ladies are the ones that really took it hard. But today, everyone is good! So for friends and family that were worried, we’re all good to go today….

Hello and thank you for being interested in my blog and my adventures in Costa Rica. I couldn’t believe how fast this trip came up on me. When I got back from Belize and had two weeks before leaving for Costa Rica, I figured “plenty of time”…not true. It wasn’t until the day before the trip that I became nervous about it. But, it went just fine and I’m now sitting in a hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica typing on this blog.

5 August 2013 (Monday):

To recap how today went: Met up with the group at the Sacramento International Airport (Channa Jenkins, Krystel Bell, Rosie Vizina, Trisha Velasquez, and Raquel E.) for a 12:30 am flight to Houston. Boarding went well but didn’t get much sleep on the flight. Made it to Houston at 6:00 am their time…three hour layover before leaving for Costa Rica. Channa and I had the emergency exit seats so had a good deal of legroom – enough where I could stretch out too.

As we took off, we saw another plane simultaneously taking off on the adjacent runway…

We reached the Gulf of Mexico shortly after take-off. Impressive blue to the Gulf.

We arrived in Costa Rica shortly before noon. San Jose is nestled between mountains and there is green everywhere – although much of San Jose itself is quite developed.

So, we’ve disembarked from our plane and work our way down to Customs and Immigration. It looks like three or more planes have all arrived at nearly the same time because there are hundreds of people waiting in line. There are two sinuous lines for visitors and one line for residents. Took us nearly two hours to get through the line…but we made it and went to get our luggage. We also looked for our other member of our group – Nate Alexander – who came to Costa Rica a couple of days earlier. No sight of him. So, we loaded all of our luggage (and ourselves) into a cab (van) and headed to the City Express Hoteles. Upon arrival, found out that Nate had just left a bit ago to go to the airport to meet us – he thought we were arriving at 2:00 pm.

There is a mall right next to the hotel so we head over there to get food. And sitting right front and center is a sushi bar…yep, sushi in Costa Rica….

As we got into the mall, the first thing we encounter is the food court. Surprise, surprise, it’s not much different from an American mall…too bad!

We finally settled on a restaurant outside of the mall food court…and it was very good food for a reasonable price.

After our meal, we went back into the mall to see what was in the place – it’s a three story mall. We found Nate in the mall looking for us – he had made it back from the airport after waiting around there for a while.

Also, the first bird we saw here in Costa Rica was a Great-tailed Grackle…figures since this species is so wide-spread.

After going back to the hotel, did some resting then working on this blog. Pretty much everything on TV is in spanish including Ratatouille (one of my very favorite Pixar flicks)…a lot of the voices don’t match what I expect in tone…but it’s still good.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) we’re getting picked up at the hotel at an ungodly 5:45 am to head to Tortuguera National Park. We should be arriving there around noon after a boat ride to get to our lodgings. Can’t wait!!!

6 August 2013 – Tuesday

So, while the date above says Tuesday, I’m actually not getting to write this until Wednesday…just so busy yesterday.  But, the memory is still quite fresh.  As I mentioned, the day started by getting picked up at our hotel at 5:45 am – we were the first pick up so we had a very nice bus all to ourselves…for about ten minutes though.  We stopped at multiple locations over the next hour to pack all of the seats with people going to the Tortuguero area – they are definitely very conscious of getting the maximum amount of transport for each gallon of fossil fuel.

The roads were pretty windy so Trish wasn’t feeling particularly well when we stopped for lunch at the El Ceibo restaurant.  Really a beautiful place!  They had a glass-smith at the entrance making some real cool jewelry.

Outside of the restaurant, someone found a sloth (an adult and a juvenile).  This is the Three-toed Sloth.

Also got to see a long-tailed hermit at these flowers.

After lunch, we headed back down the highway toward the boat launch to get to Tortuguera. here we stopped to see a cool caiman in the road-side ditch.  It was around three feet long.

