A visit to the Montangne Matoury

Before landing on Rochambeau- Airport I got a nice view over the lowland forests and savannahs of the region close to Cayenne. From above the mountains next to Cayenne are not impressively high but they are thickly forested, as is the interior of the country. Behind the capital there is a see of green as far as you can see.

 

The Montagne de Matoury is situated very close to Cayenne. The entrance to this reserve can be reached within half an hour.  On Sundays it is a little bit busy with people who do their exercises there, running along the forest-trail. The start of the trail is used as a picnic spot as well.
But, even when in French Guyana this could be considered a busy place; it still is a nice walk and not nearly a tenth as busy as any Thai national park on Sundays.

For those who walk slowly through the park and look around there is a lot to see.
The forest is secondary on the lower slopes of the hill and basically primary on the top and plateau.  The trees are not loaded with epiphytes as I have seen in other tropical forests and the types of epiphytes you see are mainly large to very large plants; for instance tank-bromeliads (Aechmaeas) of more then a meter in width.  A lot of Philodendron and Syngonium-species climb along the trunks and having reached ample sunlight in the top, grow into the large mature form and start flowering.  Orchids and Peperomia’s, which I have found abundant on Costa Rican or Ecuadorian lower mountain slopes, are almost absent here. On first sight quite a disappointment. The plants in the under story and on lower trunks and roots compensate a lot for these missing smaller epiphytes.

The under story is dominated by ferns, palms and Heliconia’s, loads of Araceae species and a hundred plant species more. The ferns show a variety of leaf forms and shades of green, from almost blue to dark reddish brown and golden yellow.
The common idea about ferns is that these are shadow plants, who can survive in a minimum of light. That is not the case for all ferns. In fact, on the really dark spots in the forest we do not find many ferns. There Maranthaceae and Araceae are much more abundant. Ferns need some light and most of the time they do much better when get an occasional ray of sun. Also, they tend to like rather dry-places in the forest and can be found in abundance along ridges and steep slopes, where water seeps away quickly.

 

Atelopus flavescens

After a few hundred meters the path passes a small stream. A new sound is added to the cacophony of the forest. As if someone is winding up a tiny alarm clock. I know this sound, for I have kept this species for years. It is Atelopus flavescens.  In spite of its bright yellow and orange color on the back and salmon-pink belly, these frogs are very hard to locate between the bright yellow dead bamboo-leaves and they move slowly, so they do not attract much attention. If it wasn’t for their calls I wouldn’t have found them. And hadn’t Joep Moonen of Emerald Jungle Village drawn my attention to them, I might even have missed that.
In the recent dying off of frog-species the genus Atelopus seems to be especially threatened. It was quite a relief to me to see (and hear) they are still rather abundant here. But lowland-species are rarely affected by the Chytrid mold that kills the frogs on higher elevations.

 

Dendrobates tintctorius

Another nice species that is supposed to live here is Dendrobates tinctorius.  On Matoury a blue/white and black form is the original type. But there have been found others occasionally, like the large yellow/black forms that are normally found near Saul in the south of French Guyana. Joep Moonen suspect’s hobbyists who caught them in Saul, but did not dare to take them with them through the customs of Cayenne or elsewhere have released these there.
The result could have been that these newcomers had spoiled the original blue/white/black form. The yellow black ones were however released on the lower parts of Matoury while the blue/white/blacks are restricted to the primary forest on the top. The yellow-ones have disappeared now. Nevertheless I must stress that such a dumping of frogs from another location could pose a serious threat to the original population!

 

Other frogs

Other frogs that crossed my path were an occasional Colostethus and some Bufo’s with pointed noses and pointed parotids, which are often called Bufo typhonius. There is, frog wise, one important difference with my experiences in Ecuador and Costa Rica: No Eleutherodactylus. Everywhere else in Tropical America (where I have been) Eleutherodactylus species are abundant and often the most common frogs to be found night and day. Here in Matoury
I found none, and during my stay in French Guyana I have encountered only one Eleutherodactylus specimen.

 

Lizards

When I visited the Matoury, it was dry season and frogs tend to hide away most of the time. But lizards enjoy the dry season. Everywhere in the forest where sun hits a open site, the bright green Kentropyx calcaratus could be seen running over the forest floor or climbing over trunks, roots and thin branches. Kentropyx is a teiid lizard but being European I cannot avoid thinking about it as a typical lacertid lizard. Only occasionally it has been kept in captivity and then it was supposed to be a real rainforest species, which was supposed to like warmth and humidity. I expect however that keeping these lizards warm and dry during the day and cooler and humid during the night would be more according to their wishes.

The other common ground-dwelling lizard there, the large Ameiva ameiva lives even more like a lacertid. These lizards are even more restricted to sunny and warm sites then the Kentropyx.
As a contrast to these a third teiid lives in Matoury, but Neusticurus bicarinatus prefers wet and dark places. They live on the forest floor near streams and when threatened they flee into the water. These reddish brown lizards look as if they have just started to evolve into crocodilians. Nice animals to see and well suited to keep in a paludarium. The problem is, they are very secretive and will only rarely show themselves and even then a flash of a lizard heading for cover is all you would see.
 

Along the path I encountered a gigantic tree with several large buttresses. Between these flew a flock of bats. Even during daytime bats can be quite active here. They never take a rest long enough to allow a closer look on them. Also hiding between the buttresses are small gecko’s of the species Gonatodes annularis. Juveniles have a white tip of the tail, which separates them from the other Gonatodes species here: G. humeralis. These small lizards are very shy and hide under loose bark or in small holes in the trunk as soon as they see a shade of a move. This gives the tree a haunted appearance. You seem to see animals but only in the back of your eyes.
Anolis lizards are much less secretive and as they trust on their camouflage, one can take a closer look at them occasionally. On Matoury I have found Anolis (Norops) fuscoauratus, a species that was once characterized as an “anole without specific characters”. Nevertheless a nice and lively species that runs up and down along the trunks of small trees, where it catches very small insects and such.


Montagne de Matoury is relatively easy to reach and also easy to walk through.  For those visitors who have just arrived and want to travel into the forests of the interior, Matoury is a nice ‘warming up’.