Lizards, Teiidae, Central American Whiptails, Ameiva festiva. Many. About five times as many juveniles as adults, a territory every few feet along the trail. I respond to the head bobs with head bobs of my own. Sunny now, hot and humid. The rain has stopped, and the tropical sun has finally emerged, shrouding this place in a mist so thick it looks like a movie set with a fog machine.
Earlier today, over coffee, I saw my first orchid bee. It was a female, probably Eulaema sp. The things dangle their legs oddly in the air as they hover, as if pumped up on too much coffee. Beautiful, green.
A social species, its whole nest tossed to grown by the storm Sunday, brood comb exposed,
lies in a matt of fallen bromeliads near the trail. It is probably some species of Trigona.
Workers pointlessly defend pieces of brood comb and honey pots.
Other bees, Trigona also, and ants as well, are giving them hell. The colony is in disarray....workers mill about
with no clear purpose. Later, I will attempt to photograph it.
Moss-covered rocks, mist, howler monkeys in the distance, over the river.
Same green iguana, in a different tree, peering down at me as I cross the river.
Honeycreepers, variable seed-eaters, blue swallows in the morning, diving at my head, pre-caffeine.
In the forest, orupendulas, Montezuma's orupendula. Ants. Atta spp., and bullet ants are everywhere, along with
a strange array of unknowns.
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