We reached the boat launch…actually multiple buses reached this place about at the same time.  We had our own boat to pick us up.

Saw a couple of cool iguanas on the way to the lodge.

We reached Evergreen Lodge after about 45 minutes of cruising the canals and waterways. The lodge itself is quite well hidden by the surrounding jungle. Fantastic place! The forest is a flooded forest so they have walkways to all of the cabanas – which are built on stilts.

After checking in, we immediately went to lunch. Then we headed out to the town of Tortuguera to visit the Sea Turtle Conservancy field station. In town, we met a bunch of dogs…they were very nice and welcoming to their town. Also on the way to Tortuguera, we stopped at a couple of points and took pictures of critters…

And, this group of swallows…maybe juveniles?

In the town, we saw a bunch of dogs…here are a few….

And this blue-gray tanager in town…

While in Tortuguera, we visited the Sea Turtle Conservancy’s research facility.

Back at Evergreen Lodge, we saw these cool blue crabs, monkeys, and a kingfisher…

Here is an Amazon Kingfisher…

And a Mantled Howler Monkey and a Central American Spider Monkey…

And to bring into the mix a plant, here is a hibiscus flower…

We also found a Strawberry Poison Dart Frog…actually many of these – as well as this cool male Yellow-headed Gecko.

And this neat fungus…

We then had dinner where we had a good time watching Nate use a spoon on his table setting…obviously not for soup but hey, at least it was concave…

Tonight we set up mist nets in the forest. We set up a total of four mist nets around some areas of shallow water.  These are the locations…

A lot of darn scary spiders were in the area as we checked the nets during the night…

We caught three individual bats from three species: Artibeus watsoni, Carollia castanea, and Carollia sowelli.  Here is Artibeus watsoni:

And, here is Carollia castanea (this is a new species for me):

And lastly, the Carollia sowelli:

Here Shahroukh and Priscilla take a bat out of the net:

During the daytime, we also got the Greater White-lined Bat – this species can often be found roosting under eaves and along walls. These are at my cabana and Krystel’s cabana:

While we mist netted, we got visited by this Boat-billed Heron – a really remarkable bird. Notice the forward facing eyes giving it depth perception…yep, it’s a predator all right. Such a cool bird!

And, walking around the walkways we found this turnip-tailed gecko…

Okay, I’m going to call it quits for tonight. I wanted to get this batch of photos into the blog, but I’m still one full day behind. We’ve been so active that literally there hasn’t been any time…hence my putting these up at 1:00 am on Thursday. But, at least I don’t have to compete for bandwidth. And, a somewhat scary fight with Kinkajous just occurred in the trees behind me – quite a ways up the tree. Also there are frogs calling and an owl too – I’ll need to find out what is making that call.

More later, we head to Sarapiqui tomorrow (Thursday August 8) and hopefully they’ll have wifi access at that hotel. No mist netting for bats occurred on Wednesday…instead we went to see Sea Turtles laying eggs…super cool!!! But for the next two nights (Thursday and Friday) we have mist netting.  More coming up…stay tuned…and I’m heading to bed and getting away from these mosquitoes.  Good night….

Thursday 8 August 2013

Now I’m in the process of catching up for Wednesday’s events. We’re chilling at a restaurant (El Ceibo) waiting for our bus – it’s stuck in a massive traffic jam due to a car wreck. Lo-and-behold, the restaurant has wifi access so spending a bit of time updating.

Our day (Wednesday) started with birding in the morning for a small group of us. Nice catch of birds: Great Kiskadee, Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Blue-gray Tanager, Collared Aracari, White-collared Manikin, Tropical Kingbird, and Olive-throated Parakeet.

Bus just got here so this will continue later….

Ok, finally got wifi – it wasn’t working well at the hotel in Sarapiqui. That would be the location of our domicile for Thursday and Friday nights. We finally got going from the El Ceibo Restaurant after a pretty good lunch. We also got to check out the adult and juvenile sloth in the trees at the restaurant. The adult came down to the ground to “take a dump” – they only do this once every few days…definitely a slow process to climb to the ground, stick their butt into the leaf litter and then leave a deposit. Being bio-nerds, we really had fun watching the sloth doing it’s business.

