La Lora Escondida

This morning we got to go to the famous Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve to go bird watching! I'm not much of a bird guy, but anywhere you can go that has 150-200 bird species is pretty awesome :) We split up into groups and each had an expert guide lead us through the Reserve. We had so much fun and saw about 15 species of birds in 2 hours, including an Emerald Toucanet, and an arboreal porcupine (which isn't a bird...). After the tour all of the groups met up, and I found out that a different group had seen a Side-Striped Pit Viper (Bothriechis lateralis)! This was one of the top snakes on my list to see during the trip, so I decided to go back and look for it, even though that meant I had to walk back to the station :)

After about a 10 minute hike, I came to the place they had described...I looked for a few minutes, but couldn't find it. Even knowing where it was barely helped, and just before I was about to give up, I finally spotted it! It was just a small juvenile, no more than about 6 inches long fully extended. Their juvenile coloration is brown, with a brightly colored tail tip. They use this as a lure for their prey, which is typically small lizards and birds (so cool!). The adults are bright green with white to bluish stripes along their sides, hence the name. They are fairly common here in lower-montane regions, but not easily found because of their great camouflage. Their name here in Costa Rica is the "Lora" :) Here are a few pictures from the day:

We have been crossing a lot of bridges lately :)

This is for the people who have requested less

reptiles and some pictures of me...AKA my

mother and girlfriend ;)

The Side-Striped Pit Viper!

Here you can see the brightly colored tail...

It looks big in this picture, but the leaf stem is

only about 2-3 inches long :)

Hard to see here, but it's the little

tan speck to the left of the tree...

You can see why it was so hard

to find, and how small it is!