Reptile Haven

Tarcoles River crocodiles:











Iguanas were everywhere. This one was on the path in front of our car:


Check out that iris:


This is a male basilisk lizard. It has powerful hind legs, which it uses to stand up and cross streams and small rivers. I've seen one of them cross a stream in Carara Park, but it did so too quickly to take a picture. This one below was on a side of the Tarcoles River.


Common sight on the trails in Costa Rica - and old army ant trail:


Wasp nest near Monteverde Park:


Monteverde Park:


This wild boar crossed the trail in front of us in Carara Park. I only had time to snap this one picture:


One of the monster trees in Carara National Park:


And this is how they begin. It's a strangling ficus. It grows around a smaller but sturdy tree, and covers it with roots until it slowly dies. But by that time, the ficus is grown enough to support itself.


The tree inside is a wild cashew.


More views from Carara National Park:

Costa Rica colors

Black-Mandibled Toucan:








Scarlet Macaws:








White-Fronted Parrot:


Emerald Toucanet:


Orange-Chinned Parakeets:


Gartered Trogon:


Green Heron:


Keel-billed Toucan (shot taken during the night jungle tour, when the guide pointed a couple of these toucans sleeping in a tree):


Red-Lored Parrot:


More toucans:

Costa Rica exotics

This is the bird that everyone comes to Costa Rica to see - just the name of it is impossible to resist. Behold the Resplendent Quetzal:



Blue-Crowned Motmot:


Rufous-Tailed Jacamar:


White-Whiskered Puffbird:


Bare-Throated Tiger Heron:


Another Bare-Throated Tiger Heron - this one juvenile:


This weirdly colored bird (with rare bi-colored bill) is a Montezuma Oropendola:


Black-Crowned Tityra:


Rufous-Naped Wren:


Squirrel Cuckoo:


Pale-Billed Woodpecker:






Yellow-Crowned Night Heron:


Great-Tailed Grackle:


A pair of Orange-Chinned Parakeets investing what the Golden-Naped Woodpecker is doing to their nest cavity:


Close-up of the Golden-Naped Woodpecker:


Gray Hawk:


Inca Dove:


The exotic thing in this picture is not the Osprey...