Costa Rica, Part Two of Five? Ujarras/Coffee

Belated Merry Christmas!  While this was a mission trip, we did take about two days' worth of time (two afternoons and one full day) to explore the countryside.  The first afternoon of free time away from the camp was spent seeing the ruins of Ujarras, before driving over to a coffee plantation on the shores of Lago de Cachi.  Some members of the trip recalled a previous visit when a sloth, likely the brown-throated three-toed sloth, Bradypus variegatus. Unfortunately, no sloths were seen on this trip.  While common, sloths have excellent camoflage, partially due to algae that collects in their fur.   We did see an overlook over one of the valleys.

Growing at the overlook was the largest Opuntia cactus I have ever seen.  It was a bit of a surprise to see a cactus growing in a predominately rainy environment.

 We arrived at the Ujarras, a  World Heritage Site notable for the remains of one of the oldest church buildings in the Americas.

The crumbling walls of the old church  are an excellent haven for mosses and, as it turned out, a lizard.

This is the green spiny lizard or emerald swift, scientifically called Sceloporus malachiticus.  This was a fairly bold animal, willing to stay on its rocky ledge just a few feet above eye level as a horde of tourists looked at it.  Although it barely shows in the picture, the tail of this lizard was sky-blue.  These lizards are occasionally found in pet stores, but this was the first time I had ever seen one.  This is easily the most impressive lizard I have seen in the wild.  It is a close relative of the eastern fence lizard, Sceloporus undulatus.  Eastern Fence Lizards barely range into southern central Illinois, but are common further south in glades in the Shawnee Hills in Illinois.  A picture of it is shown below.

The other animal of interest was the leaf-cutter ant,  This ant, which could be one of several species in the genus Atta, are widespread across Costa Rica, and found nearly everywhere.  They cut leaves off of trees and carry the leaves back to the nest. The leaves are used to grow fungus inside the nest, which the ants then eat.  Essentially, leaf cutter ants are farmers.

An ant nest was discovered under this shrub.  A nearby bush, unpictured, had been completely stripped of its leaves by the ants living here.

Next we went to a coffee plantation.  Coffee is the main export of Costa Rica, and along with tourism is one of the main industries.  As it was the afternoon and the rainy season, the rain began to come down.

This particular plantation has permitted tours of its facility.  We saw the plantation, as well as a toucan high over the parking lot, too far out of range for a photograph.  The whole area, despite being a plantation, was quite lovely.  Part of this may have been due to the fact that the plantation rests next to a sizable lake, likely Lago de Cachi.

After drinking coffee provided to us at the end of our tour, we hiked down towards the waters edge.  This was a very wet area, and my group began discussing the possibility of crocodiles. Caimans are native to Costa Rica, and being from Illinois we had no idea where we might find one.  I have a picture of the general area, taken as close to the water's edge as I intended to get.  

Shortly after this, something made a large splash in the water center left of the photo, and we scurried back up the hill in some fright.  The jury's still out on whether it was a caiman or a large fish, but we had no intention of finding out.  After this, we returned back to the camp over the Rio Reventazon gorge. 

It rained all the rest of the day.  I still found one last plant, a maidenhair fern (Adiantum raddianum) This species is extremely popular to grow indoors, and indeed I used to own one.  Maidenhair ferns grew around the lodge at camp on steep slopes where only ferns and mosses seemed to grow.

That's all for now. Happy New Year, as this will likely be the last post until the new year.

Costa Rica, Part One of ?... Not Really Lincoln Land Anymore?

I've been debating this for a long time.  With Christmas, I have a bit of spare time, so I have decided to write about my ten days in Costa Rica that I spent there six months ago.  Many of my friends and family have asked for me to write about the trip.  I have around two thousand pictures on my computer from that time.  As Costa Rica is a very biodiverse area many of these pictures are nature or landscape pictures.  It would be extremely easy to take this material and work it into a blog post.  The flip side of this is that Costa Rica is not exactly Illinois.  I started this blog with a focus on the land of Lincoln, aka Central Illinois. I debated creating a separate blog specifically for vacations, but decided not to.  At this point,  why should I bother?  Within the second blog post,  I visited Southern Illinois, and the third post took us to North Carolina and Georgia.  This blog is focused on Central Illinois, but it does venture to other places.

