For some time, friends have been suggesting I start a blog, and I have finally got around to trying. I live in two wild and beautiful places: Western Maine , USA, and the Cotswolds, England. I also travel to far-flung much wilder places.
I take photos with my trusted Panasonic Lumix, sometimes beautiful photos, more often photos that tell a story.
The blog will be erratic, depending on what catches my eye.
For my first post, from Maine, here are the tree swallows that nested in our old purple martin house and raised four young. They fledged two weeks ago.
Cruising along…She often fed them without touching down at allIt took a while to ram this down the throat of the largest chick
[Today, some encounters with smaller Costa Rican creatures, mostly cold-blooded.]
We were watching a stick insect climb up a railing, when from nowhere this anole lizard pounced! A small but effective predator.
On the same walk, in Tortuguero National Park on the Caribbean coast, we saw a Middle American Ameiva Lizard, Holcosus festivus, named for its stylish neon-colored stripes:
and a Golden Silk Orb-weaver spider, Triconephila clavipes,
The silk of these spiders is now used in neurosurgery, to provide a structure for nerves to regenerate. This one caught an insect, and very quickly wrapped it up into a neat package. I took a video:
We walked at night once or twice, and saw the iconic Red-eyed Tree Frog, Agalychnis callidryas:
Costa Rica has over 150 species of frogs and toads, including the Masked Tree Frog, Smilisca phaeota, with its strange flat body:
A couple of times we saw small groups of Sac-winged Bats, sheltering for the day under rocky overhangs:
I started this post with a small lizard, and I’ll end with a giant one. The good lizard of my title is a Green Iguana, actually called Iguana iguana, which can be as much as six feet long, including tail. This one was around three feet. They’re arboreal in nature :
but… our lodge had a small swimming pool, with a bridge over one section. An arrogant iguana sauntered out to the poolside, disdainfully ignoring the sunbathers, then casually walked over the bridge. I was in the water below the bridge.
Take a close look at the array of different scales that ornament and defend him, some spiky or bumpy, some decorative, all mathematically tessellated:
The cravat is a dewlap that helps to regulate temperature, but it is also used in courtship and territorial displays.
* My title comes from the poem The Good Lizard, by Federico García Lorca, 1898 – 1936. Here is the first verse.
In the parched path I have seen the good lizard (one drop of crocodile) meditating. With his green frock-coat of an abbot of the devil, his correct bearing and his stiff collar, he has the sad air of an old professor. Those faded eyes of a broken artist, how they watch the afternoon in dismay
I tend to think of chipmunks as seed eaters, whether from my bird feeder, or straight off the plant. I’ve also posted in the past about them eating my flower buds (grrr..), and adult beetles. The other day (spring here in Maine, after a long hard winter), I saw one sniffing the lawn at the edge of my flower bed:
Then it began to dig, enthusiastically, until its head was underground:
Success. It came up with a grub, which it seemed to find tasty:
The earth on its whiskers, and the hole at its feet, are evidence of the excavation:
In early spring, they’re desperate for protein after a diet of nothing but seeds and nuts all winter. The beetle grubs are beginning to move, and the chipmunks use smell, hearing, and tactile cues via their sensitive noses, to find these grubs. Just so long as it chooses to remove the kind of grub that gardeners dislike, it’s a win-win situation.
So one poor grub didn’t get the chance to grow into a beetle of some kind, but the same day, getting my vegetable beds ready for planting, I disturbed this emerald Six-spotted Green Tiger Beetle, Cicindela sexguttata:
It has large white mandibles, visible here, and hunts for tinier insects and spiders. You’d think that dazzling coloring would be dysfunctional for a carnivorous predator like this, but apparently not. It is quite common, about 1/2″ long, and is easy to see because it likes sunny patches, but it moves fast and rarely stays still, so it’s hard to photograph.
The Keel-billed Toucan, Ramphastos sulfuratus, is a bill with a bird attached.
Because of habitat loss and the pet trade, it is Near Threatened.
