For forty days and forty nights, my trail cameras recorded videos and photos of jungle animals. I checked the cameras at least weekly starting in mid January 2021. The videos of the rainforest animals were outstanding! Trail camera technology has come a long ways since we started doing this back in 2010. This video will premier on Saturday February 20, so if the link is funky, you will now why.
The rare greater Grison (Galictis vittata) shuffles through the rainforest on a trail camera in Costa Rica! Grison look just like honey badgers and are just as fierce.
A Tayra (Eira barbara) runs off with a papaya on a trail camera in Costa Rica!
January 13, 2020. I was dead tired from an all day expedition to find rare sea snakes out on the Golfo Dulce. Falling asleep early...I never noticed the emails that had come in just after dusk. When I woke up to howler monkeys at 4:45 am....I checked my email....I had two photos send from our wireless cell cameras to our e-mail account. The first email had this photo:
Ahh...Ocelot! Cool....We had seen plenty of them over the years...Its always a treat.....however...there was something more to the picture than just an Ocelot. Even with motion blur of the photo, I could clearly see the distinct eye-shine of a prey animal. The Ocelot had a meal!
I made a mental note and moved onto the next e-mail image that had come in a few minutes later. I recognized the location as a few minutes up the trail from the first Ocelot image. And there it was again, the same Ocelot.
Ocelot with prey at ASPER CREEK
Yes...she still had that prey item in her jaws. Well that was very interesting that she had followed the trail. I had other non-wireless cameras positioned before the first image and after the second image. They were only still cameras, but perhaps I could figure out where she caught her dinner and where she was going with it.
I decided that when the sun came up, that I take a walk on our Loop trail and check the pictures on the cameras and see what turned up.
This is what I saw:
That's our cat with her rat, a Tome's Spiny Rat. Outstanding!
But wait a minute...that rat is alive. Of course, I asked myself a question...why would she be carrying it away from the capture site and why would it be alive. I could not answer for a few more weeks and I checked the cameras once again.
In the meantime I had retraced the steps the Ocelot had taken with her prey. The color photo was first, followed by the eye-shine photo and ending up with the cat in what we call Asper Creek.
Here was the order of her travel:
Yes, the times were off a little bit and it was then I learned that cell cameras are as accurate time keepers as other cameras. This was backed up by the times that I received the emails.
After I had collected the memory cards from the cameras again it became apparent as to why she was carrying a live rat for a distance of several hundred meters and risk dropping it or something worse along the way. She had a Kitten!
The mom was an Ocelot that we had seen for almost five years on the property that we named 'Chere'. We have seen Chere with several young over the years. We are happy to see that her latest looks very robust with nice fat paws( called a mani gordo in Costa Rica). In the coming months we look forward to sharing more pictures and some videos here and on our You Tube Channel.
Chere's last kitten was in quite a few videos, including these classisc:
Thanks for visiting and watching the videos...we'll see you next time.
"Ok Mom....I'll see you in a few hours.....no ma'm....I'll be fine...yes, I'll wait right here for you!"
The chubby young ocelot told his mom.
She left.... he sat there.
He licked his paw and cleaned his face.
"What are those blinking lights on that tree?"
Eyes spies a Camera Trap!
"Oh...never mind...I'm hungry maybe I'll have a snack. A snake snack sounds great!"
"Cool, I caught a snake!"
"Where is Mom?", he thought... and he wandered in last direction...
Oh well...I'll just wait...
What are those strange blinking lights...I'll lick them...no...I'll bite and twist them.
WOW!
Bored he wanders off...
But around 3 the next day he returned and visited with the cameras as endangered squirrel monkeys screamed at him overhead.
The humans walked by that night and noticed the twisted camera.
Frank, James, and Owen walk by that night!
Later that same night, he shows back up and plays in front of the camera with his friend!
Cute Cats Playing
Here is the full video! If you can click the "Watch on You Tube" button for a bigger picture.
Supporting us.
Those of you that wish to support our efforts can
do so in several ways. You can always send us a contribution via snail
mail or though PAYPAL.
A more painless way for you to help out is by watching our OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Sooooo…..if you could subscribe to our channel and
share our videos it would be great! Here is a handy button. It is that
easy!
Let me start by saying that I like snakes. I don't exaggerate size or aggression. I'm not afraid of them. In college I had an Eastern Coral snake. I picked up Copperheads and moved Cottonmouths and big rattlers. Venomous snakes deserve my respect and distance. I have scolded many people (friends and strangers alike) for killing non venomous snakes on several occasions. I have never purposely killed or wanted to kill any snake...until the day of this encounter.