 The deciding factor was the time of year.  It's December in the Midwest.  There is very little of interest in December in Illinois.  (Yes, there are bird migrations, and it is 50-ish degrees outside on the first official day of winter.  I saw a fly outside earlier, too.  Thanks, El Nino!  No chance of a white Christmas, but we may be wearing shorts this year...  It was colder in the cloud forest in Costa Rica than it will be here on Christmas.  This is insane.)  (UPDATE- This was followed by a similar warm Christmas the following year.  Perhaps it's a common climate thing here, now.)

As a result, here is the first of several posts on Costa Rica.  It was a mission trip from Cherry Hills Baptist Church in Springfield,  Illinois.  We spent most of the week around the capitol of San Jose.  For more information on the trip itself, see CHBC Costa Rica Mission Trip.   The blog is written by a friend of mine and it is excellent.  I will warn you,  I may have about two thousand pictures, but most of the nature that I saw I failed to photograph.  Google Mimosa pudica, Sciurus variegatoides, and Pitangus sulphuratus and you will get some notion of what you are missing and what I failed to get pictures of.  Many of these photos, particularly the next two, are shots taken by Dr. John R------.

Soo...  Let's get into this.  We left from Chicago's O'Hare Airport having spent a wild night at the hotel the night before.  We landed in San Jose, Costa Rica, pictured above.  We then drove to Campamento Bautista in the hills between San Jose and Cartago.  We had landed in the midst of the rainy season and thus clouds are present in nearly every shot.  It rained every afternoon, sometimes heavily.  This is why they call it a rainforest.

The author of this post is pictured above.  Oh no, security risk!

 I should warn you that I had an abysmal, infernal, and blurry camera to work with, as well as a phone camera.

 I also had no interest in getting any closer to the insect pictured above.  A Tarantula Hawk Wasp (Pepsis or Hemipepsis spp.) is rumored to have the second most painful sting of any insect in the world.  I saw an average of about one a day in Costa Rica, on the grassy slopes of the camp.  Fortunately or unfortunately, there were no tarantulas.  The female tarantula hawk wasp, in similar fashion to the cicada killers of the Midwest, catches tarantulas, stings them, and then lays its eggs in the still-living tarantula. The juvenile wasps then eat the tarantula when they hatch.  Isn't nature so wonderful?   All I know is that that wasp is about the same length as my hand, and that this picture was taken from at least twenty-five feet away.

 The insect population in the area seemed about triple that of any late summer meadow in Illinois.  Furthermore, every insect seemed bigger. I literally kicked a beetle that was dark red and  resembled a june beetle out of the lodge on the first night after it had terrorized the people inside.

The camp itself was stunning, and the nearby hills made it even more beautiful, especially early in the morning after the sun had risen and the clouds had not settled in yet.

Even as second-growth  forest, this area was still absolutely gorgeous.  Below the camp at the base of the hill was a  stony creek with a number of epiphytes and orchids nearby.  Thanks to my camera's mishaps, I failed to get many pictures in this area that actually resembled anything that had been photographed.

This was one of the best I took in that valley.  Ferns, orchids, clubmosses, liverworts, Peperomia, saplings and even a cactus or two grew on the branches of the trees, all the way down to the base of the trees.  The small ferns are Polypodium, the plant with the long green flower clusters in the center is a Peperomia and the rest are generally unknown.

I was amazed at the biodiversity of the area, despite its location.  It was also remarkably free of trash when compared to similar sites in Illinois.  Most of the trash dumps I saw in Costa Rica were in town and near roadways that were already polluted. 

Going back uphill, I spotted Mimosa pudica.  The darker green mounds in the lawn are this species.  I leave it up to you to figure out why this plant is so special.  Sensitive plant is the English common name of this plant, by the way.  I also spotted an orchid that was reminiscent of a Malaxis, pictured below, in the laws of the hill.  Orchids growing in a lawn is a new concept for me.  I generally have to outfit an expedition to find any orchids in my area.  If anyone knows what this is, please let me know,

I'll leave you with a tease for next post.   If you know what kind of plant this is, you might see where I'm going.  (Hint: It's an Old World native, and a substance made from this plant was once banned by the Catholic Church as witchcraft.)  Merry Christmas!

