Mount Totumas Cloud Forest

The last photo of the last blog entry was that blurry Spider Monkey racing through the canopy. Contrast that with these slow metabolism leaf eating Mantled Howlers hanging out this morning catching the rays of the rising sun after a rainy night.

After watching a large group of acrobatic Spider Monkeys I took shelter from the rain at the base of a giant ceniza tree (local name) that had a second large Ficus tree wrapped around its trunk and a third small tree (Eugenia sp.) with peeling bark growing in the under story. I hung around for an hour chilling out on this awesome view while the rain fell.

While waiting out the rain an immature male Resplendent Quetzal arrived on a Cigua (Nectandra sp.) tree nearby and starting feeding. When the rain stopped I slowly meandered over a got a nice shot of him with his raggedy head. No elongated tail feathers on this youngster.

Here are the fruit of the Cigua tree he is eating. It’s in the avocado family and he was chucking these down whole.

When Quetzals are digesting these large fruit they seem to hang quiet and not move which makes them quite easy to photograph.

About those Spider Monkeys you can forget about photographing them as they scramble through the canopy and leap 40 feet through the air grabbing on to thin branches and swinging and swaying on to the next tree. Here is the best shot I got…

Through the mist on a foggy night the White Witch descended on the home at Mount Totumas Cloud Forest. This moth, Thysania agrippina, is the lepidopteran with the biggest wingspan in the world. It dwarfed the sphinx moths and other visitors to our bug light. It is of the Noctuidae family. It’s little sister, Thysania zenobia or Owl Moth, has also visited our lights. Both species are illustrated here with a hand as a reference showing the enormous size of these moths. These are both remarkable insects that invoke a sense of mystery in this cloud forest wilderness.

Thysania zenobia

Thysania agrippina

Thysania agrippina

Thysania agrippina

Thysania zenobia

Mount Totumas Cloud Forest now has wheels, a reliable vehicle to get us up and down the 4WD access road. This model is loaded with green technology. It’s looks slightly used but it runs awesome! Lyra says it is a SMOOTH ride.

Seriously, this abandoned old vehicle can be found inside La Amistad National Park at around 2200m up the Rio Colorado valley about 2 hours walk from the homestead at Mount Totumas Cloud Forest. There are more epiphytes and species of flora growing on this old truck than you can find east of the Mississippi……. I guess that is only a slight exaggeration.

Anyway here is our real truck we purchased for the project.

It is a Nissan Patrol pick up that is not marketed in North America but is well known in the Australian outback, Latin America and other rural areas of the world. We had a frame put on it so that we can put a tarp over it when hauling tourists or bags of cement in rainy whether. This truck handles well going up some of the steep sections of the 4WD road even when loaded with sand or gravel.

A great all round vehicle.

The entrance of Mount Totumas Cloud Forest at 1650m begins where the road crosses the Rio Colorado. This is also where a side stream, the Quebrada Norte joins the Rio Colorado. At this confluence on an exposed bank next to a small waterfall a pair of American Dippers nested this year and their one young is now hanging at this confluence.

Very cute. A perfect dipper nursery right at our entrance. And here in Western Panama we are at the southern extreme of the American Dipper’s range which extends north along mountain streams all the way to Alaska.

Here is the nest site. The nest was up about 8 feet above the river on the exposed bank.

Here is the entrance of Mount Totumas Cloud Forest with the confluence of the Rio Colorado and the Quebrada Norte. The dipper nursery.

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Dippers here share the stream with Torrent Tyrannulet, a pair of which are nesting about a 100meters upstream. Here is a rather poor image of one of them.
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Most people are familiar with the Katydid, a common insect whose attire is usually a solid green. Like the one here crawling on Sam’s ear.

But evolution can churn out some spectacular modifications especially when natural selection fine tunes a strategy of camouflage. Spiders looking like an orchid pedal, shrimp or sea horses perfectly blending into coral. This morning I checked the bug light and found a Katydid that stood out against the white sheet. When I put him on the stump with the lichen he virtually disappeared.

This guy would have been impossible to spot when hanging out on these branches!

Hiking on Mr. Vega’s land today we spotted a young Red Brocket Deer at the forest edge. There were four of us hiking and we watched still and silent as the deer grazed on the path.  To our surprise the deer wandered down the path in our direction until it was only about 25 feet from us. This species is very wary and avoids human contact and when he finally realized we were there he darted quickly into the forest. This is a forest species and the shorter fore legs and small horns are adaptations for forest life. The other species of deer here is the well known White-Tailed Deer that ranges from North America down well into South America as far as Bolivia.

