The Adventures of The Lizard Hunter: Tirimbina--Day 1

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Tirimbina--Day 1

Tirimbina is officially my favorite place in Costa Rica :) I had so much fun that I have to split it into 3 entries...From Poco Sol we drove to a biological station in a reserve called Tirimbina. It is a couple hours off the coast at the base of the montains we hiked through earlier. The station was pretty nice, but the best part was that it was right in between a pond/swamp and a river; each one was about 5 minutes away...Perfect setup for some great night hikes, and they were nothing short of EPIC!

The first night, Nick, Dan, Jason, and I went down to the pond to look for frogs and caiman. We immediately spotted the bright orange caiman eye shine out in the middle of the pond, but decided to look for frogs first. We could hear them calling all around us, so all we had to do was follow the sounds! The first frog we found was a Scarlet-webbed Tree Frog (Hyla rufitela), which was so beautiful! It was bright green with red webbing on its feet. Its underside was blue also. A great start to the night! Next, we found a little rain frog (E/P ridens). Not as interesting to look at, but an awesome frog nonetheless :) We were at the edge of the pond and Nick spotted a baby caiman, so I went out into the pond to catch it. After slowly sneaking through the reeds, I grabbed it! It was such a cool little animal! It looked just like a full size caiman, just in miniature form :) It even made its “mommy help me!” noise, which was cool.

After letting the little guy go, we continued looking for frogs, specifically the famous Red Eyed Tree Frog (Agalychnis callidryas) that we heard was there...We kept hearing a loud frog right around us, but were unable to find it. I decided to try to call back to it, and it worked! I had to dig through a pile of dead leaves, but I finally found it :) It was another tree frog (Scinax boulengeri), but this one was brown. The crazy thing about it was that it smelled like cinnamon! I found nothing about the smell in any Costa Rica herp books, but we thought it might be a chemical they secrete that repels predators...Future research project? :)

With the Red Eyed Tree Frog still eluding us, we kept searching. I could hear it calling high above us, but we couldn't see any...All of a sudden, Nick spotted one up in a tree! We were so excited, but we had no way to get any closer. I decided to try to climb a nearby tree, but when I pulled on a vine I saw something fall next to me. I looked down and saw a DIFFERENT Red Eye crouched on a leaf by my leg! It was pretty lucky, but at least we got to see one up close :) This frog is basically Costa Rica's mascot and it is such a tropical cliché, but getting to see it in the wild was so amazing. Their colors are so striking and their faces are so interesting. It was something I will not soon forget :)

The only thing left to do was to catch a big caiman...Dan and I waded/swam out into the middle of the lake in pursuit, but the caiman were very wary of us. Any time we got within about 30 feet they would submerge and swim away. Even though we were unable to catch one, it was a really fun experience. Most people would be terrified to be neck deep in a dirty, smelly, caiman-infested swamp, but I loved every minute of it :)

Here are some pictures, but Jason got a lot of awesome pictures since he has a nice camera. I'll post a link to his blog when he posts the pictures...