They are mostly seen in pairs:
often playing with each other (the right-hand one has gently grasped the other one with its bill) :
while keeping a close eye on us 40 feet below:
That huge bill is in fact slender when seen from below:
The main function of this unwieldy beak seems to be heat regulation, by adjusting the blood flow to vessels in the beak. Seki et al (2006) studied toucan beaks in detail. They have an external keratin shell, with a cellular core, and a hollow centre, and weigh only about 4% of the bird’s weight. This is a cross-section.
The related Toco Toucan photographed here in Brazil shows how dexterous the beak can be:
and how the food is swallowed, just like a teenager with a peanut:
We also saw Yellow-Throated Toucans, or Chestnut-Mandibled Toucans, Ramphastos ambiguus,
The beak doesn’t open where you might expect from its coloration!
Although they mostly eat fruit, they are known to be major predators of birds’ nests, for the eggs and young. But we watched one commit murder most foul. A pair of Fork-Tailed Flycatchers were nesting nearby, and harassing the circling threatening toucans.
Suddenly a toucan made a grab, and caught one of the adult birds. It settled in a nearby bush, and chomped down. Here it has just swallowed the final gulp:
Our guide Johan Fernandez videoed the toucan tearing its prey into bite-sized pieces through his scope (experience has told me that sometimes these iPhone videos don’t play back reliably: good luck):
Neither Birds of the World, nor Birdlife.org, report these toucans eating adult birds, so we were lucky and fascinated to see this. The bird was not so lucky.
The IUCN Endangered Black-crowned Central American squirrel monkey (Saimiri oerstedii oerstedii) oozes charm.
It is small, weighing 24-30 oz, with an 11in long body, to which is attached a 15in tail. The tail is not prehensile, but helps with balance.
They are very social, living in egalitarian groups of 20-75. The females have no hierarchy, and the males only form a dominance hierarchy during the mating season. They live high in the canopy, moving and feeding in the daytime, and returning to a favorite roost for the night. Our lodge, in the Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, had put out fruit for them, so down they came from the canopy, in full view of the bar:
Their food is often fruit, but in fact they are omnivorous. This one has found a large insect or perhaps a spider, an important source of protein, but also apparently delicious:
A number of bird species follow the monkey troupes, because they flush out insects that the birds then snap up.
Squirrel monkey babies are all born in a single week in February or March, so these were only a month or so old. They stay with their mothers for about a year, holding tight to their backs:
The males may stay with the group for life: it is the sexually mature females who leave for a new group.
They are a joy to watch. They navigate traffic jams on the cables with ease, overtaking with aplomb:
undertaking if necessary.
Watch this pair interacting: the left-hand one grabs the other one’s tail and plays with it:
then rapturously accepts grooming from its friend.
As you can see above, the hind foot is an interesting shape. It turns out that squirrel monkeys have semi-opposable thumbs, as you can see below. Not enough for a precision grip (unlike capuchins), but highly functional nonetheless:
PS My title is inspired by the 2023 finding that having an opposable thumb gives squirrel monkeys the cognitive capacity to be fooled by certain manual magic tricks, just like humans! Surprise!
[I had some camera problems that day, but this bird is too stunning not to talk about.]
The Resplendent Quetzal, Pharomachrus mocinno, revered by the Aztecs and Mayas (think of the god Quetzalcoatl), is a shy bird that lives in dark, moist forests at altitude in the interior Cordillera de Talamanca of Costa Rica. The male is the reason that bird lovers come from far and wide to get a glimpse, and perhaps a blurry photo:
Look carefully above, and below, and you will see that its tail is quite a bit longer than its body!
The head, body and chest are iridescent green with a bluish sheen in some lights , and the belly is scarlet. You can just see the small crest.
Skutch (1944) described the male Resplendent Quetzal as “a supremely lovely bird; the most beautiful, all things considered, that I have ever seen. He owes his beauty to the intensity and arresting contrast of his coloration, the resplendent sheen and glitter of his plumage, the elegance of his ornamentation, the symmetry of his form, and the noble dignity of his carriage.”
Our guide the nature interpreter Johan Fernandez took this picture through his scope:
There should be two super-long tail feathers, but this guy seems to be regrowing one. They often get damaged during mating season, and indeed the sacrifice did not stop him finding a mate. They were nesting in a hollow tree trunk, and they took turns incubating the eggs. The male carefully leaves his long tail outside, so as to preserve the feather(s). This helps in spotting the nest site!