Back to Wednesday’s events…after going birding from 6:00-7:00 am (bird list previously reported), we had breakfast then headed out to the boat for a several hour nature trip by boat. We cruised the waterways at Tortuguera…lots of birds, some reptiles, and (most importantly) a real cool bat tent (this is where some species of bats produce “tents” as their roosting sites by chewing sides of a large leaf which causes the sides to droop down, essentially producing a “tent” for shelter).

One of the first things we saw was this adult female Green Heron along with a baby –

Various herptiles were also seen –

This anhinga was pretty much another good sighting, right down  to the close-up views and the flight away from our boat.

We saw other birds on the boat trip…

This is a real cool bird called a Northern Jacana. Absolutely beautiful.

A video of this bird…

Mammals observed during the boat trip were the Mantled Howler Monkey and the Central American Spider Monkey.

And, pictures of a Central American Spider Monkey female with her baby –

WeAfter seeing those cool critters, we then got the “icing on the cake” – a tent roost for a group of bats. A tent roost is a day roosting site for bats that are created out of a large leaf. In this case, this large leaf has had some lateral sections of the leaf chewed upon and causing those sides to droop along the chew lines. Think of how your umbrella functions and you’ll get a good idea of how these tents work…

Here are the bats inside the tent…

Such a cool finding! After a few photographs, we left the bats to themselves. We didn’t want to unduly stress them out. We headed out by boat back to the Evergreen Lodge facility for lunch. After lunch, we had a couple of hours to relax before we had a choice of activities (for a bit extra cost) – one was zip lining (this was done by Nate, Trisha, and Raquel), and the other was another boat trip in the afternoon (chosen by me, Channa, Rosie, Shahrouk, Colleen, Colin, Moira, and Priscilla).

Just back from the bat conference opening social…really loud! It’s Sunday night and although I’m missing the return of Breaking Bad the trade-off is that I’m in Costa Rica…hmmm which will it be? Of course I’ll take Costa Rica! So although it’s Sunday I’ll return to some more Wednesday photographs.

Near the beginning of our boat ride we got to see a Purple Gallinule – a fantastically colored wading bird and nearby another Northern Jacana.

Shortly after the Gallinule and Jacana, we came across a Gray-headed Kite – a truly beautiful bird!

And we also saw a Little Blue Heron…

During our afternoon boat ride on Wednesday, we were able to closely observe a Mantled Howler Monkey group. They were feeding and moving through the canopy…real cool! Some pics…

Here is a nice movie of a female and her kid…

We got back in the late afternoon and had some downtime before dinner. After dinner, we got picked up again to be taken to the beaches at Tortuguera to see nesting Green Sea Turtles. We picked up our guide: Ray Brown and Noel – and headed to his permitted stretch of the beach. No electronic equipment can be used on the beach and no white light or any personal lights at all except for the guide’s red light.

We were able to see a turtle returning to sea, one coming up from the ocean before it turned around and went back out to sea (this was explained to me that the turtle came up onto the wrong area so was going back out to see to make another try. And, we were able to see one laying eggs and one covering it’s nest hole. So, needless to say, but no pictures here.

We got back to Evergreen Lodge closer to 10:00 pm. A small group of us – Nate, Trish, Raquel, and me – went out hiking to look for frogs…and boy did we find some. Here are a bunch of frog pics…

We also saw this Katydid…

And a few more frogs…in this case the Strawberry Poison Dart Frog….

In addition to these vertebrates, we also got to see this large ant – a Bullet Ant – and no, no-one got stung although when I touched it with my pen, it immediately grabbed my pen and put three small drops of venom on it. When it attacked my pen, I dropped the pen and ant really quickly.

