The Wet, Sticky Forest

It is May, one of the hottest months at La Selva. It is also the beginning of the “rainy season” although calling this a “season” is a bit misleading. Perhaps we can call it the intensification of the rains, or the period when rains are more frequent and intense....

The Jeweled Forest

“Knock-knock!” Don’t say “Who’s there?” It is not a knock-knock joke. Someone knocks at my office door with regularity these days. I open and, invariably, it is one of my staff, or a researcher, or a graduate student, saying “Carlos, do you want to see something cool?...

Some Days are Simply Special

Some days are a bit more exciting than others. Take today, for example. It’s a regular morning, with the howler monkeys calling on the forest behind the house, their calls reverberating through the trees, echoed by the calls of a separate troop a few hundred meters away. We woke up to the usual mix of bird songs, oropendolas gurgling softy over their recently completed long-hanging basket nests; a band of parakeets chatter while feeding on the top of a tree; three or four large parrots, quietly forage. Crested guans softly calli each other from the trees. Other small birds sing, chitter, warble. It’s 6 a.m. and all’s well…

Step, Stop, Stand, Scan, Stare, Stalk, Shoot!

I stopped the other day on the side of one of La Selva’s long trails and started to take pictures of what was happening on a section of a fallen tree, glued to one sport because there was so much going on.  Three or four groups of people walked by my spot in the hour...

Common Amphibians of Costa Rica by David Norman

In 1998, biologist David Norman published a delightful guide to the common amphibians of Costa Rica, packed with his wonderful and detailed illustrations and observations on the species’ natural history. I had the pleasure of working with David for a couple of years,...