hanging with the sloths

Does my bum look big in this?

Aviarios sloth sanctuary takes in orphaned and injured sloths.  Some have very sad stories, main problems they encounter are being attacked by dogs when they come to the ground to go to the toilet, falling out of trees, getting cold and wet in storms, developing problems related to pollution from banana plantation spraying, being taken by local people to show tourists at the roadside, being beaten and set on fire by children and lots are burned when they climb up electricity poles and onto cables.

Baby sloths are born after 11 months gestation, fully equiped and ready to go.  The mother gives birth up a tree and the baby climbs straight up and spends the best part of the next year travelling round on the mother, learning what to eat.  When orphaned sloths are brought to the sanctuary they are cared for by Judy the sloth whisperer but sadly for the sloths it is the opinion of those who run the sanctuary that they can`t go back to the wild as they have no mother to learn what to eat from. This has not really been properly studied yet. We really hope this work gets set in train soon and that things finally change so some can return to the wild, one big problem is that its almost impossible to watch what wild sloths eat.  Last year they had a sloth with a radio collar on, they knew which tree it was in because of the signal and despite watching the tree intently for three days they could never see the sloth, nevermind what it was eating!

We start at 6am with cleaning out.  Having swept up the crumbs from their platforms we then wipe them with a vinegar solution (the platforms not the sloths). Often the sloths make this a little more tricky by having a snooze on the platform you are trying to clean - you just have to clean around them.

What better way to relax after lunch than to fall asleep on your meal plate

Breakfast is stalks of berros and sometimes almond leaves.

Our first assignment was to make a sign promoting the online sloth adoptions for visitors to the sanctaury. Jessica is Canadian and came to the sanctuary at the same time as us.

Fiona gets out everyday to clear paths in the jungle

centipede

Another volunteer here called Jay was an entomologist and was always on the hunt for stuff to kill and pin

Jay wanted to see a rhinoceros beetle more than anything, when he left I said I bet we see one the day after you leave. I was wrong it was two days after he left.

The three toed sloths have so much character

There are one or two that try and help when you are cleaning out the cage by hanging onto you.  This is Sidwiggy, named after a combination of Sid the Sloth from the film Ice Age (which even you`ve seen Dad) and apparently his rescuers named him in spanish `little girl wearing a wig` which is where the wig bit comes from!

Yum- breakfast of cecropia leaves

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about lunch

Fiona and Jessica on the boat.  It was great to have access to the canoes, we often went out at night and saw kinkajous, caimen, bats, crabs and millions of mozzies.

the leaves on the water looked much prettier than this photo makes it look

hmmmm............Ralph wanted a haircut that he couldn't have at work meetings

This wild male was attracted to the sanctuary by the sounds of the captive females - this is what it sounds like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLzQk13JBMM

The captive sloths are in the enclosure behind the tree with the wild sloth in

Claire is responsible for the babies.  Every morning after breakfast we got an opportunity to either take a baby sloth to the jungle gym, or walk an adult Bradypus (Three toed) around the garden.

Luigi a baby two toed Choloepus

Shilo another two toed baby - he has very different colours

much cuteness

This one is called Velcro

We take the babies out to practice climbing on a jungle gym (this haircut was meant to be as a joke).  You have to take a teddy bear (Stuffy if you are American) out with each sloth as when some of them run into one another on the gym you have to intervene with a teddy otherwise they will bite one another (if they are room mates you don't need to as they will happily crawl over each other).  Here is Ralph intervening!

Occasionally one of the babies might descend the jungle gym for a toilet stop

having a poo takes a lot of concentration.

feeding time for the sloth babies

slow and steady wins the race

There are a lot of banana plantations on the Caribbean coast, the blue bags are to stop the bananas getting brown spots, so purely aesthetic, and once finished with they are left lying around to clog up rivers, get eaten by turtles and other wildlife.  We regularly hear planes spraying chemicals (oh must be the American government again) as the sanctuary is surrounded by Chiquita and Dole plantations.

We passed the port we are going to leave from on the way to the sloth sanctuary.  All the way along the road  are yards full of 'reefers', refrigerated containers to be filled with the world favourite fruit to be shipped to Europe and elsewhere.

The actual port

Cool name for a river

We met these guys at the hotel in San Jose and they kindly gave us a lift to the sanctuary as they were on their way to the neighbouring town of Cahuita, very handy.

On the first day we arrived just in time for feeding time so we shadowed the other volunteers and learnt about looking after our designated sloths.  As you can see they were very enthusiastic about our arrival.

dishing out the lunch for the sloths.  Carrots, camote (yam) and green beans and a spoon of dog food for the two toed and bunches of cecropia leaves for the three toed 'Bradys'

A three toed sloth - they have become our firm favourites as they are so interactive - It is not uncommon to be clambered on by them when cleaning out the cage.

This is Bruno, he has a bad back so he has to have a PE mat to lie on

There are a few sloths that choose to eat over their heads as well as upside down.  Many fall asleep while eating or forget to eat at all!

