Costa Rica Day 2.5 & 3: Neature Walks

(Too much tinkering with this post has affected the formatting. Sorry if the text or images are a little screwy...)

If the title of this post is lost on you, I suggest you head on over to Youtube and familiarize yourself with Lenny Peppercorn.


Nature is pretty neat. And Costa Rica is a great place to take Neature Walks--how neat is that??
After my post yesterday, I had several hours to kill while the students were in their GEO lectures, so I went on the first of what I'm sure will be several hikes. The UGA Costa Rica campus has several kilometers' worth of hiking trails, so I took advantage of my free time to explore the trails on the northern end of the campus. 

Leaf cutter ants heading up and down a linear path by the hundreds.

Even though I know Jurassic Park was filmed in Hawaii, I still look for dinosaurs.

Nature is pretty neat!

Meet my friend, the agouti.

The group before our neature walk.

This morning, our group toured the Monteverde Reserve, located in the cloud forest. This was a legit Neature Walk. Our guide, Oscar, has worked in the Reserve for the past 20 years. Oscar is a man of many talents. He can mimic dozens of bird calls with impressive accuracy. Our group probably would have seen 15% of what we actually saw (if even that) if Oscar didn’t accompany us.

While Monteverde is home to hundreds of unique birds, it is known for two “superstar” species. I’ve already described the Bellbird. The other bird is the Quetzal. If you remember your Aztec history, “Quetzalcoatl” was an Aztec god. Quetzalcoatl can be loosely translated to “feathered serpent.” “Quetzal” refers to the bird’s long tail feathers. The Quetzal is among the most beautiful birds in the world.

Unfortunately, most of my bird shots today were pretty bad—I spent the first two hours of the neature walk trying to adjust my camera settings and never really got the hang of it. I wasn’t able to capture them all on film, but our viewing list included: quetzals, a toucan, a black-faced solitaire (and babies), several wrens, thrushes, hummingbirds, and some bird whose name I can’t recall that lays brilliant blue eggs. In addition to many bird sightings, we also learned about epiphytes, which are plants that grow harmlessly on other plants (such as orchids).

One of the most interesting surprises for me today was getting to see the CORDYCEPS FUNGUS IN ACTION!! Oh boy, I am about to nerd-out:

The cordyceps fungus is fascinating. When it attacks a host, it invades and replaces the host’s tissue, suggesting that it may be able to “control” the host’s behavior. This invasion typically occurs in insects. Think zombie ants. A few years ago, the cordyceps fungus gained notoriety for the role it played in influencing the storyline in the popular PlayStation game, “The Last of Us.” Do yourself a favor and read this NPR article. It’ll take you 3 minutes.

Most of my pictures are on my Facebook page, but I've selected a few to give you an idea of what we saw this morning.

Oscar is setting up his telescope. He's the Superman of bird-spotting.

The quetzal, one of the most beautiful birds in the world.

Wild tomato

"You can tell that it's a yellow plant by the way that it is." - Lenny Peppercorn

A member of the palm family. Colloquially, these are called "chicken feet."

I sure do enjoy neature walks.

An emerald toucanet

The cordyceps fungus in action. So awesome and creepy.

For the life of me, I cannot remember the name of the bird that lays this egg.

Hard to see in this picture, but in the center is a tarantula wasp. The wasp stings the tarantula to paralyze it and then lays eggs inside of it. Total jerk move.

One of the 54 different species of hummingbirds in Monteverde.

We have a night hike scheduled for this evening, so I may post again later tonight. So much neature!