There are calling leopard frogs here; Lithobates forreri.
Dead toad
Next to some snail shells I was collecting, I found a gigantic dead marine toad.
Banded cat-eyed snake
A new snake species for me: the Machete Savanne or Banded cat-eyed snake Leptodeira annulata.
American Crocodile
Yes, I did hold a crocodile and it just made me want more.
Bufo (Chaunus) marinus
New World Bufo have now been changed to several different genera, including Atelopus, Chaunus, Crepidophryne, Incilius and Rhaebo. It really makes learning these names difficult… good thing the animals themselves are so cool.
On the left, a cane toad attempting to hide underwater; notice the fish in front of her. On the right, Boa shows Daniella the toad.
For those of you who didn’t explicitly appreciate the end of yesterday
… I bring you; the sunset. This is my first attempt at time lapse photography, and, although this was the first sunset that I’ve seen in Palo Verde that was dominated by clouds, I think it came out well. The choppiness and appearance of upward movement of the sun is a result of cloud cover, so perhaps I’ll attempt this again sometime soon to get a clearer, more standard sunset.
My camera doesn’t have an automatic interval shutter release setting, so I sat in the wetland and pushed the shutter release every 20 sec for about an hour and ten minutes. Almost the entire time, a calf stood next to me and mooed loudly. Let me know what you think.
Little did we know.
For our leaf release experiment in San Ramon, Allison tossed artificial leaves into the river. Little did we know that 70% of them would wind up underneath a nearby boulder…. Here’s Mike attempting to reach them.
Relaxing… but cold
Ground anole
Norops humilis
Turquoise-browed motmot
Sometimes these guys wake me up in the morning. They are scattered throughout the dry forest, but one likes to hang out by the field station. I’ve also seen a Blue-crowned motmot, but didn’t have my camera with me as I was in San Jose on the UCR campus. The bird diversity right on campus was pretty amazing, although I was usually afraid to bring my camera along because so many folks warned me of muggings.