After all of that excitement, we went to our respective cabanas for some well earned rest. In the morning, I was up again at 6:00 for birding but no-one else, yeah, it was tough but the birds don’t wait for anyone. More to come for Thursday….

So, Thursday was early birding – some good stuff for the 50 or so minutes that we were out. It was just me, Priscilla, Shahroukh, and Colleen that went. Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Gray-necked Woodrail, Great Kiskadee, Great-tailed Grackle (this is the House Finch of Sacramento – everywhere), Montezuma’s Oropendula, White-crowned Parrot (a youngster was in this bunch and begging food), Blue-gray Tanager, Black-cowled Oriole, White-collared Manikin, Keel-billed Toucan, Short-billed Pigeon, and Slaty-tailed Trogon (a beautiful male!), a Golden-hooded Tanager (nice find too), and the really cool one was the Chestnut-colored Woodpecker. We also watched White-faced Capuchin monkeys raid the breakfast area and steal packets of sugar. It was a real funny sight (to us, and not to the restaurant personnel who came out yelling at the monkeys on their second raid…when they were seen grabbing the sugar).

I’m off to the Conference so I will post pics later this evening.

It is now Monday afternoon…and I was the only one to get to the conference for the entire morning session. It was quite good too. What happened to the others you ask? Three words: “Under the Weather”. The poor ladies are all hit hard by this – Nate seems fine, just tired, and I’ve got a touch of it. It’s raining too so we’re all staying at the hotel for much of this afternoon. We think it was one of the variety of finger foods that they served…it was the only real common denominator. Although it could be something else that got us while we traveled together. We’ll just take it easy for today.

Good thing is that this is letting me work on the blog! So, back to Thursday. After the early birding, we had breakfast and got to enjoy the company of a troup of White-faced Capuchins that were determined to raid the food items for breakfast. As with the previous raiding party, the restaurant staff were not pleased with the persistence of the Capuchins.

We saw a nice Trogon while birding…

Now to the Capuchins…

Then we headed to the El Ceibo Restaurant for lunch before continuing on to the La Quinta de Sarapiqui hotel. At El Ceibo we were able to see both three-toed sloths again. The small one was sleeping in the tree but the large one was active and came down to make a “deposit”.

The guard dog at the restaurant was a real sweet girl, she sure loved the attention that she got…

Here is a neat spider at the restaurant…

We arrived at La Quinta de Sarapiqui hotel in mid-afternoon. Nice place amid a bunch of organic pineapple plantations and patches of natural habitat – especially along the river corridor which provides one property boundary.

We pretty much dropped off our stuff then headed over to La Selva Verde Lodge (right along the Sarapiqui River) to do mist netting.  The other group (the three day tour) arrived there earlier and set up a total of five nets and we took another net and set it up further down the river along a trail.

On the way back to the lodge area, Trisha and Raquel got hit by something and stopped. There were Mantled Howler Monkeys above her and it turns out they were both hit by Howler Monkey poop. Not a happy occurrence but still somewhat humorous since the tradition is that getting hit by animal poop is actually something that portends good luck.

We set up the bat work station back at the lodge and after our first run at the nets (we caught three bats) we ended up staying at the lodge and worked with some of the bats. It was quite chaotic with the other group but we got through it.

Here are some pictures of the Carollia perspicillata…

Here is a cool bat called Vampressa nymphaea…

We also caught a neat bat called Uroderma bilobatum…one of my favorites that I had previously caught in Belize…

If you were to look at the Vampressa and Uroderma pictures (their backs), one of the differences in color pattern is that Vampressa has a faint line down the back while Uroderma is prominent. The defining characteristic are the front teeth – specifically the shape of the incisors.

We also caught a rare bat called Micronycteris microbus…

We saw several other non-bat things while looking around the grounds of the hotel.  This is a cool one where Nate found a large Katydid in the process of emerging from it’s prior (smaller) exoskeleton.

And here are some frogs that we found along the river and the hotel grounds.

