Read the previous part of this blog entry in: The walk to the barranca.
The way down into the barranca started first with walking down a slope with coffee plants and here and there mango trees. After a few minutes we came upon the zigzag track that would take us more and more down into the barranca.
After some time Esme spotted a butterfly. When it landed on a leaf for a rest I tried to make a photo without disturbing the resting insect. Since it was in a spot that was hard to take a picture, and the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S600 has a fixed LCD viewer which only showed a vague shape because of the weird angle, the above photo was quite a lucky shot.
We kept following the zigzag path down, and down. We both had the idea that the path hadn't been used for quite some time by humans since it was quite overgrown here and there compared to our last visit.
Suddenly Esme noticed a plant that resembled clover (or maybe it is even a clover species) with 4-foliate leaves amongst the several trifoliate leaves. Would this bring us luck?
Close to her find I looked under a stone, and saw a scorpion! The first one we saw that day. It looked like a juvenile Diplocentrus sp. but since I was not sure it was a juvenile of the species (probably Diplocentrus melici) we had seen on our previous visit I decided to capture the little scorpion.
At first I let it walk on my hand, but somehow It fell of my fingers, on my hand palm, and stung me. It was the second time I got stung that way (the first time was by a female Diplocentrus bereai) the previous time it hurt for several minutes, but this time only the entering of the stinger was what I felt, only a second or 3, and then nothing, no pain. It might have been a dry one (no venom released). Like I said to Esme: "A cactus hurts more".
Very close to where I found and captured the little scorpion I found a small tarantula under a stone. On our previous visit we had found none in the barranca, and this was the only one we saw that day.
And just a minute or two later I found our second juvenile scorpion of the day. This time I took also a photo of the scorpion together with a caliper as a reference for size.
Again, shortly after the second scorpion, I found another one, hiding under a stone. By now we had found as many scorpions as on our first visit to this barranca, in a much shorter time. After a few photos the scorpion tried to hide under dead leaves on the track.
After a few photos I tried one with flash, because their was little good light under all the foliage.
The scorpion in the above picture measures from the curve in the tail to the tip of the pedipalps (pincers, or claws) 4.5 cm.
To be continued...