#11 Parrots, #12 Toucan at Carara National Park... plus other wonderful discoveries!

Last Friday Mom, Maddie, Joshua and Ethan headed out for a field trip to Carara National Park. It is only an hour from our home and it was an awesome day exploring. We are studying ecology this year in school and have been focusing on different forests... the different layers of the forest, and the plant and animal life that live there. Our day in Carara National Park was spent exploring what we have been learning! We also saw two more animals that are listed on our scavenger hunt!

#12 on the Scavenger hunt, the Toucan! This picture is taken
through the telescope we used to get a close look at the bird.
Toucans live on the emergent layer of the forest, the very highest of all. 

#11 Parrots. This type of parrot is everywhere is Costa Rica. 
The other day Joshua and Mom went for a walk and 
we saw a ton of these green parrots flying around. 
We also have some that make their home on a roof of a neighbors home. 
In addition to these we saw beautiful macaws. 
They were way to high up to get a good picture... but they were amazing and beautiful. 

This Boa was directly above us in the understory laver of the forest. 
We couldn't see his head but we could track at 
least 10 feet of his body.... Josh says: It was awesome!

A millipede

This spider is called the golden spider. He was beautiful! 
We were all a little freaked out when our tour guide 
went and picked him up... 
but it was awesome to get a close look at this amazing arachnid.

We learned a lot about trees... One of the most amazing is 
the strangling fig, pictured here behind us. 

Aerial roots

This pretty flower is part of the ginger family.

The next three pictures are of different mushrooms that we have seen... Finding mushrooms and learning about their niche in the ecosystem has been one of our favorite things!

Beautiful white mushrooms

These mushrooms were tiny, less than an inch long, but hundreds were on this tree.

This bright orange mushroom was incredible.
We learned that eating one is fatal to humans, but they are beautiful!

School happens everywhere here. When we are walking through this forest it was especially amazing to see large signs (in English and Spanish) reinforcing everything we have been learning in books. We are also becoming avid bird watchers. The variety of birds in Costa Rica is amazing and we love finding the bird in books and learning it's name.

A sign at Carara discussing the different layers of the forest.

                                      

A variety of this bird can be found pictured above.... It didn't have a striped tail though.