We hung around for an hour or so. Apparently he had been inside for 4 1/2 hours, so we thought perhaps his shift was nearly over. I got tired of tail shots, so I changed my settings to video to catch the movement of the tail in the wind, and lo and behold he abruptly stuck his head out. Here is the video; I have slowed down the final part:
The video stops suddenly, because I wanted to finish filming and instead take a close-up photo of his head. How foolish. If I had kept it running, I could have caught a video of him in flight. Still, you can see him looking around cautiously:
inching further out:
and then flying off in a turquoise blur:
The Resplendent Quetzal is classified as Near Threatened, but it can be locally fairly common. It is usually found in the canopy and subcanopy of undisturbed, humid, epiphyte-laden evergreen montane cloud-forest. They eat mainly fruit.
To ensure the survival of this sacred bird, killing one was a capital crime under the Aztecs (for better or worse, this is not typically amongst today’s conservation regulations). The tail streamers were plucked for tributes and headdresses, but the birds were then set free. Here is a 16th century Aztec hieroglyph of Quetzalcoatl, or Feather-Snake:
For more details, and a stunning photo, click on the story below.
We went out for the morning on a small boat on Golfo Dulce, an inlet from the Pacific tucked in behind the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. It was flat calm,
except for patches of churning, frothing water where middle-sized fish had found a shoal of much smaller anchovies or sprat of some kind.
As is the way of the world, the big fish fed on the little fish, which jumped out of the water to try and escape:
only to find Sandwich Terns, Thalasseus sandvicensis, waiting for them.
This one caught two:
There were Brown Pelicans, Pelecanus occidentalis, around as well:
and Brown Boobies, Sula leucogaster:
and humans, Homo sapiens: these humans (our captain, and Jane) caught a Pacific Mackerel, Scomber japonicus:
and a Black Skipjack Tuna, Euthynnus lineatus, both released.
Most excitingly, a venomous Yellow Sea Snake, Hydrophis platurus xanthos, a subspecies found only in this tiny 320sqkm area, and only recognized by science in 2017.
It didn’t hang about, swiftly diving down deep.
This perfect day had a sad interlude. Our captain, a delightful marine biologist, whose name I’m withholding to protect his privacy, had a full-scale seizure apparently caused by heatstroke. Our guide Johan got the radio working and called for help, and eventually another boat took our captain to the nearest dock reachable by ambulance. Our boat took on board a crew member from the other boat and we continued on our way. Our guide Johan and the various crew handled the whole situation extremely well. We heard later that our captain had been discharged from hospital, sent home, and would be fine, but it was a terrifying reminder of how close mortality can be.
PS If you’d like to know more about why this sea snake is interesting, read here:
[The videos are not always playing, and I’ve failed to workout why. Sorry. ]
The second sloth we saw was a Two-toed Sloth, better called a Two-Fingered Sloth, because it has three toes on its back feet! We were relaxing reading our books before dinner, and Johan our guide appeared to ask if we’d like to come and see his find. These sloths tend to be nocturnal, so we were lucky to see it, and it was at dusk, high-up in a tall tree. So it didn’t look like much!
Counting toes was impossible, but then it moved, just a bit:
This is obviously an appalling photo, so let me supplement it with some photos and videos taken through a scope by our excellent guide, the nature interpreter Johan Fernandez. The videos are best watched on full screen if you can.
Time to wake up, apparently.
And a pause for a portrait:
Just like us when rudely awoken from a deep sleep, a yawn seems to help:
In 1749 the French naturalist Georges Buffon described them like this:
“Slowness, habitual pain, and stupidity are the results of this strange and bungled conformation. These sloths are the lowest form of existence. One more defect would have made their lives impossible.”
On the contrary, this slow-mo life style is such an effective way of surviving on a low-nutrition leafy diet that it seems to have evolved twice: Two-toed (Bradypus) and Three-toed (Choloepus) Sloths are separated by 30 million years of evolution, and are in different genera. Among their specializations, Two-toed sloths have the most ribs of any living mammal, 46 to our 24, and this helps support their stomach when they hang upside down.
