My Search for a Boa Constrictor

/ Seth Inman / 1 Comment

Growing up in Costa Rica, I was always interested in snakes. Finding the bones of a tiny garden snake and then a group of baby coral snakes in my back yard generated more curiosity than fear, and being able to hold a baby boa constrictor that my friend had found in his yard was an amazing experience.

Since then, I have read about Burmese pythons invading Florida and looked for opportunities to photograph snakes at every opportunity. Last summer, in Kerala, I was lucky enough to find a green vine snake while hiking, but what I’d really like to find is a boa constrictor, perhaps due to my childhood experiences, or because the species is often held in captivity as pets or zoo attractions and I want to find one free in the wild.

This morning I went on a trail hike with Harvey, and we saw a group of howler monkeys, several birds, and a couple variegated squirrels. But it was towards the end of our excursion that we found a creature worth seeing that wasn’t warm-blooded. As we walked on a dirt road between two rows of tall trees, something large rustled loudly in front of us. On the back of the blur twisting through the grass on the side of the road, I thought I saw markings I recognized. Maybe this was a young boa constrictor! I quickly cut left while pulling out my camera and approached the still-moving snake. It was already climbing a tree, and I managed to take a few shots once it was up in the branches. I could easily see that it was yellow mixed with a much darker color, maybe green or black, but it was quickly clear that what we were looking at wasn’t a boa constrictor, since the yellow was so bright and its head wasn’t arrow-shaped. When we got back to the lodge, Harvey and I carefully reviewed the few pictures and attempted to identify the snake with a few guidebooks. Based on the colors, size, and where we found it, we decided it was a tiger rat snake. Despite our fortune at seeing such a large snake in the first place, I couldn’t help wishing it had been a boa.

Better luck next time.

But my search for the boa constrictor is far from over. Every time I hike I peer into the undergrowth or crane my neck to scour nearby branches. Perhaps I will have more chances at night, since the species hunts nocturnally. I plan on going on a few night walks to find the elusive strangler.

Some details on the tiger rat snake: This black and yellow species eats small mammals, frogs, and birds. It lives in trees or open areas at environmental edges, which is where we found it: at the edge of a dirt road not far from the mangroves and right next to a plot of trees planted by MR guests. When it sensed us, it slid through the grass and up a tree, giving evidence for the guidebook referring to the species as an “astonishingly agile climber,” as well as the Mexican common name voladora, or flyer. According to Twan Leenders, the Dutch herpetologist responsible for “A Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Costa Rica,” the tiger rat snake, or Spilotes pullatus, can occasionally “stand their ground when approached closely and employ an impressive threat display. The neck and the front of the body are compressed and sometimes lifted off the ground; the tail tip is rattled simultaneously, creating an audible buzz.” Although this behavior would have presented an awesome photograph opportunity, I’m glad the one we found didn’t feel threatened enough to defend itself aggressively.

The Estuary Part Two: Update

/ Seth Inman / Leave a comment

*The nested bird in my last post was a Green-backed Heron, and the woodpeckers were Lineated Woodpeckers. Other birds I’ve encountered are Great Blue Herons, White-tipped Doves, Muscovy Ducks, several hummingbirds and kingfishers, and more.

My kayak trip was the same as usual, with constant bird sightings and several howler monkeys in the trees above me. What changed was the end of the excursion. I decided to try kayaking down the stream of estuary water flowing into the ocean and see if I couldn’t catch a few waves close to shore before calling it a day. The stream of water was fairly shallow, with little piles of sand causing tiny swells of the sort seen over rocks in whitewater rivers. I had fun navigating these “water-bumps” and eventually made it into the ocean after a bit of shimmying past the shallower spots where I got grounded. I immediately set to getting past the already-broken waves so that I could catch one as it rose, like one does while boogie boarding or surfing. After getting buffeted around a bit by the incoming waves, I managed to turn the kayak around just in time to catch a small wave back to shore, paddling as I neared the sand so that momentum would carry me up the beach. Delighted by these first results, I continued to attempt kayak surfing for the next fifteen minutes before it got dark. Once it did, I dragged my kayak in and looked forward to doing the same the next day.

However, the estuary was a completely different place the next day. Very much open to the ocean, the mangrove sanctuary was continuously losing water. Slightly wary, I entered my kayak and paddled forwards. At first, the differences I noticed didn’t seem too grave: the water was shallower, but also very clear – I could actually see the bottom at some points. As I continued into deeper waters, the water darkened again but stayed quite shallow at some points. Once I got to the open area with the mangrove trees dotted around, I was able to distinctly see the effects of an estuary at a different point in its cycle: the mangrove trees had water-markings on them showing that the water levels had descended well over a foot. Here are some before-and-after shots: Black mangrove tree with distinct water markings, and branch before and after.

