First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

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chrisr
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First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by chrisr »

Had an awesome trip to Costa Rica last month using Brian Kubicki's Costa Rican Amphibian Research Center as a base. To say Brian is knowledgeable about the local flora and fauna is a large understatement. Learned and saw a lot hanging out with him.

It only rained once the whole week I was down there but still found lots of animals to film. So far I have edited down the first 2 days of video:





Big thanks to those who have posted here in the past about Costa Rica and to those of you who answered my email questions. Thanks cbernz for highly recommending the gps for the rental car! Oh my goodness I don't know how I would have made it anywhere by myself without it.

- Chris
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by Biolog_Guy TN »

Awesome video! Thanks for sharing.
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cbernz
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by cbernz »

Hey, no problem. Glad you took my advice!

This footage is very well shot. I am green with envy over your Rhinobothryum! Did you see more than one, or were those both the same individual? Love the Bolitoglossa as well - that was one of the few amphibs we missed at Brian's place.
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MattSullivan
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by MattSullivan »

very cool. looking forward to the video from the rest of the trip. I'm desperately hoping for bolitoglossa on my trip this year
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by Kfen »

I, too, am very much looking forward to the rest of the video(s).

I have a couple questions about Brian Kubicki's place. If I ever make it back to CR, I'm considering trying to stay there. Is it true that you cant walk around by yourself, that you need him to be with you? If so, what do you do the rest of the time you're there? And I also heard a rumor that he either kills or removes frog eating snakes from his property. Is there any truth to that?

Thanks
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chrisr
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by chrisr »

Thanks for the comments folks.

Kfen - Brian actually let me walk around by myself some but I don't know if he always lets people do that. He said he is primarily concerned with visitors' safety. You would want to talk directly with him about it. He did not mention that he kills frog-eating snakes but it wouldn't really surprise me considering what he is trying to do in terms of giving struggling frog species a better chance of survival on his property.

Matt - we found colonnea on 2 separate nights.

cbernz - yea Brian said there were people who had been trying to find that species. I would have liked to find more snakes in general but I decided to be kind of mellow this trip and not cover a ton of ground in terms of looking for snakes (partly due to the fact that I hurt my knees from doing too many deep knee bends while filming little critters). I also saw a 7' or so whipsnake near where the ringed snake was found one afternoon but it took off before I could film it or grab it.
I assume that was the same rhynobothryum the next day. I thought it was interesting that it seemed to be hunting both day and night.

More video to come eventually!
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by chrisr »

Here's video from 2003 (lower quality unfortunately) to hold you over until I get the thru the rest of the footage from last month:


Was great going in the field with Quetzal as well.
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by Roki »

Awesome! Glad you had a great time.
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by chrish »

Outstanding. Your videos may be the best herping videos I have ever seen. I think that is largely attributable to the fact that you use the natural soundscape and don't feel the need to talk over them or worse yet play some silly music as background.

These may be the first videos posted here on field herp forum that I watched from beginning to end. Great stuff.

do you record the sound track with your camera? Or do you have another recorder / microphone?
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by chrisr »

Thanks Chrish, your comments pretty much made my day! Yes, I just used the on-camera mics. I use this camera (discontinued) which has decent microphones: http://shop.panasonic.com/shop/model/HDC-HS700K

I agree with you that music pasted with video is often counter-productive and annoying. This opinion of mine is somewhat ironic since I am a professional maker of music for the moving image from time to time! I even tend to dislike the music in some of my favorite BBC documentaries. "Do we really have to hear this generic orchestra music again?!". I think music or dialogue can really detract from the experience of watching wildlife footage. It often makes me feel as if I have seen the footage before, even though I haven't and thus find the footage less compelling.

Here is Day 3. Not many herps here. Unfortunately there was no rain for the rest of my trip which didn't help with herps. I didn't get out much on day 3 as I had strained my knee the day before and had forgotten to sleep due to my excitement about being in the rainforest:


(This is a new version of Day 3 with the name of the Parrots corrected)

thanks, C
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by cbernz »

Nice stuff!
chrisr wrote:I agree with you that music pasted with video is often counter-productive and annoying. This opinion of mine is somewhat ironic since I am a professional maker of music for the moving image from time to time! I even tend to dislike the music in some of my favorite BBC documentaries. "Do we really have to hear this generic orchestra music again?!". I think music or dialogue can really detract from the experience of watching wildlife footage. It often makes me feel as if I have seen the footage before, even though I haven't and thus find the footage less compelling.
Yeah, that watered-down Holst/John Williams sounding stuff is a pet peeve of mine. The only worse nature documentary peeve I have is showing every single action sequence in slow-motion.