And the icing on the cake (amphibian icing because the ultimate icing was the Ectophylla alba) the Red-eyed Treefrog…

Now on to Friday’s doings…

9 August 2013:

We went birding in the morning and got some good birds:  Passarini’s Tanager, Clay-colored Robin, Greater Kiskadee, Bananaquit, Variable Seedeater, Keel-billed Toucan, Golden-hooded Tanager, Green Honeycreeper, Bay Wren, Common Tody-flycatcher, Blue-gray Tanager, Red-legged Honeycreeper, Collared Aracari, Black-cowled Oriole, Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Grayish Saltator, Buff-throated Saltator, Long-tailed Hermit and for mammals, Mantled Howler Monkey and Three-toed Sloth.

Here are some pictures of the Passarini’s Tanager. This is a stunning bird that turns out to be quite common here – in fact, I’ve seen lots more of these than the Great-tailed Grackle which is everywhere! The second photo shows a male and a female.

Golden-hooded Tanager…

And a Green Honeycreeper (male):

Also a Collared Aracari…

After breakfast, we loaded the bus and went over to Tirimbina (along the Sarapiqui River) to explore the primary rainforest. A really cool place!

We got to see cacao as well as a Hog-nosed Pit Viper…

We also saw this whiptail – it’s called the Festival or Party Whiptail because it’s species name is festiva.

And a real neat Katydid and a Cicada…

We hiked the trail to check out heliconia leaves for a really, really, really cool bat called Honduran White Bat – Ectophylla alba. This was my Central American Holy Grail!

This was such a treat to see this species. It’s been a definite dream of mine to see this species.

My reaction to the Ectophylla…

After our hike, we had a chance to explore the area at Tirimbina. We did a bunch of armchair birding from one of the patios. Good spot!

Here is the female Green Honeycreeper…

The birds identified when chair birding were: Black-cheeked Woodpecker, Clay-colored Robin, Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Plain Chachalaca, Blue-gray Tanager, Passarini Tanager, Common Tody-flycatcher, Greater Kiskadee, Violaceous Trogon, Golden-hooded Tanager, Green Honeycreeper, Black-crowned Tityra, Streak-headed Woodpecker, Montezuma’s Oropendula, Black Vulture, and Little Hermit.

We’re heading back to the La Quinta Lodge for dinner before coming back out for mist netting. This time we’ll be running two nets ourselves while the other group will have four (we were originally getting three nets but no problem).

After having dinner, we spent a bit of time doing a bit of packing since we’ll be leaving in the morning in a fair rush. Then we headed out to Tirimbina to do mist netting – we’ll be in charge of two nets on the Tirimbina Lodge side of the river (north side) at the base of the suspension bridge. Our location to work up the bats will be in the seating area at the bridge.

The mist netting went well – we only did it for a couple of hours but we got a nice variety of bats (total of five species): all three Carollia species – Carollia castanea, C. perspicillata, and C. sowelli; Artibeus jamaicensis, and Eptesicus furinalis.

Here are some pictures of a couple of Artibeus jamaicensis. We even put a light tag on a couple of these guys. One of the bats eventually landed in a tree and we were able to see it in the tree…picture following…just scroll down. The other one we released on the bridge right over the river. This was a funny story because the light tag wasn’t on the back fur well and it fell right off the bat when it took an upstroke of it’s wing when flying away. But, the effect was that it looked like the bat fell into the river…instead it was just the light tag. We all laughed about it afterwards but at that moment, everyone’s hearts skipped a beat – actually several beats! Turns out that Nate really thought the bat fell to it’s death and that we were just laughing it off to make everyone feel better. It wasn’t until three hours later that Nate came to understand that the bat was alright and that truly the tag fell off. He was really horrified and thought that he saw the bat die right in front of his eyes and was internalizing his turmoil over the event. Around midnight we were sitting in a common area talking when his all came out that Nate thought the bat was deceased. Man was he relieved that he was mistaken in his impression.