To read more about estuaries and their cycles, you can visit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s educational tutorial. Follow the links on the right-hand column to learn about their importance ecosystem services and more.

 

The Estuary Part One

/ Seth Inman / 1 Comment

The estuary waters are always flat and calm, with practically no current apart from what the wind kicks up, and the OceanKayaks’ sensitivity to motion allows you to maneuver very adeptly around mangrove trees or floating logs. All the kayaks are doubles, but I have only gone out alone in the back, and later the middle, seats, joined either by Harvey in another kayak or by the winged microfauna (who tag along even when Harvey is keeping me company).

The estuary runs for over a kilometer and a half in a winding path, but there is also a larger open area with mangrove trees dotted inside it. The trees in this wide space are lower and farther apart, allowing you to get up close to the tree and check out the birds’ nests within. A couple times I have been able to see birds sitting in the nests up close, and it is fun to test how slowly you can approach them without scaring them away.

Paddling the estuary is a great activity because you can choose your pace very easily. If you want to take two strokes and then slowly glide along for a minute while looking for birds in the trees, then you can do so, as long as you make sure not to drift too far to one side and bump into a mangrove. If it is already getting dark and the mosquitoes are taking advantage of this fact, then you can see how much of a wake you can leave as you speed towards the beach and watch fish jump out of the water to get out of your way. I generally use the slow and photograph-friendly method on the way in to the estuary, where I can get shots of caterpillars or woodpeckers, and reserve the faster cardio-workout for the way back. I have been thinking about taking a kayak out onto the cove, where the waters seem pretty calm once you get past the first couple waves. I’ve never been on a sit-on-top kayak in the ocean before, so I’ll let you know how that goes.

Park Punditry

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

Canyon de Chelly; photo by Timothy Egan

Michael’s post dealing with the intersection of man and nature is crossing paths with a bit of wise observation from one of the great observers and writers plying the American West these days.

Reserves, the FRA, and tigers

/ Michael Muller / Leave a comment

I’m at the experience desk at Cardamom County, waiting for my first set of afternoon check-ins as a trainee. While waiting, I found some interestingly related articles about the Forest Rights Act, which is a piece of legislation passed in India in 2006. For all intents and purposes, the FRA allows tribal communities to petition the government for rights to lands they’ve historically dwelt on. The controversy surrounding this legislation is based on questions of anthropogenic cohabitation, deforestation, and the honesty with which the government handles petitions.

Here are a couple articles from India Together addressing certain of these issues.

From India Together,

“Unable to bear the hardships of leading a dignified life living cheek by jowl with wildlife, a large percentage of tribes living in forest areas crave for relocation, provided of course they get livelihood options, and are able to retain their cultural and tribal identity. Yet, anthropologists contend that tribes have been coexisting peacefully for thousands of years in wildlife reserves while the concept of wildlife and biodiversity conservation is nascent. In line with this, they say that relocation of the indigenous people will rob them of their dignity.”

“…the FRA says is that the development projects have to be appropriate; they have to be ecologically right, culturally sensitive and they should benefit people. The kind of projects which are coming up are mindlessly extracting water and forest resources on which people depend; these are not really ‘development’ projects. And if the FRA is coming in the way of such projects then it’s a good stumbling block to have.”

Of course, the Periyar Tiger Reserve (where I happen to be living) stands as a sort of counter-example to these more pessimistic perspectives on the FRA. Here’s a fairly old article (from 2007) about local, former poachers patrolling the park at night, protecting the wildlife from unauthorized exploiters.

I’m interested to find out if these policies still exist at Periyar. I’ll let you know what I find out.

Water, (bottled) water everywhere…

/ Michael Muller / 2 Comments

Since I arrived in Bangalore airport on June 3, I’ve heard about Baba Ramdev and his highly publicized, nine-day fast. What I learned today was that, while Ramdev was being treated for weakness due to his hunger strike, another, less-publicized hunger striker, Swami Nigamananda, was being treated in the same hospital. Nigamananda had been fasting for nearly four months (114 days!) to protest illegal pollution in the River Ganga, a holy site for practicing Hindus and also a vital source of water for nearly 400 million Indians. He died this morning, the last days of his strike overshadowed by Ramdev’s.