OK. It was a Friday afternoon(July 8, 2016).
The camera was finally loaded with batteries, sim chip and memory card. It was finally working perfectly, sending email images within 2 minutes of taking a picture. It was in the small backpack heading up the mountain into the forest. I was going to the camera location called “Quebrada”(ravine). A creek had caused a small ravine over which a tree had fallen. The place had recently been a good spot for a camera trap. The trail was well defined (steep slopes, up and down on each side) caused animals to follow the path or cross the ravine on the tree trunk.
Most of the time animals choose the tree bridge to cross the Quebrada
A male Curassow follows the alternate path.
The above camera(Covert), took some great pictures, but had failed over the previous months. I decided that this was a perfect time to replace the Covert with a new Spartan wireless camera.
The walk had been easy and uneventful. I was in a semi hurry as to get back home in time for a quick rest and a shower. We would head to Banana Bay Marina for the happy hour which is our custom on Friday afternoons at five-ish. I strapped the camera to the tree and and looked across the ravine. There were a few plants growing that needed to be chopped so the motion sensor eye would not be tricked and accidentally triggered by rogue breezes. I also wanted to test the range and orientation of the new camera's placement before I left.
Casual Friday. Here I am on the way back to clear vegetation and test the orientation of the camera.
I left my knapsack with phone, water etc at the base of the
tree which held the camera. I crossed over the quebrada with a steep
uphill on my right and the steep downward slope on my left. As I got to
my destination(the far end of the log), I heard my walkie talkie go
off, my wife Kate was asking a question. I started to fiddle with the walkie then began answer her question. Suddenly, behind me, to
my right, slightly up the hill I heard a ruckus in the leaves. As I spun around, I saw a huge Fer-de-lance/Terciopelo, large head raised, mouth agape,
fangs prominent twisting and lunging towards me down the slope with full momentum. The snake, from it's elevated position, could easily have struck my leg, thigh, or waist. My 10 inch boots were of no help to me in my position. Fascinated by snakes, especially a large individual
such as this, after 4-5 quick paces I slowed to watch and observe. The snake
would have none of that. It reached the level trail and and continued after
me…mouth agape body flailing barely touching ground as it advanced
towards me. The damn snake was trying to kill me! My desire to observe vanished. It was fight or flight. I had a
machete, but it would have been no match for a fast twitch beast such as
this. My only hope was to out run it. Running in the jungle in never a good idea especially with a machete. At home I run on streets, not paths with steep crumbling edges. I wear light running shoes not awkward rubber boots. I never run with a 20 inch machete.
The walkie talkie went off
again with Kate asking her question. I answered bluntly and I sounded panicked, which she picked up on. I slowed my retreat to realize the predator had
stopped somewhere along the trail. Whew. I stared at the trail 2 feet
from me, then 3 feet, then 5 feet, then 9 feet etc until I saw my orange knapsack
waiting for me beside the tree with the camera. I had to go past that damn snake again.
Seeing a snake of this size and ferocity is frightful enough, but knowing it is very near and not seeing it was almost paralyzing.
14 Minutes after the snake encounter, I had almost made it back to the camera.
I took my rusty dull machete, felled a rainforest sapling, trimmed the tiny branches until I had a 7 foot stick. I began sweeping it over the uphill on my left the level trail, and the right downward slope. All the while I was hoping to alarm my nemesis again and to identify its whereabouts. 14 minutes of ‘sweeping’ passed as I made it to the rocky ravine. As I hopped over, my walkie-talkie fell from my belt onto the bare rock creek bed.
Yikes..My Walkie Talkie in a shadowy danger zone.
I had to reach for it near several rocky snake hiding places. The grab was successful. Still shaky, I realigned the camera and grabbed my backpack. Of course, then I had to cross the quebrada and go right past the irate serpent again. Stick in hand, I once more tried to scare it out of hiding. One step..then two steps then 4 then 8 and more until I had made it past the Terceopelo a fourth time. It had vanished or became docile to animals bigger than itself as is the norm. I checked in on the walkie and had an uneventful 10 minute walk back poking over every log along the way with the machete. I started to wonder, "Did all this really happen...to me?" Yes, it did. I felt like a guy who survived a late night knife assault in a silent dark alley: terrified but relieved.