[I’m just back from Costa Rica. My greatest desire was to see a sloth, which for me and many Brits rhymes with ‘both’, so make sure you pronounce my title accordingly! As usual, the photos are mine, but supplemented here by our guide’s.]
Costa Rica has three species of sloth, one of which is very rare. They live in the lush rainforest and are arboreal, often high up, which makes them hard to see and photograph, but on the other hand they don’t move much! This post focuses on the Three-toed Sloth, more properly called a Three-Fingered Sloth, which has three toes on all four limbs; here it is moving painstakingly about a foot along a branch. (The bottom is to the left, and the head is in the centre!!)
Their faces have a certain placid charm:
Their fur has a greenish tinge, caused by algae that flourish in the humid conditions:
If they are short of food, they lick their fur for nourishment. Insects live in their fur too, eating the algae.
They’re leafeaters, and leaves don’t have a lot of calories, so to conserve energy they move very, very slowly, averaging about 1/2 m.p.h, and sleep a lot. This sloth had moved only a few feet in two days. The photo was taken from directly underneath the sleeping sloth, resting its spine on a branch to take some weight off its arms, and giving the delightful impression of stretching its spine on a foam roller.
Famously, they only defecate once a week, coming down to the water or the ground, and burying their faeces so as not to attract predators.
Those powerful claws and strong limbs mean they can hang by only two legs if necessary:
(In the last photo above, you can clearly see the three claws on the front foot.)
Our guide , the nature interpreter Johan Fernandez, used his iPhone through his scope to take photos and videos, like these two; (These videos play fine on my laptop, but not on my phone, and I can’t work out why. Apologies if you can’t get them.)
These videos are not in slow motion!.
I end with a quote from P.J. O’Rourke: “Sloths move at the speed of congressional debate but with greater deliberation and less noise.”
I’m going somewhere warm for the next couple of weeks, so while I’m away I’m arranging to send out this hopefully last seriously wintery blog post!].
Ice can look like diamonds:
But its beauty can also be subtler: the physics of freezing is a transformative force. Some weeks later, and it had been very cold, -3F (-19C) at night. The stream was mostly frozen, and covered with snow, with only a few fast-flowing stretches still open.
Where the ice meets the water, a new paper-thin layer of ice had formed, and this created the perfect conditions for the formation of frost flowers:
Here is a close-up:
Wikipedia explains how they form:
“Frost flowers form when a layer of relatively warm ice is exposed to still, cold air that is at least 15 °C colder. For example, this would occur when freshly-formed ice at 0 °C underlies cold air at -30 °C. In this situation, water vapor sublimates from the surface of the ‘warm’ ice. As this moist air rises into the colder overlying air, the temperature drops, and the air becomes supersaturated. The final result is a layer of supersaturated air, lying directly above the ice (just like how steam forms above the surface of a hot mug of water on a cold day). Any protrusions from the ice surface stick up into the supersaturated air, and end up being covered in hoar-frost like crystals (i.e. frost flowers) due to condensation. ….
Typically, frost flowers are only found on new ice, when the air temperature is very low. This is because thin, new ice has a temperature close to that of the underlying, warm water. As ice thickens, its surface becomes much colder, and it is harder to get the necessary ice/air temperature difference needed for frost flower growth. Over fresh water, these conditions are only found when the air temperature drops dramatically below zero in a short amount of time, leading to a sudden freezing event. “
The previous day at my house it had reached 30F (-1C), then dropped to -3F (-19C) at night: textbook conditions!
In one spot a small animal, probably a mink, had crossed from the bank onto the ice, spilling a little snow. These provided nuclei for the frost to grow:
Closer up, they were lovely; I couldn’t get any closer without falling into the stream!
Frost flowers can be much more three-dimensional than these, which were fairly flat to the ice, but they were up to 3cm across, and still beautiful.
The next day they were gone.
PS In case it isn’t obvious, the colors in the first and last photos have benefited from a soupçon of digital manipulation, in the interests of art, if not science.
Eyes on the Wild 