I could recognize this one in particular because he stayed in a specific grassy area around the lodge and was bigger than the other lizards.  He was probably two or three feet long including his tail.  An easy marker was the blue dots on his back.

There was one day where Jon and I were exhausted from hiking, swimming and the incredibly hot climate so we spent the day near the lodge reading and taking pictures.  This iguana climbed up a chair, onto a table and tipped over Jon’s mug so he could drink from it.

He didn’t drink the tea for very long.  I guess iguanas don’t like oolong.

I have no real story for the picture below.  The iguana was less skitish than other lizards so I took many pictures of him and this one  happened to include a moth on the iguana’s head.

These guys were very common around the lodge because they love these purple flowers that were planted everywhere.

In a certain light, the woodnymph’s throat is bright green.  It’s such a flash of color!

If you have trouble identifying the woodnymph because you can’t see his colors, note that they have forked tails.

As if this winter weren’t awesome enough with the trip to Costa Rica, I get to fly to San Francisco on business next week for a Monday meeting, which means I get to use Sunday to take pictures of birds in Golden Gate Park.  (Don’t worry about the birds, Jon will stay with them and they won’t think they we might leave them for good).  Even better, there’s a place in San Francisco where I can rent a 500mm Nikon lens.  The lens is used to take phenomenal pictures.  The drawback being that the lens is very expensive to buy new and twice as heavy (8.5 lbs) as my already heave 150-500mm Sigma lens (4.2) so I want to test one out before taking the plunge.  Get ready for crystal clear pictures!

We sang “Happy Birthday” to him and he flew away in confusion.  Trevor is charming and lovely, but still seems like a baby because he does baby things like make baby noises when we’re snuggling and is scared of everything including towels and sheets when I make the bed.

In other news, I’ve become that person at work who is associated with birds.  I’m trying not to fill up the house with too much bird stuff so I save it all for my office, which now has a painting of doves, a watercolor picture of a Great-blue Heron, a mug of a chickadee, a coaster with a sparrow, a purse with a Quetzal on it and owl mittens.  It’s a good thing they like me.

It’s a very tiny plane.  During the flight we actually thought we were going to die because the plane flew at a very low altitude and the turbulence was extreme.  I didn’t take any pictures during the flight to Tiskita because I was focused on experiencing my last moments on earth.  But we survived (obviously) and I did take pictures on the way back so I can reconstruct events.  The picture below is not as scary as what we saw flying down to Tiskita because the second plane flew at a much higher altitude, but you get the idea.

To get out of San Jose, we flew near some mountains that were extremely close.  It was beautiful but terrifying.  San Jose itself is extremely built-up.  You can see why I didn’t want to bird there.

But once you’re south of San Jose things are much less crowded and incredibly beautiful.  These pictures don’t do justice to what we actually saw because they were taken through the window of the plane, which makes the pictures blurry.

Our concern was exacerbated by a pilot that didn’t speak to us and seemed to be lost or confused because he kept fiddling with the controls.

The trip back was much better.  The plane was much nicer and there were two pilots who spoke to us and warned us when there would be turbulence.

If you choose to take the flight option make sure your flight arrives early in San Jose because they won’t fly to Tiskita after 2pm.  This is because the landing area in Tiskita is a grass airstrip that’s kept trimmed by grazing horses.

But they do have a very helpful sign directing you where to park the plane.  It’s called “Terminal A.”

Look at his little nose!  Squirrel Monkeys are very sweet to each other.  They travel in large groups, although most of the time I would see only about three at a time.  One night, though, they stuffed themselves full of bananas and had to rest in a big heap of monkeys on top of the fence.

There was a large banana patch behind the lodge where the monkeys like to eat.  The employees used to give the monkeys bananas, but they started begging for food so now the monkeys find all their own food.

I really liked looking at their little hands.  They look a lot like ours and are clearly used for a lot of finite movement.

But that activity has been abandoned lately in favor of hiding on the other side of the cages where prying human eyes cannot see.  I was only able to get a blurry picture because it’s so dark back there, but don’t they look suspicious?

When we come upstairs and they’re hiding in their corner, they quickly scrabble up the cage.  There isn’t even enough room for them to comfortably stand on the little shelf, but they love having a private place to stand.  I wonder what they talk about.

He obtained his name from the noise he makes: kis-ka-dee.  It didn’t sound exactly like that to me, but he does make a three-syllable sound that is incredibly loud.  He has a couple of different calls, though, and one of them sounds like a parrot at the backend of the call.  It’s a squawk.

Would you believe that he’s in the tyrant flycatcher family?  I was surprised because he doesn’t have that delicate look with the little whiskers around his beak like the other flycatchers.

But I can tell you that he doesn’t just eat only insects because I saw him eating a berry.

There are a variety of birds in Costa Rica that have the same yellow belly, white head and black-stripe combination but the Great Kiskadee is the largest.  He’s also distinguished by having a yellow cap.  You can see a little bit of it coming out here.

We stayed at the Tiskita Jungle Lodge near Pavones.  This is located in the southern part of Costa Rica near Panama.

To get there we had a take a charter flight from San Jose to the lodge and Jon and I thought that the plane was going to crash and we were going to die on the way there.  But that trip deserves a whole other post.  So for now I will give you a taste of the things I want to talk about.  My favorite bird in Costa Rica is the toucan.

But there was also a ton of other wildlife including sloths, lizards, agoutis and monkeys.  This is a Squirrel Monkey.

If you like to see new birds, Costa Rica should be on your list.  I saw at least 40 new birds on the trip – it will take me while to know more precisely because I took 2,500 quality pictures.  The lodge has recorded 270 different species on their 800 acre property so I barely made a dent in seeing their birds.  I’d like to thank Mary for posting about her trip to this lodge because I probably wouldn’t have gone if not for her recommendation and I had such an amazing time.  You couldn’t ask for a better place to stay.

The camera makes him a little shy, but Jon was able to catch him in his closed-eye pose.

This is very obviously a male as indicated by the red head.

In South Carolina Downy Woodpeckers were very common.  Here’s a female.

The abundance of woodpeckers in SC is great because I was able to hold out for some nice, close pictures instead of simply taking a confirming shot.  You can even see her brown eyes in this one:

I like this picture because she blends so well with the tree.

One other thing that we don’t have a lot of in Utah is buildings with skull roofs.

That’s right, a skull roof.

As a vegetarian I can’t imagine killing all these beautiful animals.  But to each his own I guess.