1 post tagged “plants”
This was another hike that Drude and I took at the end of April 2006. Camino de Cruces (the Road of Crosses) is the gold road - it's the second of two roads the Spanish built to haul gold and silver from Panamá City to Portobelo where it could be shipped off to Spain to fund the Empire. The hiking trail follows the old road out to the Chagres river - there are parts where you can see some of the old cobbles still in place (though most of the road was never paved). So many pack trains went through there that there's one narrow rock cleft where you can still see mule prints carved into the stone.
Now it runs through Parque Nacional Camino de Cruces - one of the large national parks that forms the Panama Canal watershed. Because of the Canal watershed, large portions of rain forest have been preserved within driving distance of Panama city for our hiking pleasure :)
On to the Critters:
There's a stream that crosses the trail not too far from the road and these mayflies were just swarming all over. I can't tell you what kind they are (even an entomologist would probably need to put their genitalia under a microscope to narrow it to a species - and I'm no entomologist).
Very badly behaved - just FILTHY.
This is a golden ant -they're large solitary foraging ants. Also, they're hard to photograph because the gold color comes from fine hairs all over their body. The iridescence makes them look out of focus.
Can you spot the Mono Tití? Here's a bit of help:
He's a squirrel monkey - a Geoffrey's Tamarin. This little guy ran through the canopy over the trail and I just managed to capture him for a second.
Rain forests are, well, wet. Wet means fungus - these were just some particularly pretty ones that I spotted next to the trail.
I have no idea what kind of plant this is - probably a bryophyte (some sort of moss) - but it kind of looks like a face, doesn't it?
Isn't that tail just the coolest thing? It's a juvenile whiptail lizard - they loose the blue color as they get older. This one is an adult (at least I'm pretty sure it's the same species) that we spotted further down the trail. Usually you hear them before you see them - rustling in the undergrowth. Always pays to hike with your ears open.
We actually saw a couple of these guys. They're Poison Dart frogs (Dendrobates).
The ones in the Canal zone aren't quite as colorful as some of the other species, but I still think they're pretty.
Interesting factoid - these guys do parental care - if you click and look at the full sized pic, you can just see that the one on the left is carrying a tad pole on it's back - it's probably looking for a likely pool to deposit it in.
Drude spotted this harvestman on the same tree as that poison dart frog above on the right. Can't identify the species - you'd need to look right in the horse's mouth, so to speak. But look at those legs!