Before I left the U.S., many friends and family members had told me emphatically, don’t drink the water! When I would ask why, they replied as if it was common sense: well, it’s dirty. Some had apocryphal stories about some friend of theirs who had gotten sick after drinking from a tap in India, and I typically left it at that. But Nigamananda’s death raised the question again in my mind: why is water in India dirty? Is this just some immutable fact, some geological curiosity, or is it rather a human-created problem worth addressing?

These questions aren’t easily answered, just as any question posed about a nation as diverse and large as India is not. There are as many reasons why some water is dirty and some is clean, and investment in hi-tech treatment facilities isn’t always the difference (though it’s a start). I’m only recently wading into the dense information surrounding Indian water policy, the role of industrial polluters along India’s rivers in dirtying the water, and what is being thought of to clean up the situation.

Because let’s not forget: if clean tap water can’t be had, besides boiling all water, the alternative for the consumer is…bottled water. In the States, more and more people are coming to an awareness of the destructiveness of bottled water, but in most areas of the U.S. clean tap is readily available and people have a simple choice to make in how they get it. In India, this choice is not so simple.

The availability of clean water is a pressing environmental, health, and national security problem for the resident of India. But it’s also a problem for the traveller. As the number of empty bottles of water in my room mounts, and as the monsoons continue to dump rain on me all day,  I have to think: am I doing everything I can to combat this problem? As I increase the amount of boiled water I drink, I also am inclined to think more broadly. I’ll let you know what I come up with as I investigate the problem further.

In the mean time, here’s a video (by the same women who did ‘The Story of Stuff,’ which I highly recommend, though I sometimes can’t stand her tone) about bottled water v. tap water, with an emphasis on the U.S. India makes a guest appearance about half-way through, though in an unexpected way.

First Two Days at Morgan’s Rock

/ Seth Inman / 1 Comment

Day 1: After dinner, the rain had stopped and it was now pitch black outside, but the wind coming off the ocean made it feel cooler. The refreshing breeze helped me recollect the day’s highlights: Over a million native hardwood trees have been planted here since my father, my brother and I had been camping on this property a decade earlier; some of the guys I remember from then are now working as naturalist guides or kitchen staff; the organic farm is much more extensive, and hundreds of guests have come and gone from their bungalows.

The mind and breeze’s sweeps finished, and now reading, I heard crunching from the corner. At first I didn’t quite register it, and continued reading. When it continued, the interruption made me curious. I slowly stood and leaned around the large wooden column that was blocking my view of the corner in question.

The adolescent opossum and I both froze. It was about the size of a squirrel, and it had a Halloween crab dangling from its mouth. When it looked away I decided that it either couldn’t see me very well or didn’t see me as a threat, so I slowly inched my hand towards the camera that lay on the table up against my knees. Silently cursing the camera’s malfunctions that prevented me from being able to change any settings, including zoom, I turned and took a snapshot. The flash didn’t startle it, so testing my luck further I very slowly stepped over the table and around the column. About six feet away the opossum snapped out of the trance, and ran off with the crab. By chance it ran in a direction where it would have to climb a few steps, slowing it just enough to allow me a last photo as it hurried off.

small possum

Day 2: As a slight drizzle fell through the trees, we sat on wooden benches fixed in the back of a pickup truck on the way to the finca from the lodge. The finca is essentially a farm, of trees and livestock, that is connected to Morgan’s Rock and provides much of its food and maintenance services. After a few minutes it started raining hard, but neither I nor the two guests, a man and woman from Atlanta, minded getting wet after having endured the heat of the past couple days. Bismar, our guide, handed me his radio and cell phone to pass through the rear window to our driver, and I gave up my borrowed camera as well. Just as one of the guests was pulling on her travel poncho, which looked like a translucent red trash bag, Bismar called for a stop. Pointing, he said simply, “sloth,” and we looked up to watch a drenched and sorry-looking two-toed sloth inch its way from one branch to another, fur plastered to its body and spiking up on its head. “They sleep 14 hours a day,” said Bismar, “and only poop once a week.” I added that when they did relieve themselves, they had to do so on the ground. “If I had to climb down my tree every time, I’d probably only do it once a week too,” joked the guest to his wife. A few minutes later we reached the reforestation site, and met the man in charge of equestrian activity, Don Jesus, and started our horseback ride on the road towards the trail. Despite the rain, the horses easily climbed the slope up to the lookout point at the top of the wooded hill.

ocean view