2 Years In

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!

Remember to visit OCHO VERDE YOUTUBE PAGE for more videos and Follow @OchoVerde on Twitter.

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!

Hello and Happy 2015.

Roi, aka Crooked Tail, with a big belly.

We have big news to report about our project a little later in our update.

We have just returned from Costa Rica where we downloaded nearly 9000 images and videos that had been recorded since late July. This many images is a bit out of whack for our time-frame, but we had 2 cameras that recorded continuously until the batteries died.  One was due to a short due from high humidity, the other was due to a few blades of grass that popped up in front of the sensor and triggered it every time a breeze blew.  We also had one camera that developed a corrupt memory card and sadly I could not download any of the photos.  If you know of an easy way to retrieve them, send me an email and we can take a look at the images.

Is a cub on the way, for Roi?

On the animal front, we are seeing pretty much what we thought that we would.  Crooked Tail(Roi) is still around as is her cub Pizza Slice.  Crooked Tail has a bit of a saggy belly in the later pictures indicating that she may have given birth in the last few months.  This would go along with the fact that we have seen far few male ocelots recently. Pregnant or parental female ocelots do not attract mates until the young are no longer with them. We are hoping to see her with a cub later this month.

This blurry because a) it is from a video and b) Tayras are always on the move.

Our macho male Tayra is still around, but this time he is with a companion...is love in the air?  I had a chance encounter with the female in early January on a trail.  She climbed a tree groaned at me to continue to back away, which I did.  

The Pacas seem to be abundant.  The agoutis are common as they ever were at one point one occupied 350 of nearly 400 videos from a single camera.  There are plenty of ant eaters.  The Jaguarundi seem to be around as well although only singles were seen this past Fall.  The Capuchin monkeys came down to several cameras and the coatis were seen at nearly every location.  The hog-nosed striped skunk was seen more often and this may indicate him being more of a resident than passer by.  The Curassows have been strutting around like they have owned the forest.  One new animal that we had not seen was the 4 Eyed Opossum.  It seems to have a little more bounce to it’s step that the larger Common Opossum.  
Here is video quick recap:

We had 9 cameras that failed and had to be returned to the states. One new Cuddeback camera failed 3 weeks into the new year.  Ants caused a few of the failures and I believe that the rest was due to the humidity of extra rainfall in November.  One camera was full of water from a bad seal, however, the images were just fine. 
The cameras were all brought back to the states for warranty repair(I hope).
 
We have been invited to join the Osa Conservation Camera Trap Network.  Project director Juan Carlos Cruz came over twice to help get us coordinated with the data input and looked at the trails.  We are part of a 14 station network that helps monitor the wildlife in the Osa Region of Costa Rica.  Read more about the project here:
Osa Conservation Camera Trap Network
We are currently on the eastern edge of the network's boundary as it makes it way down towards Panama.

We were also invited to share our data(nearly 30,000 images) with the MAPCOBIO Project which records biodiversity from camera trap projects from all over Costa Rica. 

In August, we received two Spartan wireless cameras, one from a private donor and one from the camera manufacturer HCO Scoutguard.  With a month fiddling with the cameras, we finally had the cameras up and working.  We are able to receive nearly instantaneous email images from our cameras. As we sat on the plane in Miami, this shot of an iguana dead center of the frame, appeared on my phone. 

 Using this technology we have become one of the very first to receive live images from Central America in the United States.  This technology has been incorporated into an app by the  Zoological Society of London.  “Instant Wild” uses wireless camera trap images from select parts of the world to increase awareness of biodiversity.  Now, we can all see what is going on in our forest along with everybody else.  Here is the link to Instant Wild

I'm going to do a special blog on the 2 wireless Instant Wild cameras in the next week or two.  I'll discuss some of the remarkable technology within these cameras.

In the meantime, something weird is happening with Ocho Verde Facebook page, so until I get that figured out, you can
 Follow @OchoVerde

Tayra and Banana

 

First year in Review!

Endangered Squirrel Monkeys on the Camera Trap

Project History and Results

In May of 2013, we began this campaign on crowd-funding site Indiegogo.
The goal was to raise enough funds to purchase camera traps and support materials to do a thorough survey of the biodiversity of the Ocho Verde wildlife reserve in southern Costa Rica.

Well, a year has passed...the results were EXCELLENT!   

When you start out on projects like this, you really never know what you will find.  Nor will you know what obstacles may impede your progress.  While we suspected that the biodiversity would be numerous and varied, we had no idea how intense that it would be.  It seems that the forest is harboring a lot of animals.  Yes, we have been through nearly 20,000 images, and to be honest, 15,000 were probably Agoutis.  That being said here is a list of the 20+ mammals:

• Ocelots--at least 3 of them, possibly as many as 5 of both sexes. 
• Neotropical River Otter
• White Nosed Coati
• Agouti
• Paca
• Squirrel Monkey
• Jaguarundi-at least 3 of them
• Common Possum
• 9 Banded Armadillo*
• Tayra--at least one male and possibly a female
• Kinkajou
• Water Opossum
• Anteater-Northern Tamandua
• Capuchin Monkeys
• Wooly Opossum
• Dogs
• Striped Skunk*
• Human Poachers
• Spiny Rats
• Water Rats
• Bats different species
• Squirrels

We have seen well over 10 bird species:

A Blue Crowned Motmot...chillin'.

• Tinamou-2 species
• Curassow
• White Hawk
• Trogans
• Orange billed Sparrow
• 2 types of doves
• Vulture
• Little Blue heron
• Cattle Egret
• MotMot

More and more animals...

Most encouraging, is that the ocelots, agoutis, pacas, coatis, spiny rats, anteaters, tinamous, and squirrel monkeys that we have seen, have offspring.  Reproducing animals certainly make for a healthy forest ecosystem.

