January 19, 2015
The Morning Walk

The Morning Walk was a blissful hike down the beach, looking for hatchling tracks and doing one last sweep after all the night patrols. Nathan and I started out from the Hatchery at 5:00 am, while it was still dark outside. The first light of morning began to appear in the east, and the distant calls of howler monkeys could be heard in the forest. A nice cool breeze blew across the beach, but it was still t-shirt weather.

We headed south along the beach and within a few minutes, Nathan spotted the telltale tracks of hatchlings heading toward the sea. We followed the tracks up into the higher part of the beach and found what we were looking for, an olive ridley nest. Nathan dug around gently in the sand and found one more hatchling that hadn't quite made it out of the nest. He handed it to me and I carried it down to the surf line, so we could get it into the ocean before the sun came up. The hatchling was a little slow at first, but once the first ripple of a wave lapped against him, he became very vigorous and was soon swimming off into his new home.

We continued down the beach, exploring around the intertidal zone. Nathan showed me the tracks of a type of snail that is extremely predatory. He took a small creature and placed it at the front of one of the tracks, where the snail was submerged in the sand. After a couple of taps on the creature, the snail rose up from the sand and pounced! It was a startling sight to see, and seems even more strange to use the words snail and pounce in the same sentence. The snail absorbed the creature and was bulging out from the effort as he burrowed himself in the sand again to digest. Watch a video of this type of snail in action.

We got down to marker #36, the southern end of Playa Grande. Just a little beyond the marker is the mouth of the Tamarindo Estuary, where we had been in Enriques's boat the day before. We found some crocodile tracks in the sand and it looked like the croc had come out of the water and lounged on the beach for a while. Then we looked out into the middle of the estuary and saw him raising just the top of his head and snout above the water.

Crocodile tracks near the estuary

We turned around and continued back up Playa Grande, walking along the highest part of the beach so we could see hatchling tracks if there were any. We checked on a couple of nests on the way back, including the olive ridley nest we had seen first thing in the morning. A further search through the nest did not produce any more live hatchlings, although we did find a dead one. It seemed to have a deformity in its shell, so probably would never have made it even with our help.

Next it was time to cover the north end of the beach and up to Playa Ventanas. By this time the sun was high in the sky and the heat of the day was coming on strong. Nevertheless, when we reached the big rock at the gateway to Playa Ventanas, the beach was deserted and it felt like it was still very early morning. At the northern end of the beach, we explored around a small estuary that is mostly dry now, but with a small channel of remaining water. We found a few more crocodile tracks here, probably a very small croc.

A coati climbs down a tree, inland from Playa Ventanas

From Playa Ventanas, we walked back along the road for a little bit, then turned onto a small path that led back to the beach. The path went through a small forested area and there we saw a group of about six or seven coatis (Nasua narica) climbing down from a tree and moving into the shelter of a large tangle of roots. Known in Costa Rica as pizote, this relative of the raccoon can easily be identified by its long snout and extremely long tail. We watched them scramble among the trees for a while and then continued down the path to the beach.

The path came out of the forest and onto Playa Ventanas, right at the big rock at the southern end of the beach. From there, it was just a short walk back to the Hatchery and the station. All in all, a beautiful and educational Morning Walk.