11:50 Went snorkelling with the German
guy, thankfully the data loggers I had put out in the lagoon were still
attached in place. I reinforced their position, added some rubber bands and
pursued to looking at fish. There were
some usual characters about but the visibility today was fairly poor despite
the fantastic weather. I spotted a
non-breeding Brown Pelican near the lagoon before a flock of about 40
individuals, if not more, flew over us in a V-shaped formation. We followed up with a spot of bird watching
and I saw a small, unidentified ‘yellow bird’ with patches of brown on him
calling, and I can only presume it was some sort of Wren competing.
 |
| Birds Surfing The Perfect Blue Sky (D.Philpot) |
 |
| Bird Formations (D.Philpot) |
 |
| Some Of The Pelican Formation (D.Philpot) |
 |
| The Walk Back (D.Philpot) |
 |
| Relaxing In The Sun (D.Philpot) |
 |
| Sea Shell Rocky Peninsula (D.Philpot) |
20:45 Took the German guy to the “Lower
Quebrada” waterfall, nothing new but we still enjoyed a pleasant walk. We made lunch then took a lengthy walk down to the shell
beach collecting rocks and saw some “Ocelot” footprints.
 |
| Walking The Lower Stream (D.Philpot) |
 |
| Stream Base Sand Bank (D.Philpot) |
 |
| Ocelot (Racoon) Footprints (D.Philpot) |
 |
| The Wandering Naturalist (D.Philpot) |
From that we heard a squabble that
sounded like cats fighting… so with that I grabbed my torch and followed this
pair of yellow reflective eyes, with only a shadow to be followed when it ran,
into the darkness of the beach leaving the volunteer behind. I entered the area like a predator and
stalked those big yellow eyes for ~200 metres along the intertidal and had
thoughts along the lines of “It could be a Racoon, but surely a Racoon cannot
swim like that” but anyway…
Note 1: If you are running down the
beach after an Ocelot… it is probably just a racoon =/ the shadow eventually
was forced to come up to the beach at which point I saw it’s striped tail and
obvious Racoon shape. Got some great
practice for real Ocelot stalking though :-)
Note 2: Costa Rican cheese doesn’t melt
and thus the chicken & cheese spaghetti dinner was quite unsuccessful but
nice anyway.
 |
| Another Beautiful End To The Day (D.Philpot) |
 |
| Stood In Paradise (D.Philpot) |