Your "?" at the end is some sort of beetle. It's probably mimicking something, not sure what - maybe a young stick insect or grasshopper? Your hawk is a Crane Hawk, you lucky sod! And that is definitely a Chestnut-sided Warbler, by far the most common warbler I've seen down there in winter.
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by chrisr »

Thanks cbernz for the IDs. Any thoughts on the tiny frog at 4:25? I wish I had got better footage of the hawk. It suddenly appeared in that tree and then was gone a few seconds later before I could really film it :(

One nice thing about this camera is that it shoots at 60p so slow motion at 50% or above looks pretty sweet. I use it sparingly but sometimes it really works well.
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by Ribbit »

I second everyone else's comments about the quality of the video. I have rarely (if ever) seen such well-composed, steady (yay for tripods!), and carefully edited footage on this forum or in any non-commercial context. (And the commercial stuff usually has plenty of other annoyances.) Thanks for posting!

John
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by cbernz »

I'd say that tiny frog is probably bransfordii, or maybe persimilis. C. bransfordii seems to be the most common tiny, warty, stout-bodied Craugastor in that area, but I think you'd have to have detailed photos to tell for sure.
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by Ribbit »

The beetle at the end of day 3 looks to me like some kind of rove beetle, family Staphylinidae. But I'm not a beetle expert so I might not know of some other group of beetles that looks similar.

Speaking of beetles, I believe the red/orange dome-backed beetle at the 7:09 mark on day 2 is some kind of Pleasing Fungus Beetle, family Erotylidae.

John
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chrisr
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by chrisr »

Thanks much John and Cbernz.

Yea I am really into using tripods although sometimes they slow me up and I miss footage that I could have gotten handheld (the Crane Hawk is a case in point). I actually had a pretty crappy tripod on this trip in order to not pay extra for baggage weight and the thing completely fell apart on the night of day 4, right before I found my first adult Red-eyed Treefrog! And of course when we found a couple eyelash vipers on day 5 my handheld shots came out jittery :oops: ! I am looking into whether or not I can fix some of my footage from that day digitally. So far, no luck.

Never heard of Pleasing Fungus Beetles before. Great name. I've enjoyed your posts in the past John thanks. Was it you who posted about being in Panama and finding a similar pretty butterfly to the one I found in my 2nd video at 9:52?

C
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by Ribbit »

chrisr wrote: Was it you who posted about being in Panama and finding a similar pretty butterfly to the one I found in my 2nd video at 9:52?
Yes. Mike Pingleton identified it as genus Pierella, and then David Fischer posted a lookalike from Costa Rica that he thought was Pierella helvetia. I'd say yours looks like P. helvetia also. Note that P. helvetia is a synonym for P. helvina, and both names seem to be used quite a bit.

John
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by chrisr »

Thanks John. I decided not to delve too much into IDing the arthropods but would like to at some point. That particular butterfly blew me away. Unfortunately I thought I had gotten great footage of this but it looks like I hit "pause" instead of "record"! Where is the slapping-myself-in-the-head emoticon? :?
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by chrish »

chrisr wrote:Yeah, that watered-down Holst/John Williams sounding stuff is a pet peeve of mine. The only worse nature documentary peeve I have is showing every single action sequence in slow-motion.
Another big beef of mine is when every shot is so close up that you can't see what's actually happening. Of course, that helps cover up that they shot it in a studio.

But the worst is when they take some footage from the wild and put some ridiculous heavy metal music to it!
cbernz wrote:Your hawk is a Crane Hawk, you lucky sod!
I don't think that is a Crane Hawk. It is too light in color, there is some orange on the cere and it has white under the wings. My money is on Gray Hawk.
I can also see the banding on the leg feathers.

I think your hermit is a Long-billed Hermit (formerly Long-tailed Hermit, then Western Long-tailed Hermit :roll: ).
And you parrots at the beginning aren't White-fronted. I think they are Brown-hooded Parrtos, but I don't have a CR Field Guide.
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chrisr
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by chrisr »

Thanks so much for the IDs Chrish. I am going to reupload the day 3 video due to the mis-IDed Parrot. Looks like u are right about them being Brown-hooded. I assumed they were the same parrots I saw most other mornings which were White-fronted, and didn't really scrutinize the footage enough.

Couldn't the hummingbird also be a Green Hermit?

I've been working on the other videos. Day 5 has a lot of birds as well so we'll see how I do with the IDs...
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Re: First 2 days in Eastern Costa Rica last month (video)

Post by cbernz »

chrish wrote:I don't think that is a Crane Hawk. It is too light in color, there is some orange on the cere and it has white under the wings. My money is on Gray Hawk.
I can also see the banding on the leg feathers.
Yes, Gray Hawk. It just seemed to be so dark and long-legged, but the call didn't sound right (and I forgot about the wing shape and pattern).
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