Despite my safe return, story of fear and then triumph, the damn snake scared me. I now wonder what is under the sofa, inside a dark cabinet, around the driver side tires as I step into the car. These are all places that a Fer-de-lance could be even though I fully know it is quite unlikely. This Friday in the woods changed me, possibly forever.
For the first time in my life, I wanted a snake to be killed. This felt strange. Kate and I and others, including our dog walk the trail several times a week. This was absolutely not the place for a hyper aggressive highly venomous snake to be.
I recounted my tale with permanent area residents over the next few days. None had ever encountered such aggression from an undisturbed snake. Theories abounded such as mating season, young protection, recent kill of prey animal, shedding time, none of it made any real sense to me. A snake this aggressive that is living in a healthy forest of large mammals would litter the forest with their bodies or be eaten or killed by one of its predators. I had written the above narrative a few days after my encounter and initially planned to end it there.
There must be more...
Eventually, I downloaded the images from the camera and began to wonder: Can I see the damn snake? YES... I could see it! The picture that was triggered before, shows a thin line up the hill which was my aggressive Terciopelo. See for yourself:
Snake Present
14 minutes of Hell later, the snake is missing.
Tough to see much...I know. Fer-de lances are notorious for having excellent camouflage, so I had to zoom in on the following part of the 'before' picture:
Here is the close up:
See it?
So you see, the head is up the slope and the tail likely extends a ways towards the end of the fallen tree well out of frame. While the extreme zoom from a long way gives no scale for size. The apparent length in frame is consistent the the nearly hand sized open mouth the snake showed me as it sprung up from the leaves and vegetation.
Here is what likely happened:
X marks where the snake was probably initially coiled...waiting.
Initially, I passed over or near the snake near the end of the tree on my way to set up the camera. This is a perfect place for a snake to coil and await prey. Perhaps I startled it and caused it to ascend the hill. When I went back to clear the vegetation I got the call on the walkie. Instead of paying attention to where I stepped, I was pulling the walkie from my belt and attempting to answer. I may have brushed or perhaps stepped on the back end if the Fer-de-lance as it extended onto the trail to the base of the fallen tree. At the time, that it became irritated enough to 'attack with mouth open', it doubled over itself and easily came down to the side of the trail. If I was on it's tail it certainly almost had to come at me. This apparently can explain the violent aggression. I still don't know why it continued after me when I was 7-8 feet away or why it followed me down the trail 3 meters or so after I was no longer a threat.
Furthermore, I had to pass by the snake two more times after the initial melee. Both times the snake was invisible or gone, meaning that in the four times we crossed paths, only one was an aggressive encounter, probably initiated on my behalf. When I understood all of this, I lost my desire for its death. It was just a natural reaction after all.
Very true words!
July in Costa Rica is part of the wet season. Heavy rains and cooler temperatures cause snakes to move around a bit more than in the dry season. However, this July, on the second day of our trip, this Terceopelo was the only one we encountered for the full 25 days of our visit. That is unusual!
Coming full circle...I walked past that spot 15 more time at least over the next few weeks. I kept a wary eye for my friend, but he was gone or never showed himself. So I'll let him peacefully eat all the rats in the forest and we will agree to keep our distance from each other through our new found mutual understanding.
I made the GIFs in this blog from a Discovery Channel show about some of the snakes in Southern Costa Rica. It is worth a watch in its entirety. Only the last part is about the Terciopelo and I used this as it shows the correct size of snake that I encountered. Start at the 31:13 minute mark to see the Fer-de-lance.
******NEW****** If you would like to read about more snakes in Costa Rica, check out our latest entry at Snakes of Costa Rica update
Striped Hog-Nosed Skunk seems to be a common resident.
The cameras are still preforming well and we are learning about the animals every visit. Thanks to all who have contributed and supported us with encouragement and financially. A special shout out to those who have cared for and fed our pets when we're out of the country for extended periods of time.
Our trip in July left us with over 20,000 images and videos that needed to be sorted through categorized and cataloged. Now that we are finished, we'll give you the highlights. (MAXIMIZE videos in lower right of screen)
The above video is common opossum. Her pouch is loaded with young possums. Once they are too big for her pouch, they will ride on her back.
Opossums were not the only ones who had young during the January-June period. The below image came through one of the wireless cameras.
Well this could be a number of animals:Tayra. Coati or a Jaguarundi. These cameras take two pictures seconds apart per trigger. Here is what the companion picture recorded two seconds earlier:
That is a Jaguarundi and her kitten. These are the first images of young jaguarundi that the cameras have recorded.