This is the largest hummingbird species visiting our feeders. The Violet Sabrewing was absent during the winter months but has appeared since around mid march. In the early morning this individual often enters the front door of the house and explores around often hovering over the red tassle of a pillow on the couch mistaking it for a red flower. One time he got disoriented and ended up lost in the kitchen flying against the window. I thought the condenser of the refrigerator was dying when I heard the rattle of his wings against the window. I picked him up and released him outside. Within a couple of minutes he was back on the feeder

Monotropa sp.

Sometimes it is not the exotic that inspires but rather the familiar that one finds in exotic places. For those familiar with the more temperate forests and mountain habitats of North America it is not hard to recognize the familiar echo of more northern latitudes in the flora, fauna and fungi of the neo-tropical cloud forest. Here at Mount Totumas Cloud Forest we are at the very southern range of the Talamanca mountains that extend northward for a couple hundred kilometers into Costa Rica, a large part preserved in La Amistad National Park which borders our site. In some of the highest peaks of the Talamancas that exceed 3000m there is clear geological evidence of glaciers during past ice ages. Most likely forests similar to those found today in temperate North America once extended down to the Talamancas here in Central America. The oaks that dominate the forests here for example are descended from more northern forests.

Monotropa uniflora is a unique member of the blueberry family (Ericaceae) that has no chlorophyll and nourishes itself exclusively from rich forest soils. In North America this species is white with a common name of Ghost Plant or Indian Pipe. Emerging in spring and early summer it always evokes something of the mystery of the forest underworld and here at Mount Totumas Cloud Forest it appears in a more gawdy tropical attire, bright red, in oak forests above 2000m

A Common flower of prairie meadows in North America and alpine and subalpine habitats in the Canadian and North American Rocky Mountains is the Indian Paintbrush, genus Castilleja. Several species and hybrids range in color from yellow to pink to orange to red. Here on the pastures at Mount Totumas Cloud Forest one comes across a more diminutive species that looks almost sub-alpine, perhaps some relic of the past when at these same elevations we would have found ourselves above tree line on alpine meadows instead of today’s manmade pastures used to graze cattle.

Did the Castilleja found here migrate down to these elevations from paramo habitat above tree line once humans opened up the forest for grazing?

In eastern temperate forests in North America following heavy rains chanterelle or oyster mushrooms emerge on rotting deciduous hardwood branches and logs on the forest floor. It was not a surprise then after the first rains after several weeks of dry weather here to see what appears to be a member of the oyster mushroom tribe. If it wasn’t for the flies and larvae that arrived first I would have taken them home to fry up with butter. Seeing the fallen oak log draped with these fungi awakened strong memories of the Appalachian mountains in late spring.

Epiphytic orchids far outnumber terrestrial species here. In the deep shade of the understory here at higher elevations one comes across a terrestrial orchid species that resembles those found in more northern mountain forests.

Mountain lions roam these forests as do White-Tailed Deer. Hairy Woodpeckers are here at the most southern extent of their range. And at this time of year winter residents like the Swainson’s or Wood Thrush can be found on understory branches. Summer Tanagers, Northern Orioles, Blackburnian Warblers foraging in trees draped with epiphytes cause our provincial heads to spin. For here they winter in their ancestral homeland from where these families of birds migrated northwards. Tanagers and warblers migrate as far as the boreal forests of Canada to breed in the summer. Their breeding songs ring out in the northern forests in late spring just as the white Monotropa uniflora Ghost Plant is emerging from thawing soils.

We were digging a ditch laying our new filter system and water line to the house when we discovered an ancient stone tool made of some very hard stone. 

It’s quite heavy for its size and the tool still has a sharp edge and it fits perfectly in the human hand with a small bump on the upper surface which improves its grip.  The  design and craftsmanship demonstrate the technology of the peoples who made this tool.

You can imagine separating the skin from muscle of a recent kill,  the peeling away of bark, the splitting of bone and wood.  Holding this tool in your hand you feel a link directly to the past of our ancestors.  I used the tool on a fresh cut piece of bamboo to smoothen the joints to be used as a curtain rod. Kind of a pathetic application compared to those used by  the ancestors who made it. This  simple task of shaving bamboo however does honor their craftsmanship that hundreds of years after being buried it emerges still in perfect shape to perform a task it was designed for. How many of our modern technological tools would  emerge after centuries buried still functional? I guess stainless steel cookware.