Costa Rica Wildlife

One of my big reasons for wanting to visit Costa Rica was to see some of the amazing wildlife and it definitely didn't disappoint!  We didn't manage to get pictures of everything but we saw wild scarlet macaws, 3-toed sloth, amazing butterflies, lots of howler monkeys, some kind of possum, many different crabs, a few snakes, frogs, a family of falcons, and birds every color of the rainbow.  It seemed that everywhere we looked there were creatures and insects living and thriving in the jungle.  I enjoyed it immensely but I was very glad we weren't camping!  Especially after we saw a decent sized (non-poisonous...whew!) snake going straight past the porch of our casita and followed it to make very sure it didn't detour inside.  We also had several crabs come near the door and while I thought they were cute, I didn't want to share my space with them.

Just after white-water rafting, we crossed a bridge on the way to lunch and saw this caiman crocodile sunning himself in the middle of a river.  I was very glad that was NOT the river we'd just left!  (click to enlarge)

 

While on our nature tour, we saw lots of animals through the spotting scope.  We came much closer to other howler monkeys but this was the first one we spotted in the trees.

Costa Rica has something like 50 species of hummingbird and we were lucky to see several beautiful ones.  They loved certain flowering bushes all around but they only time they were still enough for a picture was at the feeder.

This was a gorgeous Blue-gray Tanager

The clay-colored Thrush is the national bird of Costa Rica.

This crimson-collared Tanager and his mate were quite the lovely couple.

This is the outside of a blue morpho butterfly in a large habitat.  We tried many times, very unsuccessfully, to get a good picture of the beautiful blue on the inside but it still felt like cheating since it wasn't wild.  I was thrilled to be enjoying the waterfall at Montezuma when a wild blue morpho lazily flew by a few times.  Again, couldn't manage a picture but I sure enjoyed the moment.

A red poison dart frog...very cool! 

The red-eyed tree frog, also very cool.  He was so sleepy those big red eyes would just drift shut on their own.

This little eyelash viper was curled up in a tree right off a path.  It was only our second day in country but I knew immediately I wouldn't be wandering through the woods anywhere!

Leaf cutting ants were blazing their own trail across the path.  I discovered that they also really like to bite brown flip flops but very fortunately got them off before they found my toes.

We really enjoyed spotting this gorgeous toucan and would have loved to get closer to him!  Even from a distance you could spot that beak with the naked eye and immediately identify the bird.

We saw lots and lots of iguanas.

Crabs in the ocean, crabs on the sand, hermit crabs and these land crabs everywhere else.  They were pretty interesting but I started wearing shoes after dark when I realized they were wandering in the grass beyond our porch.  

 These green parakeets were nesting in the trees near our resort.

It was such a great trip.  God's creation is so amazing.