Day 9 -- Ocelot!

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Sheila and I were on Nest Hugo today. One chick had fledged the day before, and the climbing crew, Jinette and Kelly, and the two vets, Katty and Lucia, arrived today to take a crop sample.

Jinette, high in the tree at the Hugo nest box

Katty and Lucia send up abucket and stick to Jinette, who has climbed to the
nest. The adults are both in the nest and wise to this procedure. One is on the roof and
one is at the entrance snapping at Jinette, so she must use the stick, which it grabs,
to pull it out of the nest box. She then quickly plugs the entrance of the nest box
with a poncho, reaches in the bottom door and pulls a chick into the bucket.

Preparing to weigh Hugo II; Photographing Hugo II

Weighing Hugo II; getting a crop sample--the poor chick gagged and gagged

Measuring Hugo II's wing; Katty, Jinette, and Lucia--Lucia and Katty are veterinarians

Tree-climber Jinette in more feminine attire before dinner

Lucia came back later to relieve us, and Sheila and I found our way over the muddy trails back to TRC by ourselves. Jhin came later a bit put out because he was supposed to have been our escort back to the center.

On the way back we saw a southern Amazon red squirrel foraging on the ground. Quite large and not like our red squirrels. The dreadful picture here is the only one I could find on the web. This squirrel has black feet, red flanks and a reddish end to its tail.

When I got back to the Center, I did some wash and hung it again on the staff clotheslines. Then I had my first (and second) cup of coffee and lounged in a hammock bringing my journal up to date and cooling off before lunch.

Rambo was using a weedeater on the cleared area around the Center. I found it almost unbearable to hear this alien, loud sound and to smell the fuel—not to mention dodging the clots of mud thrown up at my hammock!

Two spider monkeys put on a performance climbing and chasing in a nearby tree. The tree was too far away for my puny telephoto capabilities, but I could watch from the comfort of my hammock. Comical, cute animals.

Comical National Geographic photo of a spider monkey

I caught up on more hammock time after lunch, and then at 3:30 pm Richard took me on a solo nature walk—everyone else was too hot or tired. We each took a camp stool and sat down quietly at six different places while Richard used his iPod and guide skills to call in some rarely seen birds: Band-tailed Manakin; Banded Antbird, Black-faced Antbird, Band-tailed Antbird, Scaly-breasted Wren (used to be Nightingale Wren), Yellow-browed Tody Flycatcher, and White-winged Shrike Tanager. I can find no photos of the Scaly-breasted Wren. Richard praised me for seeing the Banded Antbird, an uncommon sighting according to him. The bird is a forest floor species and very well camouflaged. The most colorful were the Band-tailed Manikin and the Yellow-browed Tody Flycatcher below.

Black-faced Antbird; Band-tailed Antbird

Band-tailed Manakin; Yellow-browed Tody Flycatcher

White-winged Shrike Tanager; Banded Antbird

Shortly after we returned to the Center, I realized that I’d left my camera on the ground beside one of the places we’d stopped to sit and call in the birds. Damn! By now it was dark and nearly time for supper, so Richard volunteered to go out early in the morning and find it. Even though my camera has a waterproof rubber gasket protecting the card, I was nervous that it would rain in the night . . . as it has been doing since our arrival . . . but for my stupidity had to resign myself to taking my chances.

After supper this evening, Jhin volunteered to take whoever wanted to go on another night hike. He and Richard talked and decided that Jhin would take the same trails Richard and I had that afternoon, with the chance of finding the camera sooner.

There were only three of us on the night hike besides Jhin: Alice, Sheila, and me. I, of course had no camera. At the outset, Jhin told us to look for white eyes reflected in our headlamps for spiders, yellow eyes for amphibians, and red eyes for mammals. Right away we spotted one of what they called the bufo toads (not cane toad) that had been serenading us each night. We also got to see a cryptic crab spider which looks like a tiny frog; what I may incorrectly remember but think was a poisonous wandering spider; a stick grasshopper; a giant cockroach (erg!), and finally a small treefrog that pretended to be dead when Jhin picked it up. It was very cute. 

What on the left appears to be a frog is actually a Cryptic Crab Spider; the frog on the right is a Bufo Frog

A tiny tree frog which, when Jhin picked it up, played dead in his hand

A Peruvian Wandering Spider (Phoneutria nigriventer) and at right a Giant Cockroach (about 3" long)

This is a Stick Grasshopper; wish I had a better photo of it

Shortly after this we came upon the hike stopper—an ocelot! When first spotted, it was maybe 25 feet off the trail sitting washing its chest like a housecat. It seemed completely unperturbed by our headlamps. We watched it for at least 10 minutes as it washed, stood up with its front paws on a higher branch, crouched (when Jhin approached it closer), and finally bounded off farther back into the jungle. What a moment!!

A beautiful cat. Here’s what my Internet research has to say about this feline species (Leopardus pardalis):

Thirteen ocelots are killed to make one fur coat

• The ocelot’s fur resembles that of a jaguar and was once regarded as particularly valuable. As a result, hundreds of thousands of ocelots have been killed for their fur. In one year, 140,000 ocelot skins were declared to have been imported by the USA. They were once the mainstay of the fur trade.
• International commerce in ocelot products has now been prohibited; ocelots are now listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which means that it is protected—with hunting banned—over most of its range. There is stillsome illegal trade, however.
• Almost extinct in their natural range in the USA, ocelots are extremely rare in Mexico. Habitat loss and over-hunting have decimated their populations.
• The ocelot was classified a “vulnerable” endangered species from the 1980s until 1996, but is now generally considered “least concern” by the IUCN Red List. 

After seeing the cat, all thoughts of the camera were forgotten as we returned to the Center. The next morning Richard went out early and found my camera—about 100 feet from where we’d turned around. It did not rain in the night and the camera was none the worse for wear except that its soft, simulated leather case looked like it’d been munched on by a snail or some other insect.