We got several other Jaguarundi images as well.
We even had a jaguarundi image sent by the wireless camera just last week:
The Coatis also were with young. In this video, you can see the clan of females and juveniles. Adult male Coatis are solo.
While we saw no evidence of offspring, you have to wonder how this trio of Tayras paired off on Valentine's day.
To further the Tayra mystery, we suspect this ritual is related to scent marking, but it was pretty funny to see how it all went down.
The day before we left to head back to the States, I made one more quick run through the jungle to double check the cameras' settings/batteries/aim. We captured this image of a Tayra at the famous rock:
We saw several ocelots that we could not recognize including this big guy:
and...this little guy:
We have no idea if any of the ocelots are related, but we suspect that they are.
Finally, we get to the monkeys. The Capuchins were very active on nearly all cameras. One camera in particular caught something quite interesting. It shows capuchins actually feeding with coatis. The unusual thing is that adult capuchins will capture and eat young coatis, but this clan and troop seem to get along really well.
One of the male monkeys even flashes the camera before he spins it away from himself.
Remember that you can follow the wireless cameras on your iPhone with the INSTANT WILD APP from the Apple App Store...it is free!
See you next time!
If you would like to support our project to help with expensive lithium batteries, camera upgrades, data plans, etc, please use the secure PAYPAL button below. Thank You!
My name is Frank. My wife, Kate and I run the camera trap project in Costa Rica. I'd really like to thank ZSL , Edge, and Instant Wild for allowing us to be part of such a great idea. I thought that you may be interested in knowing a bit about camera trapping in the jungle, these particular wireless cameras, both camera trap locations, and finally about some of the animals. We are currently in South Carolina in the United States and get our images via email seconds before they are posted on Instant Wild.
About the Ocho Verde Camera Trap Project
We acquired the property in 2010. It had been classified as a preserve by the original owner who was interested in maintaining a population of the Endangered Red-Backed Squirrel Monkeys. He did this by planting fruit trees in the cleared areas and allowing the secondary and primary jungle continue to develop. He probably did know it at the time, but the squirrel monkeys actually do better in recovering secondary rainforest as opposed to primary rainforest. Unfortunately when the property changed hands, the new owners soon lost interest in the property and the land was hunted for Pacas, Curassows, and Tinamous. Even some of the large trees were slashed and 'milked' for a medicinal sap. When we arrived, we brought in a full time caretaker family who had a non violent way to curb trespassers and poachers.
Prior to our first visit as property owners, Kate reached out to an now defunct organization called Yaguara who were camera trapping all over this part of Costa Rica. We could not offer much financial support to their organization, but we were able to transport 8 camera traps for them duty-free from the United States. We even purchased a camera trap for ourselves. On Christmas day 2010, we looked at the memory card and had a visit from an Ocelot. That was exciting, but we wanted to find out what else lived on the property and were animals recovering from being poached. In 2013, we launched and Indiegogo project that helped us buy 12 cameras that were spread throughout the property. We learned about so much more. We learned patterns of activity, movements by individuals and that we had a great amount of biodiversity.
Camera Traps in the Jungle
If you have ever been to a tropical rainforest one thing that you will notice is that it is dark. The thick canopy of trees obscures so much light that photography with a DSLR, point and shoot, or camera phone is a real challenge. Most contemporary camera traps were designed to capture images of feeding deer and not see animals in the dark wet humid jungle. Those who know about photography realize that in low light you need long shutter speeds. Long shutter speeds give blurry images when there is movement. That is one of the image conundrums we are faced with in dense jungle camera trap photography.
The ants are beginning to obscure the lens. (jaguarundi)
A few days later this was the last recognizable image. (raccoon)
We have some other problems being in the jungle. Rain can get on lenses making for strange and blurry images. Worse still, bad rubber seals allow water to actually enter into the cameras short circuits occur and render them useless. Plants can grow very fast in the rainforest and often times a plant will grow smack in the middle of our frame. This obscures animals and sends off false triggers that eventually drain batteries. We also have problems with ants and spiders. A species of tiny spider finds the little hood over the lens a perfect place to spin a web. It is a nice and dry space, but the web obscures our view of all animals. The ants will eat the rubber gasket where the camera door closes and lets water in. They can also just invade the camera and eventually close off the viewing portal. Cameras often quit working for no apparent reason and sometimes batteries inexplicably corrode.
