Iguana iguana
Drawn from open occurrence records inside Osa Peninsula, aggregated onto a 10 km grid.
Occurrence records measure where people looked and found something, which is not the same as where the animal is. This is a relative likelihood, not a probability.
Records exist for January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December. A quiet month can mean the animal was absent, or that nobody was looking.
A big male green iguana is two meters of dinosaur theater, whip tail included, in colors that despite the name run from green through orange to slate, crowned with a spiny crest and a solar panel's confidence. They are the most visible large reptile in Costa Rica, stacked along riverside branches, because basking above water is a survival strategy: threatened, an iguana simply falls, crashes through the canopy, and swims off underwater like it planned the whole thing. A third light-sensing organ on the top of the skull, the parietal eye, watches the sky for hawk-shaped shadows while the real eyes mind everything else. Adults are almost entirely vegetarian, which surprises everyone.
Basks communally, males defending display branches with head-bobs and dewlap flags. Cold snaps literally drop them from trees.
River-edge trees in mid-morning sun; a low angle across the water gets crest, dewlap and reflection in one frame. Watch for the head-bob display.
Skip any roadside stall offering iguana handling, and never feed wild ones; both feed a capture trade the species does not need.