Masked Litter Frog (Craugastor mimus)

This is a small inconspicuous frog that camouflages very well in the leaf litter. In my two visits to Yatama Ecolodge, I have seen plenty of these flush from my feet as I hike through the trails during the day. While spotting them when they jump is easy, finding where they landed can prove difficult with so much brown leafs on the trail. They are also difficult to identify accurately, as there are plenty more Craugastor species that resemble it’s masked face, like the Red-eyed Masked Little Frog, Noble’s Litter Frog and the White-lipped Rain Frog. You have to pay attention to features like overall color (brown vs red?), whether there is a well defined white line running through the edge of the upper lip of the frog, and looking at the eye color. Per the Amphibians of Costa Rica: A Field Guide book by Twan Leenders, achieving identification in the field still proves difficult, given that litter frogs in general and these species in particular show a lot of variation in their color pattern.