Some sloths are less camera shy than others

Buttercup is queen of the sanctuary and rightly the most famous sloth on the planet. She is amazing and deserves her fame, she spends her days being admired by visitors while she sits in her wicker chair. She was reaching out for me as I walked past her in this photo.  We could watch her for hours pulling her various Zen like poses.

A new species

This is Millie, she is in the exhibition centre and prefers to remain in this relaxed pose most of her days.  She is like a Buddha (in temperament and shape!).

We have been given official T - shirts for when the cruise ships come on tour 

Eddy and Marmaduke two of the three resident dogs here

my precious

We met these great guys on the bus to San Vito.  The guy on the right was a teacher who worked on a remote island off the coast of Canada teaching mostly indigenous Inuit children. The guy on the left was looking for somewhere to live outside America as he was convinced that the CIA or another government agency is spraying aluminium from the skies in order to combat global warming or control our minds. They are known as chemtrails on the internet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory he was happy to have his photo taken but didn't want it on the internet - hence the artistic smiley face.

After Corcovado we arranged to go birding in Coto Brus near San Vito with Rogers colleague Jason. Luckily for us Jason was also employed on a bird ringing project with Stanford University which meant we got to visit the bird ringing project in the morning and go birding at Las Cruces in the afternoon.

We stayed at a great B& B just outside San Vito.  On arrival we were greeted by the owner a very pregnant Kathleen who just a few hours later went into labour and had a baby boy.

View from the b&b

We visited a coffee plantation which was one of several sites in a Stanford University study comparing different habitats from coffee plantation through to primary forest with many grades of  forest and agriculture in between.  Here is a picture of an Olivaceous Picolet in the mist net.  

The same bird in the hand - this is Costa Rica's smallest woodpecker

Clay coloured robin, Costa Rica's national bird

weighing of birds can be somewhat undignified

Being caught in the net is pretty tiring for hummingbirds so they need a quick feed after being ringed.  Ringing hummingbirds is tricky as their legs are so small.

Going to check the nets in the coffee plantation

The social flycatcher has a brilliant red head but you can only really see it if you blow on its head

They took the usual fat scores and wing measurements as well as some feathers before attaching the ring

I think this is a blue throated golden tail

Hummingbirds also had Cellotape dabbed around their faces to pick up any pollen they may have had on them.

This humming bird didn't even need a pot to be weighed in

A fantastic bird the Tody Flycatcher

Cherie's Tanager which we've been seeing on bird feeders and in gardens.

This poor Manakin was kept in this net for two hours and fed plastic beads to record how fast they pass through the birds digestive system.  This will give researchers a rough idea of how far Manakins disperse seeds around the forest. We both thought that this wouldn't really tell you much unless you knew the movement patterns (which they do have) and toilet habits (which they don't have) of the birds. Also it is probably quite stressful for the bird making it poo more often than it normally would (making it fairly unhelpful data) also each species probably reacts to this stress differently (making them uncomparable).  To put it mildly we weren't convinced!!!!

The second site was secondary forest that had grown up from a coffee plantation last farmed 20 years ago.  It was encouraging to see many species now using the area, including our favourite Manakins.

Orange billed sparrow

Orange collared Manakin.  A few years ago at this site they had caught a gynandromorphic orange collared Manakin which had male plumage on one side of its body like the one here and the other half female plumage which is all green!  To get the idea here is a picture of a gynandromorphic cardinal http://news.discovery.com/animals/bi-color-cardinal-mystery-110531.html.

black hooded antshrike

Bananaquit sticking his tongue out - and defying gravity (forgot to spin the photo)

Green hermit Hummingbird

quite an impressive bill - add joke about expenditure here

We spent the afternoon birding around the Wilson Botanical Gardens and Las Cruces forest with Jason who could perfectly imitate all the birds.

This is Afrika a crazy little dog who was very pleased when we turned up to the botanic gardens as she could accompany us on our walk and she spent the next few hours hurtling at top speed through the undergrowth and rolling in ditches and piles of leaves (very probably scaring away some of the birds we wanted to watch - but she was still very entertaining), don't know how she doesn't get bitten by snakes!

A cecropia leaf umbrella

Looking up inside a strangler fig, the original tree trunk of the host tree has rotted away leaving the surrounding fig structure.

Ralph always keen to strip to his pants found yet another opportunity here......

...and this is what Afrika thought of it!

A jungle fairy

An observation tower in Las Cruces from which we looked across the tree tops and saw many new birds

View from the top

Agouti eating a banana stolen from the gardens bird feeder

More dogs, these were at our guides aunt and uncles house where he took us as he could guarantee we would see crested oropendulas, which we did.

Our guides dog chased passing vehicles at top speed which was both very amusing and quite tense making as he got very close to the wheels of the vehicles.

A random dog had appeared that day in their garden, it was very friendly, unlike their dog

Us with Jason displaying the Birds of Costa Rica book open on the manakin page!

That night in the town of San Vito which was incidentally founded by a group of Italian people in the 1960's we tried but failed to find a good pizza.  On the way home we called in along the town plaza to find a local schools football tournament underway.

The b&b Kathleen and her husband had built with an amazing Gaudi inspired eating area.  Her husband was a bird guide and gave us lots of top tips on where to find birds nearby.

Loba their dog