Marsupial frogs

Meet Gastrotheca psustes....

...otherwise known as the Marsupial frog. Coral found this one hiding beside a vernal pool in the pasture down to Gasualpampa. They are called marsupial frogs because they have a pouch on their back teardrop shaped just above their butt. They use this pouch to carry their brood, tiny little tadpoles carried around like kangaroo joeys in their pouch. She carries them to a small body of water, much like these pools in the pasture, where like most frogs (save those born whole, this happens!) they undergo an amazing metamorphosis. From chubby tadpoles to ungainly polliwogs eventually into full grown adults. Quite an amazing life cycle and an amazing find! After all marsupial frogs like this one are critically endangered. Surely this find was a lucky foreshadowing of the night to come.

Winding up the Gasualpampa valley and following the stream slowly down that night we collected almost all the different species and color morphs on our chart with Alejandro. Teeny little Pristimantis orestes no bigger than your pinky nail, red eyed Pristamantis ¨foldy¨, and even Pristimantis pycnodermis, the females getting 20 times as large as the males! By the end of it all groping home by headlamp near midnight we are exhuasted but happy and enamored of frogs. The elusive tribe of amphibians chorusing through the misty wet night. Lucky beyond believe we even glimpsed those rarest of rare, oddest of birds a pootoo. Pootoo´s are like giant nighthawks cryptically camouflaged and seldom ever seen blended in atops the broken trucks of trees hunting by night. These eyes have seen some things and seen some critters but that is only the second time I have ever been lucky enough to see a pootoo.

Pootoo´s AND marsupial frogs all in one night! Almost too much to believe and this is only our first day out...