About these Cameras
The Spartan Camera(showing adjustable antenna) and my iPhone 5for scale.
Like all of the cameras that I have seen on Instant Wild, these are made by HCO Scoutguard. They are called Spartan cameras. They were new in the Fall of 2014. I don't have the ability to name the cameras on the images. The cameras use infrared flash for night images. There is not a white flash wireless camera on the market yet, but there will be in another month or so(fingers crossed). The cameras use 2g (second generation) cellular technology. There is currently 3g and 4g available. We use Spanish telecom operator Movistar as our provider as it is the only one that is within range of the cameras as of now. The Spartan can be set to send images via text or via email. They are currently set to send email images.
So what happens when an animal triggers the camera? The camera records two images at 8mp to the internal SD card(see top image for a card saved sample). The second image is then compressed into a small file and sent to me and the Instant Wild image address. The Spartan can send larger images, but that will use slightly more battery power and twice as much data as the current images. We opted for the small images as we were unsure of data costs and battery drain, but this can be adjusted in the future.
The cameras have a neat feature called SMS. This gives one the ability to control different aspects of the camera by calling a number for the phone and then entering in commands via text. One can tell the camera to take a picture and send it right a way or enter other email addresses, etc. We opted to turn off SMS control as we were told it would consume much more battery power. We won't be back in Costa Rica for a few more months and want the batteries to last a long time.
We have had these cameras running since the end of January. They were a challenge to set up as they had to be programmed with a PC and we are Mac people. Movistar had never heard of these remote cameras so we had to teach them about needing a sim card, but no phone plan as we were only going to be using data for email transmissions. The cell signal can be spotty in Costa Rica. If the camera is ready to send an image and cannot get a signal it aborts the attempt to send after a few tries. Fortunately, the images are held on the SD card for us to view later.
The M in the information strip tells us that the camera was MOTION activated as opposed to another type of trigger command. The P5 tells us how much battery power is remaining in the cameras. P5 indicates full power. It should drop to P4---->P1 as the batteries run down. The current batteries are AA Lithium batteries(12 of them) that we put into the cameras on February 11. The info strip also tells us the current phase of the moon as well as time and date and temperature. One of the cameras was purchased with funds from a donor and the other was generously offered to us by HCO Scoutguard. A note about the Spartan camera shown above. The model pictured has a blackout screen over the infrared LED's. The two cameras that we are using does not have the blackout screen.
About the Locations
Images from this camera arrive from OCHOVERDE
Images from this camera arrive from ochoverde.
We chose the locations for the cameras due to the sheer numbers of animals that passed through the jungle at these locations. The only animals that we have not seen in these locations are the Neotropical River Otter, some of the birds, and the wrong people. We learned that these areas are very good because people trails and animal trails intersect. For identification purposes we'll call each camera OV and ov.
The OV camera is at a spot that we call "Tigrillo Woods" since it was where we have seen the most ocelots(tigrillos). In the upper right corner is part of a huge whorled vine known as 'mi favorite'. 'Mi favorite' is the favorite vine of our caretaker. It can also be seen numerous time in the videos and images in our previous blogs. As you may recall from the Instant Wild images, the animals usually cross right to left or vice-versa. That is precisely how the person trail is oriented. There several 'animal' trails here as well as you can see in this crude schematic:
There are 5 possible ways for animals to enter frame.
I considered placing the camera on the tree to the far right, but it would have to look up the trail and is looking west. Cameras in that spot in the past get rain drops on lenses and light flares from the sun. The Spartan cameras have a bit of a telephoto lens, which I'm not a fan, that tends to compress the field of view. Across the trail from the camera is a fairly steep embankment. In actuality, the animals often walk over and climb onto that vine instead of going up the embankment. The other location where camera ov is placed is called 'Tres Hermanas', three sisters. The 3 large trees are the three sisters. We have had cameras here for over 2 years and again it is a confluence of people and animal trails. Last year the top of the tree above the buttress on the left fell and gave us this nice log. This log actually gave us a new animal trail. To the left side are the branches of the tree where many animals feed on lizards and insects, etc. The camera is not there because of the intense rays of sunlight during most of the day which makes it difficult to see the animals. Here is how the trails lay out in another of my crude schematics:
The camera location is on the tree marked C.
