Congratulations, BioD, on what must have been a stellar trip.  Only the finest hotels have scorpions in the sink ... One wonders what you did with her, after she posed for her close-up.

On your photographs:

Reptiles: Nice lizards.  A basilisk!  At the top of the second page is something that looks very much like a monitor lizard; but the Varanidae are not native to the Western Hemisphere, are they.  Also, the crocodiles smiled very sweetly for you, but it is too bad you saw no turtles.

Birds: Lovely close-up shots of hummingbirds!  How ever did you manage to get so close?  I shall see if I can ID that light-brown-and-white large bird which I assume is a raptor.  Also, there is what I think is an ibis.  But actually I am surprised you did not see more birds, especially waterfowl.

Arthropods: Amazing beetles!  Your daughters are mighty brave to handle them, while Daddy stands a safe distance away with his camera.  And that butterfly with transparent wings is gorgeous!  In the bottom right corner of the first page is something that looks very much like a spider, but I feel it may be a spider-mimicking insect: do you know which it is?

Mammals: How exciting!, a sloth walking (or whatever it is they do by way of moving) on the ground!, and a coatimundi!  Too bad the ocelot happened to be out-of-town.

On orangutans: Yes, the Mongabay page is very distressing.  The tone comes across as one of plangent helplessness: We can blame everyone from all around the world who are interested in cutting down the forests of Borneo, whether for lumber or for palm oil, but the global economy seems so hardened at this point, that it is not clear that anything effective can be done in time.  The figure with maps at the bottom of the page, showing the range of orangutans on three dates, is especially frightening: consider the great diminution of the range just between 1999 and 2004.

At least there was one bit of good news, maybe, again down toward the bottom: the CITES people managed to get an international ban on trading the slow loris, which, unfortunately for the slow loris, happens to be one of the cutest animals on the planet.  But since so much trade in exotic animals is done on the black market anyway, we cannot be confident that even now with the ban, the loris will be left in peace.

This should be a part of your "Make Good Eco-Behavior Look Cool" campaign: Collecting exotic animals should become a form of social leprosy.

On John Cain Carter, the Texan ex-patriot raising cattle in Brazil: Like you, I am of two minds on that.  Well, keep an eye out for what he is up to.

On declining numbers of grassland birds: Right, there you go, an excellent example of one kind of Western American attitude toward the land.  Dick Cheney's pals in Wyoming, punching holes, building access roads and erecting barriers all over the place, are at the top of the list, but are by no means the only ones who make life hard for the sage grouse, etc.

Great post, BioD.  Have fun during your woodland retreat.  I look forward to the pictures.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Some of us animal-rights types like to arrange a hierarchy of human-to-animal evolutionary relationships, by way of ordering our obligations toward the respective animal species.  This is done rather on the model of how some ethicists say our principal obligations are first to our family, then to our friends, then to our neighbors, then to our fellow-citizens, then to the citizens of allied or related nations, then to everybody else.

So, by that reasoning: We should prefer the interests of the great apes to those of, say, dogs; and those of dogs to those of mice; and those of mice to those of chickens; and those of chickens to those of turtles; and so forth.  From what I have read, the people who reason like that seem to take the hierarchy down as far as some arthropods (e.g. lobsters) and mollusks (e.g. octopuses and squids), and stop there.

I myself do not find this very interesting.  For one thing, there is a great deal of subjectivity which rightly should be taken into account, above the evolutionary relationships -- even as in human relationships, we often have greater obligations to our friends than to our relatives.  In fact, Primates seem to be more closely related to Rodents than to Carnivora, including our beloved cats and dogs, and to the hoofed mammals, including the similarly beloved and admired horses, cetaceans and elephants.

To say nothing of our beloved chickens, over in a completely different Class.

Anyway, that objection does not matter much right now.  What matters is, if the consideration that we are very close cousins to orangutans moves at least a few people to do something beneficial for them, then by all means we should do our best to put that consideration out there.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Hey, all:

You both are right on the money.  The bird is an example of convergent evolution, in which a falcon has adopted both the appearance and feeding behavior of an accipiter.  My old Peterson guide states: "unfalconlike in flight".  And the Herpeto- prefix does refer to its diet of reptiles.  Related overlapping species, in range and habitat, are Collared Forest Falcon Micrastur semitorquatus and Barred Forest Falcon M. ruficollis.  

These species (and many others) get as far North as the northernmost cloudforest in Mexico at Rancho del Cielo Preserve, where the clouds from the Gulf of Mexico collide with the Sierra de Tamaulipas.  

I wish I could be more positive about their status, and the others you pictured, but with population increases, development pressure, habitat fragmentation, etc., etc., etc....  Sometimes I think pictures and skins and other preserved specimens are all we will have left.  Sorry for the depressing note....

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

Thanks, David, for mentioning that place, which I had never heard of.  Most of the hits on the first two Google pages are about Ronald Reagan's ranch of the same name (?!), but there is some interesting information that can be found.  I doubt we shall ever go to that part of Mexico, but it is nice to know what there is of interest.

I gather it is somewhere between Gomez Farias and the Cerro del Tigre, and that students of entomology and ornithology from Texas often go there.  And getting there has its hardships, or at least it did ten years ago, when the very detailed guide in planeta.com was written.  The author serenely says, "Be nice to the natives, and do not whine if the store in Gomez Farias does not carry Diet Coke or Doctor Pepper, as I once heard students from Texas Tech do."

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Hey, all:

Yes, I let out a howl of pain when I was reminded  that that "B" actor/figurehead President had a place of the same name.  

There is a wonderful description of the area in a beautiful book "At a Bend in Mexican River" by George M. Sutton, who was one of the premier U.S.  ornithologists and naturalists.  Specifically on nearby Rancho Cielito in the lowland coastal plain, it covers the area quite well, and yes, the jumping off place for Rancho del Cielo--at least used to be-- was Gomez Farias.  I would take several first-born as collateral for the loan of my copy of the book.  

I have a tenuous connection to the location through family/geography, but few know much about it.  The last I knew of it, it was still  sponsored/operated by the Gorgas Science Society (Foundation?) of Univ. Texas at Brownsville.  The sharp ones here (all) will recognize the Gorgas name.

The area BioD visited in Costa Rica is rich in Neotropical diversity (no news there) and much of that extends up into the 'Rancho's' area.  I heard someone estimate, ~30 years ago, that there were ~200 undescribed species of ferns--one general taxon--in the mountains surrounding Rancho del Cielo.  

Heh heh, I have gone on so much I could spoil the book for its readers!  Would not want to do that!

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

I seem to have been wrong to call the Laughing Falcon a "true falcon."  It does indeed belong to the family Falconidae, but not to the subfamily Falconinae, which are the "true falcons," all assigned to the genus Falco, including the peregrine and the American sparrow hawk.

In an old but very nicely written popular reference book, by Oliver L. Austin, Jr., "Birds of the World," with splendid illustrations by Arthur Singer, we read:
<<
The family Falconidae is another heterogeneous group, varying from the swiftly darting little falconets 6 1/2 inches in length to the 24-inch Gyrfalcon of the arctic tundras and from the swift-flying predatory Peregrine, Hobby, and Merlin to the comparatively sluggish, scavenging caracaras. ...

The subfamily Herpetotherinae contains the rather primitive [!] Laughing Falcon and the four forest falcons of continental Central and South America [including the two that David mentioned].  These dashing, soft-feathered predators of the tropic and subtropical forests live largely on reptiles.
>>

No doubt much work has been done on the systematics of the Falconidae since 1961.  In any event, I expect I shall remain a bit confused, no matter what the experts are saying nowadays.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!