Sloths!!! And more.

Today was my favorite day so far; you'll soon see why. It began with a toucan. I happened to look up, and saw a large black bird, and then noticed that it had a yellow on its head. From that I guessed that it was a Toucan, but I couldn't see any more than that. Ioana, our bird-specialist TA, identified it as a Chestnut-mandibled Toucan and passed around her binoculars with which we got a splendid view. It stayed around for a while and posed for me to take pictures.

Chestnut-mandibled Toucan (Ramphastos ambiguus swainsonii)

Next, Chhaya found moths camouflaged on the bark of one of the trees she was studying. She almost didn't see them, except that she needed to measure the diameter of the tree and found two moths.

We also saw a vulture and a squirrel (something that's actually more rare here than at Princeton!), and I saw two coatis wander across the trail together (unfortunately it was in the middle of my butterfly observations so I couldn't get to my camera in time).

Squirrel! (Said as in the movie Up.)

Throughout the day I saw several brown Anolis lizards. The males were displaying their throat flaps (dewlaps) which are a bright splash of orange on an otherwise highly camouflaged brown lizard.

Anolis lizard displaying its dewlap.

After a long day of observing and catching--or mostly failing to catch--butterflies, we saw on our walk back a Morpho, a large iridescent blue butterfly, alight on a leaf and fold its wings so that the underside (ventral side) was visible. Although a dull brown compared to the blue topside (dorsal side), the ventral side of the wings were gorgeous in their own way, with so-called "eyes," colorful patterned circles, and a lacy pattern along the edge.

Morpho butterfly.

Having finished our fieldwork for the day, we headed back to the parking lot where another student, Lauren, was still doing some experiments with termites. She still had an hour and a half of experiments to do so our choices were to walk back (45 minutes) or to stay until she was done and get a ride in our Professor's pickup. We decided to stay. Best decision ever.

We asked our Professor if we could follow him around the forest. He pointed out caterpillars, insects, and flowers, including this gorgeous passion fruit flower.

Passion fruit!

Throughout this time we heard the sounds of a woodpecker, quite loud, but couldn't localize it. The sound was quite loud, but somewhat diffuse. Suddenly, Chhaya looked up and there it was, tapping away on a palm tree!

Then, just as we were about to go check on Lauren's progress, she came running over to us and said "They're releasing sloths!" Pictures, I think, say more than words here.

Mother and baby just before being released.

Mother and baby climbing into their new home.

Snuggling with a sloth! (Thanks to Chhaya for the picture.)

Loving every moment of sloth time!

Male sloth checking out its new surroundings.

A content sloth. It stayed here for quite some time. While they are
capable of moving at some speed, this one was certainly taking its time.
I now fully understand the meaning of the word "slothful."

Apparently, the person releasing these sloths is from a group that takes animals from regions of forest which are being disturbed or cut down and releases them elsewhere. In addition to the sloths, they released a really cool tarantula.

Released tarantula.

And as if all that weren't enough, we rode back to the school house just in time for dinner to find an agouti just across the road!

Agouti eating fruit.