If the truth were told, I would have placed the camera on the trees(marked with red circles) on one or the other side of tree #1. I did have it placed on the small tree between #1 and #2 and it gave us great images:
Current camera location is off frame on tree past the one on far right(female Curassow!)
The other camera location is one that we had a camera at for a long time as well. It mostly recorded videos that you can see in other blogs. Here is a decent screen capture of the view from that location--it is on the tree to the left of tree #1:
Camera ov is currently placed on the viny tree behind the anteater/tamandua.
Again, this spot gave us a nice wide viewing area. So, why did I decide to place the camera where I did. There are a couple of reasons. The main one being that tree #2 is aboutto lose another huge section of trunk. It looks to me as if it will fall directly on top of each of our other camera location options, when it does fall. The second reason is that there is good evidence of animal activity on the trunk of the tree in our current frame. We think as this tree decays, it could be a popular feeding spot. ov very well could get smashed when sister #2 falls so we'll have to keep that in mind.
ochoverde UPDATE MARCH 17, 2015 It looks as if a large chunk of tree has fallen to the left of sister #1.
Empty Images
I really dislike empty images. There are several reasons for them. The most common are that the animals are moving fast. The Spartan are reported to have a 1.2 second trigger speed which is considered slow in the camera trap world, but given the other advancements, we'll give it a pass. There are not a lot of reasons for animals to be moving fast. One is that it is chasing something or being chased. Another is that the camera is triggered by a flying bird or bat. It could be a Tayra which is always on the move. Trees and leaves moving in the wind can trigger the camera. Hot spots can trigger them as well. A hot spot is an intense area of sunlight that heats up more than the rest of the area around it. A hot spot example is in one of the empty ov images above as well. The animals can be just off frame and trigger the cameras. Sometimes it is a mystery trigger. The woods at Ocho Verde are indeed mysterious with many strange unexplained happenings. Check out our "Mystery Smoke" video:
I have no idea what triggered this. If it is a person smoking early in the morning in the jungle, the cameras all around missed him coming and going. He also would have had to kneel or sit as the camera is just a foot or so off the ground. He then would have let the smoke drift into frame. Spooky. The best cure for being blanked completely are multiple or 'burst' images. The cameras are programmed to take two pictures about 1
second apart. This is done to insure that we get at least one image.
Unfortunately, the Spartan is programmed to send the second image instead of the first image. I
would change that if I could. The good news is that our blank images
will have a companion image to give another view of the animal or to see
what triggered our camera. We also have non-wireless cameras very
close by. I will be able to sync up the times and we will ID the
missing animals and those we could not recognize in the Instant Wild
images. We will just have to wait a while to find out for sure.
Identifying Animals The internet is full of strange and wonderful pictures of people captured at exactly the wrong times. The same is true of camera trap images. Animals in weird positions can be tricky to recognize. People routinely mis-identify tayras and jaguarundis. They are close in size, color, habits, and movement. It is often the slender tail that clearly separates the two animals in a cam trap image. When ID'ing animals, the guides are great resources. Pacas and Agoutis look a lot alike at certain times. However, you rarely see Pacas during daylight or Agoutis in hard darkness. Sure there are exceptions, but it is not often. Knowing an animals habits is part of the identification process. Often times when looking through images, I'll have a few "What the hell is that?" statements. They are usually figured out in images before or after when we get another piece of the puzzle to add to the equation. The wireless Spartans give us one chance at the moment. We have to go on animal behavior and physical characteristics. Even then we can't always be sure. Take this image from a few weeks ago:
is it this Tayra on the same log...
or this capuchin monkey on the same log?
Hard to say, right? We are leaning toward capuchin monkey. What about this image...
This could be a Tayra, Jaguarundi, or labrador. However, we have never seen a lab on the property nor are they very common in our part of Costa Rica...let alone a well fed lab. The Tayras on the property are pretty healthy. The thin tail suggests that it could be a Jaguarundi. We won't know for sure until we see the second image or even other images from the companion cameras to the left and right of our Spartan. Someone asked about ocelot recognition. We are doing that along with some paca(side patterns) and tamandua(tail patterns). To date we have followed Crooked Tale/Roi, a female ocelot and her cub Pizza slice. We saw Pizza Slice on the OV camera last week. Ocelot recognition is addressed in this blog from last year. Thanks for reading this far. I'll be waiting for the next click of the camera...just like you!
If you have wandered onto my blog by accident and want to know what's being discussed, be sure to check out Instant Wild and their live camera trap images: LINK TO INSTANT WILD!
