Wildlife Sightings Round-Up from Picaflor — Description

Posted 17 years ago on   •   Last updated on June 1, 2016   •   Reading time estimated at 3 minutes

Time for another wildlife sightings round-up from Picaflor! Here are a few tales about the animals I’ve seen in the jungle and around the hacienda lately.

Pico and I went for a swim yesterday. On our way to the quebrada, we sighted a red-and-green macaw. On our way back, I saw what might have been an olive tree runner climbing a tree, circling its trunk. I also saw a tiny lizard creeping through the thatch of our roof. Very cute.

Leafing through Reptiles and Amphibians of the Amazon by R.D. and Patricia Bartlett, it dawned on me that whatever left those tracks on the riverbank was a lizard, one that doesn’t drag its body as it walks. Lots of possibilities…

Yay! The frog is back in the bathroom! I was worried because we hadn’t seen it in over a week, but Pico obviously wasn’t concerned.

Pico’s been worried about Ron, though, because he hasn’t seen the oversized rodent for something like five days. From what I’ve gathered, Ron was found motherless when he was just a baby and was nursed by the Picaflor family. He still comes to eat every couple days (I bought him rabbit food when I was in Puerto), and he’s treated like a pet.

This wildlife sightings round-up from Picaflor Research Centre includes a tiny lizard, here seen in the corner of the shower.

I noticed a tiny lizard in the shower this morning, only slightly longer than my thumb with its tail, and half the width. I left it alone, thinking of waiting until the afternoon for my shower.

Good idea. We ground corn and pumped water twice today, plus I hiked for over an hour. Sweaty!

When I went to the shower (water problems being resolved for the time being), the lizard was still there. I tried to make it move by gently pushing it with the handle of my toothbrush, but it couldn’t clamber up the slick sides of the shower.

I picked it up and of course, it bit me. I’m sure tickling me wasn’t its objective, so lucky me.

Random Wildlife Sightings Round-Up from Picaflor

  • a gecko in the kitchen
  • an opossum in the food storage cage (eating bananas)
  • a hot pink butterfly
  • a tiny, metallic orange hummingbird
  • a mauve-ish butterfly
  • something raccoon-like with a ringed tail caught in the glare of my flashlight, perhaps a trejon

Saw another lizard I can’t identify, this time a huge brown-black one, about three times the size of the largest Amazon whiptail I’ve seen.