Someone asked me what was the cutest thing I saw in Costa Rica. Everyone assumes it was the sloths (I saw both the two-toed and the three-toed variety, more on those later) and they were fantastically cute, but it was not them. It was the bats. Specifically, what the bats were doing. Here is a row on bats on a tree, little bats about two inches tall, and they are hanging in a row because they are pretending to be a snake. I mean, seriously, how adorbs is that?
Occasionally they would wiggle in unison to look more snake-y and I would make a squee noise because, c’mon. We were on a boat in the rain (because in the rainforest -surprise!- it rains a lot) and we passed a cormorant on a branch which was lovely in itself, but then the guide pointed out there were bats doing their snake thing on the underside of the branch to avoid the rain. Awwww. Damp pointy-snooted bats being a snake. So cute.
Turns out, BTW, that is not the cutest bat thing in Costa Rica. I was reading my book, “The Wildlife of Costa Rica” and in the bat section there was this page.
Are you frickin’ kidding me?!? Puffy cottonball bats clustered under a leaf? I would have probably had a teenage-girl-seeing-Nsync-style-meltdown if I had seen those.
Let’s look at some trees. I saw a great variety of trees. While we were gliding around the rainforest we saw this tree with amazing roots, I think it was a Tea Mangrove Tree, but I could be wrong:
And there was this giant tree. Most of the trees aren’t nearly as big because a lot of the rainforest was felled for lumber before it was made into a protected national park, so it’s unusual to see gigantic umbrella-like trees.
This one looked like Snuffleupagus.
And this tree is called a Buttressed Tree. It is very large and I tripped over several of their roots throughout the journey. (Reiterating: very outdoorsy.)
Outside of one of the hotels we stayed in was this cool-looking palm tree.
And one day we saw a Costa Rican Bamboo Palm with its flowers/fruit in all three stages, which was neat. They start all curled up in that banana-looking thing, then they are flowers in that white fluffy cascade and they finally turn into the fruit.
Finally (plant-wise) here are a bunch of awesome plants that I could not be bothered to learn the names of. This in no way negates their awesomeness, I just got tired.
Birds! Holy Moses, I saw so many birds. And many of them make a noise, often at the same time, which makes what we in the art world like to call “cacophony.” It was loud and amazing and if I lived there I would make a concerted effort to learn what bird makes what sound. Since we’ve already dipped our toes in Trogon water, here’s the other Trogon I saw, the Baird’s Trogon. Similar to the previous Trogon, this bird looks like it was dropped on its head as a wee birdlet and now is no longer “quite right.”
We saw an enormous turkey-like bird one day. It’s called the Great Curassow. This is a male. The best part about this bird is the clump of curly feathers on the top of its head. It looks like it’s rockin’ a big ole jheri-curled hairpoof. That, combined with it’s expression, makes it hysterically funny to see. Here’s a pic Susan took:
And here’s a better picture taken by my other co-traveler Lowell (thank you for the pictures, Lowell) where you can appreciate the silliness of this thing.
Our first day our guide told us that at 5:30 p.m. parakeets would come and nest in the palm trees outside the hotel. Sho’ nuff, they did do that with much screaming on their part. You get a couple hundred parakeets together that haven’t seen each other all day, they start shrieking all their daily activities at each other like crazy. “I PICKED TIMMY UP FROM SCHOOL!! OH, AND I WENT TO THE DMV AND RENEWED MY LICENSE!! THE LINE WAS SURPRISINGLY SHORT!! I BARELY HAD TO WAIT AT ALL!! etc.” Here are some yelling at me.
And I don’t want to appear paranoid, but it looks like these two are laughing at me, right? Not with me, at me.
And these ones are clearly holding a secret Masonic meeting or something.
Creepy birds, parakeets.
Next blog entry, more birds, all kinds. Also another extremely cute thing.
How hard was it to not grab all the bats and stuff them in your pockets to take home and snorgle later?!?!!
Exceptionally difficult. I had to exercise a whole lot of restraint I didn’t know I had.