Midwestern Canyons

With few exceptions, the Midwest is extremely flat.  Illinois, for instance, is the third flattest state in the country, and central Illinois is the flattest part.  Excluding the Illinois River Valley and Sangamon River Valley, there is virtually no significant elevation change in this region.   This makes areas like Starved Rock State Park or Matthiessen State Park a virtual wonder.  Cool north-facing canyons hold geologic and floral rarities for this part of Illinois.

At first I was extremely happy to have this sort of place in Illinois.  Then I noted a trend.  In Indiana sit Turkey Run and Shades State Parks.  The same ecotype, north-facing canyons and rarities both botanical geological.  And then I start reading about Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio, which is similar, although not exactly the same.

Is there a canyon-filled, popular state park in every Midwestern state?  And what is the equivalent in Michigan and Wisconsin?

Glacial meltwaters carved these canyons, it is said. That must have been a decently-sized flood.  I find it curious that at each of these places I have visited,  hemlocks grow wild, whether naturalized or not. (At present, I am delayed by several causes from determining anything related to the hemlocks that grow in Starved Rock.  I understand that most of my readers are probably people who see my blog linked on Blue Jay Barrens,  Steve Wilson's excellent blog.  Most of those who visit that blog I presume live east of me, and likely see Eastern Hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) on a regular basis.  I, on the other hand, see such marvels as Prairie Trilliums (Trillium recurvatum)  in the woods nearby and find them extremely common.  I understand that this is a rare species anywhere east of Indiana, so to each his own treasure.)

To return to what I was saying, hemlocks are not common in the Midwest, and thus dwell exclusively on such sites as Starved Rock and Shades State Parks.  Other rarities of such sites include Canada yew (Taxus canadensis) and a diversity of fern species.  I am not implying that all these fern species are rare, but Starved Rock State Park, by itself, contains roughly a third of Illinois fern species.  I myself saw roughly eight species on my last trip, which was after a hard frost had killed off the leaves of most deciduous species.  One of the evergreen ferns was Asplenium trichomanes, which according to BONAP does not grow north of the Shawnee Hills in southern Illinois.  (There will be a future post entitled "When BONAP Is Wrong")

There are several reasons why Midwestern canyons are so biodiverse.

One is the fact that, as in my second to last post, the Midwest is the crossroads of the nation's plants and animals.  Starved Rock's summit, pictured below, holds both northern white pines (Pinus strobus) and the eastern red-cedar, (Juniperus virginiana), two plants from different parts of the world.  The cedar is a southern or western immigrant going north, and the pine is a dweller of the north at its southern limit.

 A second reason is that topography lends itself to diversity, obviously due to water-runoff.   Rocky upland areas provide dry habitat, while the bottoms of canyons are permanently wet.

Third comes temperature.  The cold rocks, shaded by trees, lead to a cool micro-climate with distinctly un-Midwestern  temperatures, while the hot rocks on the edges of bluffs provide a differing micro-climate entirely.  Plants such as White Pines, denizens of the north, can be found along these slopes.

All of this contributes to unique and diverse landscapes that are very worthy of exploring.

Bird Banding Fall Conclusion

Bird Banding has concluded for this year.  I posted back at the midpoint on what we had then.  This semester,  the LLCC Bird Banding station banded 2047  different birds of 80 species.  Considering that all happened within about a three month window of time, this is very impressive.  New birds for all time include the Blue-headed Vireo and Cape May Warbler, pictures from Wikipedia below.




Blue-headed vireo above, Cape May Warbler below.