Here is the Argentine Brown Bat (Eptesicus furinalis) that was caught…

After we took down the mist nets and packed up our stuff, we found this cool Vesper Rat (Nyctomys sumichrasti).

Saturday 13 August 2013

For the next day, I did another bout of early birding before breakfast. Only new bird was the Red-throated Ant Tanager. Saw a couple of other birds that I hadn’t seen before but they moved on before I could identify the bird. Then breakfast and pretty much immediately after breakfast we headed out to the Rio Sarapiqui for some white water rafting. Can’t believe I’m doing this (my first white water rafting adventure) but compared to Channa, I’m perfectly calm. Here is a basilisk lizard and a heliconia flower at the La Quinta.

So off to rafting we go…only six people fit into a raft (other than the guide) so I went on a different raft. Got to meet some cool folks (pretty famous mammal biologists it turns out)…

During the trip down the river for the group, Nate got knocked out of the raft. Some great photos from that happening…

We stayed on the river longer than expected so once we got back to the La Quinta, we literally had to get all of our stuff out immediately. So, we got our stuff loaded onto the bus and headed off to San Jose. On the way we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. Good food and a cool dog awaited us there.

Then, what is it Nate and Rosie see???

Why, it’s nothing more than…wait for it…Super Spider!

Actually, the spider didn’t tower over Nate and Rosie. It’s only about a half-inch in size and was quite cool. We’ve seen several of these guys/gals and they seem to have a pretty nice range of colors and patterns – mostly all of them have red and/or yellow in some combination.

We took a group picture of us at the restaurant…

Fun times with this group of people! Now back to San Jose and getting ready for the Conference.

Hi again everyone…sorry that I haven’t had a chance to update the blog. Got real busy during the conference and simply didn’t have the energy to do it the last couple of nights. Last night (and the night before) I was sitting on my bed going through my pictures and downloading smaller copies for the blog into a separate folder and kept waking myself up as my head fell forward (I was usually able to get a couple of pictures saved before I did the head bob). So after doing that a while, I figured that was the universe telling me to go to sleep…which is what I did.

Back to Saturday August 10th, 2013, San Jose around 5:00 pm after taking a pretty windy road back to the capital (San Jose). We made a stop at a pretty spectacular waterfall and then went the rest of the way.

So we checked back into our hotel and spent some relaxing time during the evening. The following morning, we rented a van (with driver) and went to Poa National Park – a real cool (actually hot), active volcano about 1.5 hours north of San Jose.

On the way to the park, we stopped and saw this Two-toed Sloth.

Here is a view of the volcano with stem venting from the active volcano and also the lake area where the old crater used to be located.

At the overlook, we took a couple of pictures of the group, here is one of them…

Not really sure what Krystel is doing here…but…Channa is grinning quite a bit….

After the overlook, we took a hike along the trail…nice trail…it felt a lot like the north coast of California (chilly and fog).

Once we reached the first overlook, we were greeted by this rambunctious ground squirrel…

…as well as encountering this cool bird called the Yellow-thighed Finch.

We stayed at Poa National Park until around noon and then headed down the mountain for lunch. We ate in a village called Poacito and after lunch visited a garden area that had lots and lots of hummingbirds.

On the way to the restaurant we stopped at a spot and took this panorama photo of the valley below…

Here are some hummingbird pictures from the garden area…

The hummingbirds here in Costa Rica are simply amazing! As I update this blog, I think about today (Saturday August 17) and the sheer number of hummingbirds seen today at Monteverde Reserve…but more on that later.

We got back to the Hotel and went to the evening social that kicked off the conference. Lots of finger foods were served and there was music and other lively entertainment. It was quite loud but nice to see people from the previous five day trip. The conference programs and talks start officially on Monday.

Monday (August 12) rolls around and pretty much everyone is sick. The ladies (all of them) are quite “under the weather” and are unable to attend any of the talks on Monday and just spend the day sleeping in addition to being sick…like, really sick too! Nate is feeling okay but I’m not feeling quite right either and it hits me like a ton of bricks during the late afternoon. Fever, achy, and so very tired – no energy at all. By this late in the day, Nate is having symptoms of fever and fatigue too. Luckily neither one of us got it as badly as the ladies.