Anteater carrying young

Paca mom and young paca.

Ocelot Recognition

So far, we can identify 3.  
"Roi/Crooked Tail"

 her cub, "Pizza-Slice"

... and "Big Male"(note that Big Male seems to care less about the bright camera lights).

We are continuing to look at the ocelot rosette patterns to help identify more individuals.

About the trails...

All of the cameras were placed on established trails,with one one exception.  The coatis, jaguarundis, tayra, common opossums, and ocelots were seen at the most distant camera, nearest camera, highest camera, and lowest camera. For example, Ocelot Pizza Slice, was seen on all of the cameras.  We believe this to mean that animals like and use the trails.   We also have seen animals following 'animal' trails into other parts of the forest.  

The only unestablished trail is the tree that is crossing the creek, which animals, of a all sorts, used as a bridge.

   

About the cameras...

The Bushnells and the Moultries recorded thousands of images of varying degrees of quality. While sharp images don't make good fodder for blogs, you can glean a lot of information from them.  The Bushnells were far better on battery consumption and durability, and not so great on consistent image quality.  The Moultries made ok videos and ok pictures and were ok on battery power. The color HCO Scoutguards do make nice images for videos with good color night and day shots, but seem to run out of battery power faster than the other cameras.  The old Cuddeback worked great until it failed(nearly 4 years of use). The new Cuddeback was pitiful from day 1 in both image quality and battery use.  We now have a Browning to add to the mix.  

The good news about the cameras is that all have been serviced/repaired or replaced under their great warranties (we are still talking to Cuddeback about a solution).  We thank the manufacturers for sticking with us through our adverse situations. 

HCO Scoutguard had offered us a wireless camera to use.  It did not arrive in time to deploy on the July trip, but we have it in house now and it is ready to go.  A second wireless camera has been contributed by an individual.  The route will be animal->camera->cell tower->email address, in early real time information.  We hope to work with an international organization to get the info out to the WWW(more about that when it happens).  Needless to say, we are very excited by this and sincerely thank them for the contributions.

Setbacks and Problems 

No project is without it's share of setbacks and problems.  Camera traps aren't really made for jungle environments.  Many of the infrared cameras had problems finding enough light to make make color pictures during the daylight and 'flipped' to night-time mode.  This is why you see black and white images during the day.  The color cameras had similar problems as well: not enough light for a slow shutter-speed.  We had our share of leaky batteries. Sensors failed, causing the cameras to continuously take pictures until the batteries died.  Leafy plants sprang up in front of lenses. Spiders seemed to enjoy making webs on the lenses. One camera was partially infiltrated by ants.  Good cameras sometimes failed for unknown reasons. Perhaps it was the humidity.  While we did see poachers, they did not see us(we think).  In an entire year there were only 3 days when they were caught on camera, none had any game.

The Best Of Year One

Battery Waster Award--- Agoutis

Least Expected Animal-Tie-Neotropical River Otter and Striped Skunk

This is a screen shot from a video of the skunk.

Coolest Video- 3 Jaguarundi Walking, runner up the White Hawk

Most Adoring Critter-The Tayra

Scariest Monkey-Armless Ghost Monkey(Capuchin) 

Best Bird-Curassow- runner up MotMot

Best Predation- Tayra with Iguana

Most Unexplained--The Mystery Smoke at 4:15am 

Least Favorite Images--Poachers

  Best Overall Image-Jaguarundi

That is all for now.
Remember, that you can subscribe to this blog or follow on YouTube.
We were also named as one of the best camera trappers to follow on Twitter Follow @OchoVerde

See you soon!

Leave you comments below.

The Mono Precioso Cam

The Tayra was a star on the Mono Precioso Camera last fall.

The Mono Precioso camera is a Bushnell Trophy cam.  It was set to take 3 images per trigger.  It was placed near what I though was a good animal trail.   It was at the bottom of the mountain where the terrain began to flatten.  There are permanent water sources nearby as well as a pasture and plenty of tall trees.

There is a chance that this camera recorded the biggest variety of animals of all of the cameras that we used.  We also were able to record some rare predation activity and an extremely rare aquatic mammal.
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Capuchin monkeys are mostly up in the trees, but they do come to the ground(but still on a tree).  The Mono Precioso camera trap caught the monkeys very near the ground on three separate occasions.  However, the 9/15 visit shows what is perhaps a pair that is taking a look around.
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The weasel-like Tayra seemed fond of this trail.  We assume that it was a male as best we could tell from the photos.  He seemed most active in the mornings.  The Tayra is an omnivore, eating fruits, insects, nuts, birds eggs, reptiles, and small mammals.
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While reptiles are common at Ocho Verde, we rarely see them on the trail cameras.  The Mono Precioso camera was able to spot this male iguana(orange head).  It was probably heading out to the pasture edges to sun itself.

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Unfortunately, Iguanas and Tayras don't get along so well together.  On October first, the Tayra crosses the camera at 8:26 am.  Six short minutes later, it returns again with the iguana in it's maw.

Mouthful of Lizard!

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 In addition to the tayra and a few ocelots, the Mono Precioso camera also caught the Neotropical River Otter.  This site is 150-200 meters from the permanent water source. 

We only saw the otter on one day, and we felt fortunate that our water source is pristine enough for these neat animals.

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We have also rendered a few videos from the Mono Prcioso camera.  As always, maximize the screen size for better viewing.
The first video involves the Tayra.

The Second video is a compilation of nearly all images from July thru January set at a fast pace.  Definitely need a max screen size for this one.

You can keep up with nearly all the camera trap updates by subscribing to this blog and see all the videos plus some others on the Ocho Verde Youtube Channel.

If you like Twitter, we often announce updates to the blog and videos through tweets.

Follow @OchoVerde