Below is information copied from the notes of Vern Kleen, Banding Station President and Very Important Bander (VIB)

Species with new “Seasonal” Highs

Mourning Dove                                    17

Red-bellied Woodpecker                    12*

Downy Woodpecker                            33*

Hairy Woodpecker                               4*

Yellow-shafted Flicker                        12

Eastern Wood-Pewee                           4

Blue-headed Vireo                              1

Blue Jay                                                  22

Black-capped Chickadee                    26

Tufted Titmouse                                   33

White-breasted Nuthatch                    9

Golden-crowned Kinglet                    23

Ruby-crowned Kinglet                        34

Veery                                                       6

American Robin                                    84

Cape May Warbler                             1

Black-throated Green Warbler           15

Wilson’s Warbler                                  5

Eastern Towhee                                     4

Field Sparrow                                         27

Fox Sparrow                                           13

Song Sparrow                                        120

Lincoln’s Sparrow                                23

Slate-colored Junco                              284

Northern Cardinal                                 77

The area is a mixture of woodlot, lawn, and prairie restoration, allowing for a diversity of birds.   This has been explained in a previous post, and also in this other post.   As such,  I refer you back to the other posts.  I have plenty more information about the bird banding program, but much of it is technical.  If interested, post in comments below, as so many of you have done.  (That was sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell.  I presume you could, but there's always that one person...)  Anyway, before I get any more bird-brained puns (for their body size, birds have large brains and most birds are very intelligent),  I will conclude this summary.

*Woodpecker numbers may be up due to emerald ash borers killing trees in the counties north of the banding station. I believe this has been noted in other blogs.  (I look forward to seeing "Woodpeckers on the Rise!" posted in an alarmist article in the mainstream media.)  I do think this is a sign of a serious problem.

Why We Illinoisans Live In the An Excellent State (for nature)

I follow several other blogs closely, all of which are located in beautiful places like British Columbia or Pennsylvania or North Carolina or even southern Ohio.  All of these places, especially British Columbia, are beautiful, and I find myself suffering from location envy.  Even in Ohio, there are hills.  We of central Illinois, on the other hand, have heard that steep elevation changes exist and some of us have marveled at them on vacations.  Then we come home to a place where the curvature of the earth is visible.  Elkhart Hill, a small mound of earth, is a landmark along Route 55 north of Springfield and south of Lincoln, because it is the only hill in the area.  And if there were more hills in central Illinois, what would we look at?  Corn, with occasional soybeans.  Between fields, there are rows and occasionally hedges of trees. Along waterways, there can be a good deal of second-growth, second-rate forest, but that seems to be about the most interesting landform in central Illinois.

Yet, this is too harsh, although this description does seem accurate at times.  For instance, the Illinois River provides abundant exceptions.  Grandview Drive in Peoria Heights, Illinois is one of the best exemptions.

Lovely, isn't it?   In reality, central Illinois residents have plenty of nature all around them.  For instance, we have every type of weather invented, short of hurricanes, and we occasionally get the aftereffects of those, too.  I've lived through a tornado passing over my house, multiple ice storms, temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for a week, three month long droughts, floods, five inches of rain in an hour,  a couple of blizzards, more severe thunderstorm warnings than you could shake a stick at, and hail an inch deep. That was all just earlier today.

I might be joking, a bit.  But in comparison to someplace like Portland, Oregon, where it's only rainy and cloudy, with sunshine once in awhile, we have a good variety.  All of the above have happened in the last ten years, by the way. 

Of course, Illinois has other wonderful nature perks.  Within a three hour trip in any direction, a majority of Eastern Plains and Eastern Hardwoods plants and animals can be found, as well as the abundant, Midwest-only, Prairie Trillium and a few other similar species:  A prairie trillium is found below.

This is not a typical prairie trillium, as this is the only trillium out of the thousands that I have seen with four leaves and four petals.  This is an infrequent genetic mutation among all trilliums, and especially, it seems, among Trillium grandiflorum and Trillium undulatum of the Appalachians.  Granted, these are the most noticeable and photographed species, thus biasing the sample. 

