Phil’s night walk is a ritual at Bosque del Cabo—who would want to miss seeing the infinitesimal creatures, even a dozen of the nocturnal habitants, that range around the main lodge?—but its 5:45 start coincides with happy hour. Just do it. Shining a light on the understory of the rainforest, his night walk is an elixir more potent than any cocktail.

Guiding at the lodge since April 2001 (after familiarizing himself with the area over the previous decade) Philip Davison is its resident biologist plus a research fellow for Friends of the Osa.

“I’m a Yorkie,” he told us earlier that day, explaining his British accent and showing us a photo taken in Norway where he worked after graduating, in 1979, with a BSc in Zoology/Geology from the University of Portsmouth. “Would you recognize me?” he asked.

"Viking" Phil in the 80s in Norway where he worked in forestry (Photo courtesy Phil)

Definitely a daylight tour (Photo courtesy Phil)

None of these caimans (crocs) on our night walk (Photo courtesy Phil)

(Those snake-gators you saw us wearing in photos from previous blogs were mandatory here, Phil cautioning the dozen or so of us to walk single-file, no dawdling, especially near the swimming pool.)

Having never been on a guided night walk, Magellan and I ditched our headlamps for the pen-like nightlights the lodge provides and paid attention to Phil’s directions: hold it on the right side of your head at eye level and scan the light into the rainforest, walking slowly, quietly. Nocturnal animals have tapetum lucidum, a retroreflector in their eyes that enables them to see in the dark, and when you shine your penlight on their pupils, an iridescent glow is reflected, the colour depending on the specific creature.

The Golden Orb Spider is named for the colour of its impressively strong web

Have a look at how the Golden Orb’s amazing silky web is being used https://www.wired.com/2009/09/spider-silk/

The Daggerwing Butterfly with its exaggerated-parachute wing shape

The Frangipani Caterpillar with its aposematic yellow bands and vermilion head

Look at its black horn at the end of its posterior

No easy task is it to have your nightlight reveal a frog on the forest floor, never mind an insect on the underside of a long leaf like Phil does, confirming why it’s essential, especially on night walks, to be led by a local guide. Otherwise, you are, literally, in the dark.

An agile climber with acute vision, this 60s lime-coloured lizard is the Green Canopy Anole

The very commonly found Asian House Gecko, (Hemidactylus frenatus)

The Cat-eyed Snake keeps growing throughout its life and can be a metre long

Many of these little creatures don’t wander far. If, like Phil, you live in the area, you know their address, their dining-out habits, their newest hangout.

Common in Costa Rica, the Marine Toad has a skin that’s toxic to many animals

Its deceiving name, Savage’s Thin-Fingered Frog, comes from biologist Jay Savage

The Bolivian Frog is a little cousin of the larger Savage's Thin-fingered Frog

For defence, Phil notes that the male Gladiator Frog has a bony spur behind its thumb that it pokes into the eye of another male to blind or kill it

Professorial, Phil brings to his night walks a Wikipedian knowledge of tropical ecology, adding layer upon layer of information about each critter he finds: its kingdom, phylum, class, genus, species, appearance, behaviour, reproduction, distribution, plus a story or two about its Osian life. Educational blanketing while you wait your turn, patiently (well, you start out that way) to zero your camera in on, say, a Dendropsophus ebraccatus (Phil’s words), a banana frog (my D-student take-away). Anthropomorphizing, I imagined the cat-eyed snake (sorry Phil, the Leptodeira septentrionalis), nodding her? (she seemed longer) approval of his description of her culinary habit of swallowing a whole red-eyed tree frog, alive.

After exploring nocturnal life in the quiet reverberation of the rainforest, we saw why this is truly happy hour—the beginning, for us, of what we did on many a night in Costa Rica.

Navigation

To see more of what Phil is up to in the wildlife capital of Costa Rica have a look at his Twitter and his blog.

For more info on the tours we took, go to Backcountry Journeys.

Baker, Christopher P.  MOON Costa Rica. Berkeley: Avalon Travel, 2015. Our favourite guide to this wonderful country.

Bosque del Cabo Rainforest Lodge—where the rainforest meets the ocean , where Phil is the resident biologist, has a comprehensive website that details everything you’d want to know about staying here, which we highly recommend.