Have you ever had a perfect opportunity to take an amazing photo? To capture something beautiful and hard to believe?
An artistic tour de forceto be shared with friends and loved ones.
I had one of those today...
And my camera choose that exact moment to stop working!
Nooooooooo!
Oophaga pumilio (Strawberry Poison-dart Frog) These things are amazing parents, and I had an unreal experience to witness it in action. Unfortunately.... this is not the picture I was going for. Damn you camera!
I saw what looked like a clump of dirt stuck to one of their backs. Turns out it was one of their tadpoles!
They will carry one of their tadpole babies on their backs. Giving them a piggy-back ride to the top of a tree where they're placed in a bromeliad.
Bromeliads are frequently full of water and a perfect place, far from predators, to place a little tadpole baby.
The tadpole first eats anything else alive in the bromeliad, but eventually might starve. The mother slowly makes the rounds to all her tadpole babies and lays an unfertalized egg into the plant for the growing tadpole to eat.
Now that's dedication!
The trees here are huge! And to imagine a tiny froggie jumping up one every day to lay an egg seems like an almost insurmountable task.
It's too bad I couldn't get the shot with the tadpole on the back... but you get the idea.
Today was pretty on and off, rain-wise. Meaning I was in the lab crunching a lot of data most of the day.
Aside from the froggie parents of the year, I didn't get the chance to be outside as much as I'd like.
I did find a cute bird nest nearby. See that odd shaped grey fluff-ball in the lower part of the crack. It's a beautiful baby bird.
And then comes the inevitable, unfortunate part of the story that seems so common to my trip to Costa Rica.
One lesson I'm learning about the jungle is that things are rarely what they seem to be. For example, one of my favorite birds, the Acari, may seem beautiful and majestic.
Not true.
They are viscous baby-killers.
You'd think this would be a face you could trust. It's like a real life Toucan-Sam. "Just follow your nose!" [to a nest full of babies to eat!]...
Consider yourself lucky that I didn't get a picture of this cartoon-looking bird eating tiny, little, baby birdies one at a time.
Horrifying.
Near the river station I also ran into another monster/alien/demon today:
This thing had a body that was ~15cm long! I don't know if it could bite or what. No way in hell I stuck around no enough to find out. If any one knows what kind of insect this is, it would be nice to know. Especially considering it's taking up residence on the screen to my bedroom window.
Hopefully tomorrow has less rain and more lizard catchin'.
Just to heads up you that I come to your blog now, every day, hoping to find another entry. SO GOOD! Lots of love, Ma (2)
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