Anyway, Illinois has nine of the eastern  U.S. Trillium species, including three species.  (Trillium nivale, Trillium recurvatum, and Trillium viride) with  a predominantly Midwestern distribution, We also have three species of Opuntia or prickly pear cactus.  Foxglove beardstongue, Penstemon digitalis, turn prairie fields and roadsides white in May, and several more western penstemon grow along the western edge of Illinois.  Scorpions roam the bluffs of southwestern Illinois, while several species of traditionally Appalachian  Plethodon salamanders hide out in Vermilion River woodlands.  Both the western Massasauga rattlesnake and the eastern Timber rattlesnake live in Illinois, though unfortunately I have seen neither.  

The point I am trying to make is that Illinois is a crossroads.  Plants from all over the U.S. grow here, whether western, eastern, northern, or southern.  Jack pines, little bluestem grasses, eastern hemlocks (I will prove that soon enough) and bald cypresses all grow in Illinois, as the borders of their ranges fall here.  Thus, within a short drive to any nature preserve, I can see a vast variety of the plants and animals of North America. This is why Illinois is amazing.  We have bald-cypress swamps and glacial bogs, hill praries and rich woodland, and plant and animal species to match. Granted, not all of these are found in Central  Illinois, but we have a few prairies, including the largest hill prairie in the state.  There may be many cornfields, but there's invariably a nature preserve within an hour of any location in Central Illinois.  Thus, while we lack the natural spectacles of mountains and landforms, we have a pretty amazing state as is.*

*It would be even better if IDNR and the rest of the state had money or at least a budget.  Our DNR is the most underfunded in the country.  (UPDATE, as of the time of this writing, I mean.)

New Tree Species Discovered in Illinois, by Me! (Sort of)

This is history for this blog.  I have discovered a population of a tree species that theoretically does not exist in Illinois.  I visited Starved Rock State Park in LaSalle County recently.   For those unaware of Starved Rock State Park, it's a series of canyons and bluffs along the Illinois River likely carved by a massive flood many thousands of years ago.  The rolling topography is unusual for Illinois, and reminiscent of the Blue Ridge Mountains that I visited last spring.  The leaves have fallen mostly off the trees.  This makes all the white pines (Pinus strobus), eastern red ceders (Juniperus virginiana), and white cedars (Thuja occidentalis) present very visible. I found something else that looked a lot like a hemlock tree.  However, Tsuga canadensis, the Eastern Hemlock, is not recorded from Illinois since 1962. The record was found on the Illinois State Museum's herbarium website. The Illinois State Museum records are rather hazy and it's unclear whether naturalized trees were used or not.  Conditions change a lot, and it seems that this record of the plant has been lost in the depths of the Illinois State Museum's herbarium.  Tsuga canadensis is not listed as a threatened or endangered species in Illinois, it's just not listed at all according to Illinois Department of Natural Resources or essentially all Illinois wildflower related sites.  For all practical purposes, eastern hemlocks do not grow wild in Illinois.

This picture contains two suspected hemlock trees in the center and on the left.

I took a hike today along St. Louis Canyon in the park. This is a fairly popular trail, with people visiting all year long... and yet, most people seem to only record the waterfall present.  Notable plants in the area include the aforementioned white pine and white cedar, as well as forbs like harebells (Campulana rotundifolia), all of which are rare in Illinois.  Starved Rock also has a third of Illinois' fern species, and I saw at least seven there even after several frosts had already come through.   So it is a very biodiverse area.  The canyon was cool and damp all year round, just the way hemlocks like it.  So seeing about a dozen of them, with a few more growing up in moist crevices along the cliffs, was unsurprising.   I positively identified the plant  with two biology professors as witnesses.  I fully expected to come home and see that eastern hemlocks are a threatened species in Illinois.  It took a full half-hour to find out that they have even been recorded in the state once, albeit 50 years ago.  Below is the Bonap range map of eastern hemlocks.  Note how they come close to Illinois in Indiana and Wisconsin, but never into Illinois.  I have seen hemlocks at Shades and Turkey Run State Parks in Indiana, which contain environments nearly identical to Starved Rock.  (North-facing heavily wooded canyons, cool, damp canyon floors, exposed upland bluffs, large populations of disjunct species, etc.  The differences are actually very minor in climate and ecosystem The four yellow-shaded counties in western Indiana represent the hemlock populations in those two state parks)



Here's an interesting fact,  Canada Yew, Taxus canadensis, is recorded from Starved Rock, and I have never seen it there.  Superficially, at least, Canada yews and hemlocks look fairly similar.  However, Canada yews lack the upright habit of the trees I saw today, and the trees I saw today have needles about half an inch long at the most.  Canada yews have needles roughly an inch long.   Could hemlocks be misidentified as Canada yews?  Possibly.  I suspect Canada yews are also found in Starved Rock, however, as I saw Canada yews for certain in Shades State Park in Indiana and Canada yews are more common in other parts of  northern Illinois as well.

