Tales of the Roving Fellow II

Veiw of Panama


Inside the Rainforest



Gaestreus mushroom

Aguiti in the garden

Writing from the Las Cruces field station and botanical gardens, Costa Rica. Awesomeness in the tropics! The field station sits at a 1,200m elevation in a premontane tropical wet forest near the Panama border. I'm absolutely sure that I've more than doubled the amount of vertebrate biodiversity I've seen in my life in the span of little more than a week. Currently at the station is none other than great and revered founder Leighton Reid, who took several of the more hard core birders (including myself, of course) out on a birding walk last Monday in which we saw or heard 77 sp. of birds. Mammals have been scarce, but I have seen agoutis, coatis, either a kinkajou, tayra, or small puma (it was dark, only an outline and eyes were visible), and, funny story, a german shepherd that was mistaken for a jaguar. Quick facts: Costa Rica has 4% of terrestrial diversity in 0.03% of land area. As far as birds go, Costa Rica alone, roughly the size of Virginia, has almost as many bird species as the entire North America. Lastly, I'm positive that when I hang out my towel to dry, it actually gets more wet (slightly exaggerating there of course, but the humidity in the rainy season is intense!)
Yours soggily:
Ornithorhyncus; Roving Fellow