Santa Elena Reserve- Day 30

Today was colder and wetter than the day before. After our disappointing day at Monte Verde Reserve we hoped for something better at Santa Elena Reserve. We walked the shorter middle loop. We saw two species of frogs.

Rain Frog

Rain Frog

Both species were very tiny juveniles. One was even smaller than the juvenile tink frog I saw at Cano Palma earlier this trip which had held the record for the smallest frog I had ever seen.

Juvenile frog (smallest frog I've ever seen)

There was one large anole which posed nicely for our photographs thinking it was well hidden from us.

Anole sp.

Anole sp.

 At the entrance to the park there was a quati monde, collared redstart and a very nice orchid garden. The birds and mammals wandered around me as I looked at the many flowers in the garden.They ranged from a few feet high to small leaves of a few inches long. Flowers were extremely variable.

Pleurothallis sp.

Stelis sp.

Stelis is still the genus containing the smallest orchids I have ever seen. A new species for my trip was found in the garden here. The plants don't look like much but the species was different than the lowland one by the light yellow colouration versus the dark purplish one.

Stelis sp.

Some plants even had more flowers on them than leaves! This small plant looked a lot larger with the flower stems extending longer than the leaves.

Pleurothallis sp.

Pleurothallis sp.

Pleurothallis cf floribunda

Others had single flowers but where they lack the numbers they made up in colour. This Pleurothallis was very tiny and hardly noticeable but if you looked at it from underneath the colours were bright yellow, orange and red.

Pleurothallis sp.

My favorite orchid was this Epidendrum which had many flowers and a quite large healthy plant.

Epidendrum endresii (Oerstedella endresii)

Epidendrum endresii (Oerstedella endresii)

Maxillaria sp.

Maxillaria sp.

 Back in Santa Elena....we walked around town a bit and went to souvenir shops. It quickly became obvious that each store sold the same things but at different prices. Further on the outskirts of town we walked to the frog zoo where the staff amazed us by their lack of expertise and enthusiasm for local wildlife. Further wandering led us past the butterfly gardens which my friends David and Brena are purchasing and moving into very soon. This was a little ways outside town by then but we continued walking to the ecological reserve where we wanted to have our last walk around. We had heard it was free since no price was listed on the local map given at our hotel. At the desk we figured out this was misinformation and the price was 10 dollars to walk the trails. Since it was nearing nightfall we decided to return the next day in hopes of finding the rumored lateral-striped viper seen there.

Epiphyte orchids in the trees were blooming throughout town

A night walk around town was disappointing yet again in terms of vertebrates but many insects were singing. It was a startling moment while walking down a small path to see this fairly large scorpion at eye level on a tree.

Scorpion