Below are a few other pictures.  I forgot to get a close up, which would have been much more helpful.  The lighting in the canyon was also very bad, so I am unable to present crisp and clear photos.  I feel not unlike a Loch Ness monster photographer, except trees are immobile and easier to locate.

After all this, I have drawn the conclusion that eastern hemlock trees do in fact exist in the wild in Illinois.  A  population grows in St. Louis Canyon, and at least one other hemlock was spotted in Kaskaskia Canyon later on the same day.  Therefore, it is likely that Illinois has a new record, at least, for a tree species, and possibly a new tree species for the state entirely.   I'm extremely excited to be the one to find it.

UPDATE:  It's been over a year since I made this discovery, and I have since learned that the Eastern Hemlocks discussed above are an introduced, nonnative population.

Slithering Snakes- Mom, Don't Read This #2

I enjoy reptiles.  If I wasn't planning a career in botany already, I would have gone into studying herptiles (reptiles and amphibians).  When I was three years old, I had an Australian accent because I watched Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter so much. I still love herps. The other day, in fact, I caught a toad just outside the door of a church building and brought it to a bible study inside the building.  (I returned him outside within a few minutes.)

Here are some of my favorite snakes I have seen in the wild:

Storea dekayi:  Dekay's brown snake is a small snake found commonly in forests throughout the Eastern U.S.   I have found it both in Illinois and in Georgia.

Illinois^^^

 Georgia^^^

Nerodia siphedon: Above is possibly the most common snake in Illinois, the northern water snake. It's a toss up between northern water snakes and common garter snakes.  Garter snakes have a tendency to be found in urban habitats more commonly, so it is likely that they are more common.  Here is an unknown species (Thamnophis spp.) :

I happen to have a den of garter snakes in a location not far from my house, and a second site five minutes away which contains a different species.  Neither one is known, although the one in the net below is about twice the width and length of the one above:

The author of this blog was promptly surprised when the snake pictured above decided to exit the net.  That is a post for another time.

Ophidophobia sufferers, you should not be reading this far.  The rest of you can try and figure out what ophidophobia is*.  I have mild anatidaephobia, and I'll let the smartest people figure out what that is. I know somebody is googling it.  Leave what you find out in the comments section.  It's a good time to talk about phobias, as the following image may make you scream.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.  More snakes, in other words.  I need your help, however, with some of these.  I have no clue what the following species is, for instance.  It was found in the fall in far southern Illinois (Garden of the Gods) and was initially assumed to be a ring-necked snake.   However, a ring-necked snake found nearby is pictured afterwards.

The following is a ring-necked snake, Diadophis punctatus.  The above is unknown, but it was taken only a few hundred feet from the snake below, so it could be a strange ring-necked snake color morph.  I cannot find a similar species online, unfortunately.

The following snake has stumped me for years.  This photo was taken about nine years ago, when I was a wee lad and only half as crazy as I am today:

I have assumed this is a racer, but the marbling on the sides makes me uncertain of the identification.  It was found in Peoria County in April in lightly wooded terrain with some development and a few water sources.  Can anyone confirm that this is in fact a black or blue racer?  That would help a lot.  Let me know what you thought of these snakes. This is only a quarter of the wild snakes I have have seen, as over half the time a camera is unavailable and/or the snakes escape quickly away before I can even get out a camera.  Anyway, good night/morning/afternoon/Friday to everyone.  

*Hopefully I'm not scaring too many of you away today. Roughly one-third of all human beings on the planet are at least slightly afraid of snakes, and fear of snakes, aka ophidophobia, is the most common phobia statistically in the world.