[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
Eyes on the Wild 