qetzal
Posts: 311
Joined: Feb. 2006
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| Quote (Lou FCD @ Dec. 12 2009,07:37) | | They're awesome shots, qetzal! I think I'd have wet my boxers, having realized I'd just stepped over a Fer-de-Lance. |
I didn't realize that’s what it was until later that evening, when I had a chance to look it up. Even then, it was pretty sobering to think about!
According to Wikipedia, Bothrops asper is one of four different species that are sometimes called “fer-de-lance.”
| Quote (Kattarina98 @ Dec. 12 2009,08:16) | | You did what???? |
Well, in my defense: 1) I didn’t know it was a fer-de-lance at the time. 2) I wanted to get a shot of its belly, since that sometimes helps with identification:
And 3) I was in complete control at all times. If he had made the slightest move toward me, I was quite prepared to sprint screaming in the opposite direction. And from the way he slunk off, I think he knew it:
The ranger station at Braulio Carillo had a huge colony of golden orb weaver spiders (Nephila clavipes). I don’t know how well you can see in this shot, but there were dozens of big females and who knows how many small males inhabiting an enormous complex of interconnected webs. The whole thing was probably 10ft wide by 8ft high by 6ft deep!
Here’s a close up of one of the larger females:
A few days later, we drove south to the Boruca Indian reservation. On the way, we saw this sign:
I was hoping to see some wild monkeys, but if that’s the kind of freaky, Island-of-Dr.-Moreau-looking monos they’ve got, I’m glad there weren’t any cruzan la via near me!
On the dirt road to the Boruca, we saw this laughing falcon (Herpetotheres cachinnans) sitting on top of a dead palm:
And this scorpion (maybe Centruroides margaritatus?):
The last morning, as we were headed to the airport, we managed to get a shot of a blue-crowned motmot (Momotus momota). (It was back-lit, and I haven’t learned how to compensate for that, so I had to increase the brightness a lot to make it visible in the image; that’s why the pic looks so washed out.)
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