Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Animal Encounters in Drake Bay

 It's been an exciting first couple of weeks for us at our new home in Drake Bay...

Fer-de-lance

After a hard morning’s work clambering up hills, counting nutmeg seedlings and saplings and watching toucans and spider monkeys, we lay in our hammocks for a little snooze. All of a sudden there was a commotion with people shouting and running around. Juan had come over to our hammocks shouting something about a Boa.

Elmer had found a Boa Constrictor trying to eat the chickens and was in the process of catching it, whilst the whole village gathered to watch. At 3 metres long, we thought it was massive. But the locals were unimpressed, saying it was average at best and that they'd seen much bigger ones here in the past. They estimated it to be about 30 years old. Eventually the Boa was captured, safely put into a big sack and carried away to a nearby location away from the chickens where it was set free again.

Scorpion with babies

Just a few days later, walking around outside our house, we came across a scorpion with her babies on her back: A rare and exciting find. Whilst Mark was setting up his camera equipment to capture an amazing photo of her, Karen went to investigate a bit of eyeshine that she'd seen not too far away, only to discover a Fer-De-Lance. It was quite a young and small snake, around a metre or so long and quite skinny. We abandoned the scorpion and cautiously managed to get a few shots of the Fer-De-Lance before it slunk away into the undergrowth.

Other wildlife highlights these couple of weeks included Cat-eyed Snakes, Masked Tree-frogs, Fiery-billed Aracaris, Scarlet Macaws, Hourglass Tree-frogs, Red-eyed Tree-frogs, White-throated Capuchins, Red-lored Parrots, lots of Hummingbirds, Parrot-snakes, and Gladiator Frogs, to name a few.

-Karen & Mark, 6-month Interns

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