Category: amphibians

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 9, 2026 • 8:15 am

I have a few batches now, so I’m complacent (never happy!). Today’s photos of Costa Rica come from reader Rachel Sperling.  Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

In January I took my first (of many, I hope) trip to Costa Rica. We spent about a week in Manuel Antonio, on the Pacific Ocean side. We took a couple of nature walks in and around Manuel Antonio National Park, and we saw plenty of wildlife. One of these days I’m going to treat myself to a really good camera, but these were all taken with either my mirrorless Olympus or my iPhone camera, which are light and easy to stash in a backpack. I did see a couple of sloths – both three-toed (Bradypus variegatus) and Hoffman’s two-toed (Choloepus hoffmanni), but they were high up in the trees, so I wasn’t able to get a good photo of them.  These are the photos I was able to capture:

On the drive from San Jose to Manuel Antonio, we stopped at a creek to view some American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus):

We saw a number of Central American Squirrel monkeys (Saimiri oerstedii), which were incredibly cute:

Then there were these little beasts: the Costa Rican mafia, aka the Panamanian/Central American White-faced capuchin (Cebus imitator). According to our guide, these monkeys can be pretty vicious with animals their own size, and they’ll just riffle through your backpack if you’re not watchful. Someone had to be on guard whenever we went to the beach.

We went on a nature walk in the rainforest at night (with a guide), which gave us the opportunity to see a lot of nocturnal animals. Among them was the Red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas):

Masked tree frog/New Granada cross-banded tree frog (Smilisca phaeota) in Manuel Antonio National Park. I’m sorry I’m not better at identifying plants, to the disappointment of my botany-teacher father:

Black iguana (Ctenosaura similis), at the beach at Manuel Antonio:

We also saw a coati (Nasua narica), which Wikipedia tells me are diurnal, but it was definitely after sunset and that is definitely a coati. They’re relatives of the raccoon, and our guide told us that a mature one can hold its own against a jaguar. This one wasn’t afraid of us, anyhow:

Back at our b&b, this Black-hooded antshrike (Thamnophilus bridgesi) came to visit me as I read on the veranda a few times. I think it’s a female, though the sexual dimorphism of this species doesn’t seem terribly dramatic. I did see her building a nest:

On my last day in Costa Rica, I heard a tremendous ruckus in the trees outside my hotel in San Jose. I looked and discovered that the trees (American oil palms —Elaeis oleifera —I think) were full of Crimson-fronted parakeets (Psittacara finschi). They were LOUD and they were going to town on those trees. There were too many to count. Fortunately, they quieted down after sunset:

Manuel Antonio National Park from the water. These little islands are bird sanctuaries that tourists are not allowed to visit:

Sunset over the Pacific, near Manuel Antonio National Park:

Nauyaca Waterfalls, near Dominicalito, where we swam:

Finally, I thought you’d like these because they’re jaguar-inspired. We spent an afternoon at a village belonging to the Boruca, an indigenous tribe. They cooked us a delicious lunch, and showed us how they made dyes from local plants, and carved and painted balsa wood masks. The masks were first used to frighten the Conquistadores. Now you can buy them just about everywhere:

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 7, 2026 • 8:30 am

Today we have urban wildlife, from Marcel van Oijen in Edinburgh.  His notes are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Urban wildlife in Scotland: Vertebrates

Marcel van Oijen

 

We live in Edinburgh South and our back garden borders a small woodland. The following pictures were all taken in the garden over a number of years, but I sorted them by month, from January to November.

Foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are among the first visitors to our garden each year. They have become very common in British cities. There are about 400,000 foxes in the U.K., and roughly one third are city-dwellers.

Magpies (Pica pica) come in droves to our garden. They are fascinating to watch but tend to frighten off the songbirds and steal their food:

Occasionally we see sparrowhawks (Accipiter nisus) plucking pigeons apart until what is left is small enough to fly away with. The magpies resent the sparrowhawks invading their territory, and gang up against them:

Carrion crows (Corvus corone) usually come in pairs; this one was an exception. The way it walked, paused, looked around, nodded its head, inspecting everything – it all suggested confidence and cleverness:

We do not often see Great Spotted Woodpeckers (Dendrocopos major), but regularly hear them pecking away when walking in the woodland behind the garden:

The mammals we see the most are our American friends, the Grey Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis). They tend to chase ach other away, but these two were friendly, maybe young siblings:

We are always surprised to see amphibians because there is not much open water in our neighbourhood. This summer visitor is a Common Frog (Rana temporaria):

Wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) are almost as acrobatic as the squirrels, and we see them climbing up the stems of plants and jumping onto the birdfeeders:

We don’t see hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) often enough – we would like them to eat more of the slugs that invade our house from the garden:

This is the more common behaviour of the Grey Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis): entering supposedly squirrel-proof birdfeeders and being nasty to each other:

We often see pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) around the golf course one kilometer away, but last November was the first time one came to see us:

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 31, 2025 • 8:15 am

Send in your photos, for it’s 2026!