Tuesday morning (August 13), everyone is much better. We’re all feeling well and can attend the talks and the program today. This continues throughout the week with some outstanding information presented in the talks. Overall there were 639 participants in the conference – the largest conference/meeting of bat professionals and students ever to have occurred. These participants were from 55 countries and 327 oral presentations and 109 posters were presented. We made the press all over Costa Rica and over 4 million people in CR found out about the conference from the great media coverage. It was truly a fantastic conference and I rank it up there with one of the very best conferences I’ve attended.

We presented our posters on Wednesday afternoon/evening from 5:00 until after 7:00 pm. A lot of people came by and we had great conversations with those folks. Here is Channa with her poster and a close-up of her poster…

Rosie also gave a poster…here it is…

And finally, my poster…

At the closing ceremonies, they honored the students that provided all of the labor to keep the conference functioning. This was great to see all of these people get a standing ovation…they certainly deserved it – they were wonderful!

Thursday evening was our banquet dinner. A great time was had by all attendees…

Here is our group with the banquet tickets on our nose…yeah, there is a reason…they are all in the shape and color of the noses of the leaf-nosed bats (Phyllostomatidae) that are so species abundant in Costa Rica.

Here’s a picture of our dinner table with Channa, Krystel, and Nate…

Not sure what this guy is doing with Raquel’s hair…

Picture of Nate and Shahroukh…

Then the DJ started playing songs and dancing began. Songs ranged from Kansas’ Dust in the WInd to Rick Astley’s Together Forever, very eclectic – it was an eighties evening.

The dance floor was hopping with bat biologists cutting loose, including our bunch…go Rosie….

Krystel wanted to dance some more…

A great Salsa band played too…

It was definitely a fun night, however, I can’t get Rick Astley’s Together Forever song out of my head. Hey, I grew up in that eighties era remember…

Friday (August 16) rolls around and we get picked up at our hotel at 7:00 am for the trip to Monteverde Reserve for the next leg of our journey. We’ll be spending two nights and three days at Monteverde and we’ll be able to mist net for bats on Saturday (August 17). We also have planned a rainforest hike in the evening, a rainforest hike during the day, then returning to the hike location for mist netting for bats in the evening.

Pictures of these activities coming up…

The bus ride was quite long before we reached Monteverde. Santa Elena is the town where Monteverde Forest Reserve is located and is a really neat town. Everything is close to each other and they have some nice shops and restaurants. We had fun walking around the town before we met up for lunch.

After lunch, we headed to the Monteverde County Lodge – our abode for the next couple of nights. We checked in and hung out for a bit of time before heading out to Rich Laval’s Bat Jungle – a very cool bat exhibit of bat species from that immediate area. Plus Dr. Laval is a pretty famous bat biologist to boot! It was really remarkable meeting him and having him lead us through his facility. After the Bat Jungle visit, we went to the Children’s Eternal Rainforest Reserve for a night hike. A substantial rainstorm hit before we left the hotel and returned during our night hike where we got pretty thoroughly soaked.

Here we start off by meeting Dr. Rich Laval – a very famous bat biologist…

We then went into the exhibit and got to meet some of the residents…

We headed to the Children’s Eternal Rainforest Reserve after coming back to the lodge to get our things for the hike. Once we arrived, we had an orientation to the place by Guillermo (Memo) – one of the guides at the Reserve. The Reserve started as a small place but has now expanded to over 54,000 acres in size and has property that abuts many of the protected properties in the area. While the area was one parcel and very small, the children of the community “adopted” the place and started having candy and bake sales to raise money to buy more land. This caught the attention of many people and the result was a good funding stream to purchase properties. A great conservation story.

Getting ready for the hike…and, as we got ready to go a White-nose Coati paid us a visit in the trees…really cool!!!

