Toucans and Rainforest Walk

Feb 4 through 8

Toucans and rainforest walk

We've been getting up and walking to the edge of the farm by the rainforest almost every morning to see the toucans in the trees.  It is amazing that as big and colorful as they are, we are unable to spot them until they move or fly to another tree.  We are always able to hear their "croak" before we see them.  We have seen two kinds of toucans here.  The first day we looked, we saw the chestnut-mandibled toucan  with a yellow and dark-brown bill. 

Every day since, we have seen the keel-billed toucans - the colorful "Toucan Sam" type.

A couple of different times, we have taken walks through the rainforest that borders the farm.  The tree canopy is so dense that it is really dark in the forest. There are lots of huge ferns in the rainforest.  After struggling to grow nice ferns in pots on my porch, it is amazing to see them grow so big in the wild.

Eric even found this unusual "bottom tree". 

We stumbled upon some huge ant dens in the coffee plants on another farm bordering the rainforest.  At first we wondered why someone had dumped a truckload of sand and then we started seeing the leaf-cutter ants.  The ants had stripped off so many leaves from the coffee plants and were scouting for more leaves.

We also came across the tracks of some kind of raccoon and a big cat in the mud in the rainforest.  While it would sure be cool to say we saw a jungle cat in the wild, in reality it would probably be a bit scary to see those eyes watching you.  I'm sure we won't have to worry about that since all the jungle cats hide so well.

Vulcan Turrialba was smoking like crazy one day and I got some great photos from our perch on the mountain.