Neil Taylor sent in a miscellany of photos from the UK. His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:

Highland Cattle:
Chip-stealing Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus) gather to mob their chosen victims! Port St. Mary, the Isle of Man.

Two photos of a zebra jumping spider (Salticus scenicus) eating a greenfly (species unidentified):

A large house spider, an Eratigena species:
A labyrinth spider (Agelena labyrinthica) in its funnel web with the remains of ladybird beetles (Coccinella septempunctata):

These photos taken in the environs of Cambridge the UK unless otherwise stated:
Bombylius major – The Large Bee Fly with its large rigid proboscis for nectar feeding:

The delicate beginnings of a wasps’ nest:

A Steatoda nobilis (false widow spider) lifting a caught and wrapped bumble bee (likely Bombus pascuorum, the Carder Bee) to its lair.

An Araneus diadematus, the European garden spider, bites a wrapped and disabled bumble bee (likely Bombus pascuorum, the Carder Bee).

Araneus diadematus, the European garden spider:

An unidentified frog – Marrakech, Morocco:
An unidentified moth – Marrakech Morocco:

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 30, 2025 • 8:15 am

We now have about four sets of photos, so I’m even more complacent. But please send in yours if you got ’em. Thanks.

Today we have regular Mark Sturtevant with a collection of insects and one vertebrate. Mark’s IDs and captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Readers may remember the recent post where I showed pictures of the dual emergence of 13- and 17-year cicadas during a trip to Illinois. I naturally did not take pictures of only cicadas, and so here are many examples of other insects I found in the parks that I visited. The rest will be in a later post.

First up is a banquet scene of ants feeding on a dead beetle. According to iNaturalist, the ants are a good match for Bearded Carpenter Ants (Camponotus subbarbatus). The picture took many hours to prepare since the ants were constantly moving around and the depth of focus would not capture all that I wanted. So I had to manually assemble some parts of most of the ants from different pictures to recover different focal points. Like focus stacking, only without the automated software that does that for you. I also moved some ants around to improve on the composition. For example, the one on the far left wasn’t where it is now. It’s worth clicking to embiggen this picture because jeez, it was a lot of work!!:

Next up are two pictures showing a bucket list item for me. This little beetle is from the Brentidae weevil family, and I was excited to find it since I don’t recall seeing a beetle from this family before. Weevils are divided into multiple families, but Brentid weevils are considered to be a primitive example of the group, identified by their straight snouts and lack of elbowed antennae. This particular species is the Oak Timberworm (Arrenodes minutus). Do you see the little mites? They were probably phoretic hitch-hikers, using the weevil for dispersal:

The grasshopper shown next is called the Green-legged Spur-Throat Grasshopper, Melanoplus viridipes. This small forest grasshopper has vestigial wings, although I don’t know why. Flightlessness in grasshoppers is more typical in large species where flying is not practical. In any case, they were pretty common in the screaming forest (screaming because of the millions of cicadas above), and it was fun stalking them because they are quite wily, moving to the opposite sides of leaves as I approached. But I snuck up on this one from a distance and this is a heavily cropped picture:

A few Lepidopterans are next. This is the caterpillar of the Hackberry Emperor Butterfly (Asterocampa celtis). Emperor butterflies are exceedingly common along forest margins, but the caterpillars are seldom seen (at least to me). Perhaps they are a species that stays hidden during most of the day. I believe this one was parasitized since it was not looking nor behaving normally. Notice the elaborate head ornamentation:

The butterfly in the next picture is the Question Mark (with the great binomial Polygonia interrogationis). They are close relatives of the similar Comma butterflies. Commas have a single white squiggle (a , ) on their hind wings, but here you can see a squiggle and a dot – so it’s a ?.:

This small moth is aptly named the Pale Beauty (Campaea perlata). One can easily recognize moths from its large family, Geometridae. Geometrids rest with their wings held out flat, and they usually have angular wing margins. The larvae of Geometrids are the familiar inchworms, and they have a distinctive way of crawling that probably everybody has seen:

Next is an odd little insect known as a Hangingfly (Bittacus sp.). Hangingflies look like craneflies, but they have four wings rather than two, and they belong to a completely different insect order. They hang vertically like this, but usually with their hind legs dangling free in order to snag small flying insects out of the air:

What is going on in the next picture? This insect is a plant bug in the family Miridae, and this particular species is Hyaliodes vitripennis. Plant bugs are Hemipterans that feed on sap, but the puzzle here are the eggs. They are Hemipteran eggs by the looks of them, but they seem way too big for this insect to have laid. Still, it showed no interest in moving away from the clutch:

Next up is a Hemipteran that is NOT a sap feeder. This was one of about a dozen hatchling Wheel Bugs (Arilus cristatus) that were milling around on some plants, slowly dispersing after emerging from eggs. Wheel bugs are predators, and are our largest species of assassin bug. You can see something of their eventual size and why they are called Wheel Bugs in the linked picture:

Finally, here is a dozy tree frog, quietly waiting out the day deep in the woods. It should be either Dryophytes chrysoscelis, or D. versicolor, but it is fairly impossible to visually tell them apart and their ranges broadly overlap. If the former species, then it is diploid with conventional pairs of chromosomes. But if it is the latter species, then it will be a tetraploid with four of each chromosome:

Jerry can most definitely correct me here, but this is one way in which a new species can emerge quite rapidly because once a fertile tetraploid population is established, any hybridization between tetraploid individuals and their diploid ancestors will produce triploid offspring, and these are generally sterile.

JAC:  Yes, Mark is right. An increase in ploidy can cause instantaneous reproductive isolation, and is in fact fairly common in plants.  One issue is how a tetraploid species (which could arise from the union of a diploid sperm and egg, or chromosome doubling after fertilization) can actually establish a population.  That usually requires that the new tetraploid species can occupy a different habitat from the progenitor diploid species, for if it’s outcompeted by the progenitor, then there is no ecological isolation and the tetraploid could be “hybridized to death”.

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 17, 2025 • 8:30 am

Today we have the seventh installment of Ephraim Heller’s July trip to Brazil.  Ephraim’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

These photos are from my July 2025 trip to Brazil’s Amazon river and the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland area and the world’s largest flooded grasslands. Today I include photos of miscellaneous critters not otherwise categorized.

The Amazon is undammed (although there are many dams on its tributaries) and during the rainy season the river overflows its banks to flood endless forests in its watershed. One of the memorable activities of our trip was canoeing through a forest:

Amazon river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis), also known as the pink river dolphin. They are born grey and acquire their pink color with age. Their final hue is influenced by many things, including behavior, diet, and how close their capillaries are to the skin. They can modify the shape of their melon (the bulbous forehead structure) to change the direction, size, and frequency of their echolocation pulses. Their brains are 40% larger than human brains, likely explaining why they do not use social media:

Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) and cattle tyrant (Machetornis rixosa). The world’s largest rodent. Capybaras practice autocoprophagy, consuming their own protein-rich morning feces to maximize nutrient extraction from their cellulose-heavy plant diet. This behavior, combined with their ability to regurgitate food for re-chewing (similar to cattle), allows them to efficiently digest tough grasses and aquatic vegetation. Delightful:

Giant river otter (Pteronura brasiliensis).  These are the apex predators of South American rivers. They are the most vocal of the otter species and possess a rich vocabulary. They recognize each other using throat markings that are unique to each individual. They require about 9 pounds of fish daily. While I consider our North American river otters to be cute, I found the appearance of the giant river otters to be disturbing, with crazed, sinister eyes and a somewhat Frankensteinian build. When not hunting and eating, the otters we observed spent a lot of time literally beating the bushes on land. Perhaps a reader can explain this behavior?:

Polka-dot tree frog (Boana punctatus). The polka-dot tree frog represents the first documented case of fluorescence in any amphibian species, discovered when researchers observed their bright blue-green glow under ultraviolet light. This fluorescence is produced by three unique molecules, hyloin-L1, hyloin-L2, and hyloin-G1, found in the frog’s lymph tissue, skin, and glandular secretions. These compounds belong to the dihydroisoquinolinone family and represent a completely new chemistry for animal fluorescence:

Finally, a baby spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus). Spectacled caimans use nine different vocalizations and 13 visual displays to communicate. Males also communicate by moving their tail to a certain position, such as making it vertical or arched. Juveniles vocalize when in distress and adult females emit calls to warn young of threats. This is one of the few nighttime flash photographs I took with which I am happy:

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 14, 2025 • 8:15 am

Charles Dunlop sent some photos with a short intro.  His brief IDs (without species names) are below, and click to enlarge the photos. (I’ve linked to species when I can identify them, but readers can help in the comments.)

Attached are some photos that I took in Costa Rica in 2019. 

Black-bellied hummingbird:

 

Blue Morpho butterfly:

Big Cats, La Paz:

Jaguar, La Paz:

Frog, La Paz:

Resplendent Quetzal:

Millipede:

Bananaquit:

Crab:

Iguana sp.:

Crocodile:

Here’s the salamander!

September 28, 2025 • 1:00 pm

Did you spot the salamander in this morning’s post?

Here’s the original photo again:

And the salamander is circled. Note that it’s just the head. Tricked you!

An enlargement of the head (circled). ,  Note that I didn’t say it was an entire salamander.