Costa Rica part 3: Tortuguero by night

One of the additional trips we had whilst in Tortuguero was the opportunity to see the jungle by night. This was a fairly simple walk out from the lodge with a guide and some torches to see what we could find. The answer was, quite a lot, especially amphibians.

The poster-boy of the amphibian world is the red-eyed tree frog. They are reasonably common and quite approachable even when you shine a light on them.
This was the basic idea of the walk. We only walked I imagine a few hundred yards, stopping frequently as we found, or are accurately the guide found, a new thing to look at. Mostly it was frogs and more frogs though.

The bullfrog was the largest of them, about the size of a small fist and beautifully marked.

Others were a lot smaller though just as beautiful. None of them are the dangerous poison-dart frogs of which we saw a few but not well enough to get any photos unfortunately.

We also saw a number of spiders

which those who know me will be amazed I managed to get photos of. 

I think the most amazing thing though was the sleeping birds. You don't think about where they sleep but the answer is clearly on branches. 

These two are broad-winged hawk and white-collared manakin. 

We only saw one mammal, this big-eared climbing rat. 

A really interesting view on a different side of Costa Rica and a lesson in night photography to boot.