And, finally the major find of the hike, a Green Palm Viper…

After getting a thorough drenching, we headed to a pizza restaurant for dinner. Great pizza…

Then back to the hotel. Some night bugging produced some neat things at the lights.

The next day we went to the Monteverde Forest Reserve for a morning hike and for lunch. The place is spectacular! And the hummingbirds were phenomenal!

Another massive tree…

Another rainforest picture…

And, this orchid which smelled like vanilla…

These flowers might be a Gesneriad…

Also found these flowers called Two-lip Flowers…

Towards the end of the trail we came across this White-nosed Coati. He pretty much paid us no attention and spent his time foraging for food. He didn’t try to beg any food from us either. Real neat seeing this relative of ringtails.

Once back at the entrance, Raquel found this moth…

Lots of walking sticks were flying around too.

The hummingbird feeders were really crowded with quite a variety of species of hummingbirds. Here are a few:

Took some great video of the hummingbirds and will post those at the end of this section soon.

We left Monteverde in the afternoon to head back to the lodge and to get dinner a bit later. Then we’re scheduled to return to set up mist nets for batting tonight.

In addition to the mist netting, we were able to take some pictures of nectar-feeding bats at the hummingbird feeders. Here are a couple of pictures of these guys…

Overall we caught and examined four species at Monteverde.  Two of the bat species were nectar bats – Hylonycteris underwoodi and Glossophaga commissarisi.  Very cool bats!  We also caught Carollia sowelli (which we caught in multiple locations) and also Myotis elegans (one of the smallest bats in Central America).

This is Myotis elegant – notice that it doesn’t have a nose leaf…this is one of the bats in the family Vespertilionidae.  Most of the bats back in the United States are Vespertilionidae while most in the tropics of Central America are Phyllostomatidae (leaf-nosed bats).

The other group also caught a Micronycteris microtis and brought it over for us to examine.

For the mist netting, we set up under a covered patio outside one of the buildings.  Great location to work up the bats we caught.  The mist net was set about fifty feet away from us.

I was also able to take a movie of the hummingbird feeder as it was getting dark.  This movie was done with my headlamp on – an amazing number of hummingbirds were coming to the feeder to get their last meal before sleeping.

After mist netting, we went back to our hotel and had dinner.  The ladies were immediately on their iPhones when they got within wifi range.  Also, there was a sweet poster in the lobby!

The following morning, went out on a bird walk.  It was our last day at Monteverde…but before heading back to San Jose, we stopped at a small, organic coffee farm.  Here are some of the critters seen on the bird walk in the morning.

So, this morning we visited Senor Badilla’s small coffee farm.  He raises organic, shade-grown coffee on a one-hectare farm (he has two other small parcels where he also grows coffee).  He grows not only the sustainably grown coffee but he also has a variety of fruit trees as well as a small aquaculture operation to provide his family with Tilapia.  He worked for thirty years at Monteverde Coffee Farm and moved his knowledge over to his own operation.  He built his own roaster as well as other equipment – a real Costa Rican McGyver.

A view of the region where coffee is grown…

All to quickly we were back at the Hoteles Express in San Jose.  We had one more night in San Jose before we had to go to the airport the next morning for our flight back to California.  I was a few birds short of triple digits so I got up early and went birding near the hotel.  Actually got five new species!  Then it was loading up the hotel shuttle and heading over to the airport.  As always, the airport part was crazy.  But the flight wasn’t too bad – although Krystel and Rosie’s flight was delayed by a couple of hours (they were leaving on an earlier flight than the rest of us).  We all made it back to Sacramento nearly the same day we left Costa Rica (we landed in Sacramento right before midnight).

This was simply an amazing trip – I had a blast…even the getting sick part was an adventure – not good adventure but one none-the-less.  I plan to return to Costa Rica as soon as possible!!!  Thanks for joining me vicariously through my blog.  It’s been fun to review the photos and to remember the times!