hey, blog readers! it turns out a new internet cafe opened in the last year in la palma, the tiny town we´re spending the night in before hiking in to Corcovado National Park tomorrow. i don´t have time to upload the entries i´ve prepared from the last week, but there is going to be a bonanza of posts when i get out of Corcovado in 8 days. anyway, i´m happy and healthy and hope you´re all the same. i´ve been seeing and learning more amazing stuff, and looking forward to sharing it with you.
´til then!
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
heading to the hills
This is photo of a coatimundi I took just outside our dorm a couple of days ago. They're close relatives of raccoons, but seem to be more social -- you often see them in large groups. I think they're great.
Today was our last day in La Selva. Becky and I spent the morning putting together our powerpoint presentation, and then there were 4 hours of afternoon presentations to get through everyone's independent projects. It was grueling! Now we've packed up all the course equipment and are rounding up our personal belongings.
At lunch today a long-billed hermit (hummingbird) got trapped in the dining room. It was flying around like crazy while the japanese tourists took photos and video. it kept sticking its bill through the screen, and at one point wedged it in the wood up near the ceiling and got stuck. It hung there by its bill for nearly a minute, then someone tried to get it down and it flew off again. By the time one of the tourists actually caught it, it was so exhausted it couldn't even fly. Becky force-fed it sugar water until it perked up and flew off again.
Tomorrow morning at 7:30 we leave for Cuerici, a station near Cerro de la Muerte (the mountain of death!) where unprepared settlers wandering over the mountain pass were known to stall in the clouds and freeze solid. But I've got my woolens, so no worries. I'm looking forward to the cold, the oaks, and the chance to see the resplendent quetzal (a bird worth a Google for sure if you're not familiar with them).
After Cuerici we head out to Corcovado on the Osa Peninsula, a site similar to La Selva but wilder and more isolated. I'll try to keep daily blog entries to upload all at once when we get back to internet in 16 days. I anticipate seeing some amazing things and bonding further with my companions while occasionally hating them all because they're in my personal space. The trip is halfway over.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Lunar Eclipse Day
So, ya'll in the northern temperate zone had a lunar eclipse too, of course. It was pretty down here, with the sky so dark and the moon all orange. There isn't much light pollution here, in spite of the powered-up biological station.
I attached a photo of me with my favorite Costa Rican tree so far, the Pochote, aka Bombacopsis quinata (Bombacaceae). It was taken in Cabo Blanco, but I thought I'd pop it in out of order here so you all get a good look. Please note the charming spines. Behind my back you see the beach, and the brightness of the tropical sun on the ocean. So beautiful!
Today I saw a kinkajou -- monkey-like raccoon relative -- and some kind of tropical opossum with a crazy long tail. They were up above the bridge in the dark. Earlier in the day we saw a young spider monkey on the bridge, he was hanging from the high wire from just his tail, swinging gently. He definitely wasn't afraid of people, and came closer when we walked by rather than going farther away. I got a great look a the abscess in his abdomen that was draining. Cute pus-filled monkeys! Makes me wish I worked with mammals. ;)
Today Becky and I finished collecting our data. With 300 data points, it has to be an OTS record! Or close. We found selection for fewer seeds per pod and thinner pod shells. The last was a bit of a surprise, a small but significant effect that I think might have been the result of an error in our measurement protocol. It has been fun working with the data, figuring out how to get the answers we want. One of our variables had a left-skewed distribution that is impossible to fix as far as we can tell -- our stats package won't do a box-cox transformation, so maybe that would have done it. Anyway, this is by far the most excited I've ever been about statistics. May the effects be long-lasting.
We pursued the great green macaws today without success, but I got to see a white-crowned parrot and a dove that was new to me... I can't remember the name right now. The parrot was in a palm snag, sticking just its head out of a hole that must be its nest. The birds here are so fun! I'm still wowed and intimidated by the plants... but hopefully Amanda and my plans for research in July get funded, and then I'll have the chance to get to know La Selva's flowering plants better then.
Tomorrow is our last full day here. Everyone is frantically writing papers, analyzing data, and preparing presentations tonight. Except for those of us who are going to bed. Hooray for sleeping!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
busy day
Today was a bit crazy. I went into town in the morning to get passport photos for my grant proposal. I got some cash and cookies while I was at it. Then I spent the rest of the day working on papers... I have to write a proposal, edit my IP from Palo Verde, and write my La Selva FLP and IP. And of course, I wish I was out exploring in the woods all day every day. Everyone in the course (including instructors) is starting to get that vacant, shadowy-eyed look that comes from focusing too hard on one thing and not sleeping enough. It's sad to admit it, but I'm looking forward to leaving La Selva, because that will mean leaving a lot of this stress behind.
It rained today, that was good. The air feels nice now and the amphibians are out, so the herpers are happy. They're out hunting for frogs right now. I saw a laughing falcon and red-legged honeycreeper today. Becky and I heard from one of the naturalists that there ARE green macaws around, and we know exactly which tree to look in, so that's exciting.
I'm going to bed now. It's going to be great.
It rained today, that was good. The air feels nice now and the amphibians are out, so the herpers are happy. They're out hunting for frogs right now. I saw a laughing falcon and red-legged honeycreeper today. Becky and I heard from one of the naturalists that there ARE green macaws around, and we know exactly which tree to look in, so that's exciting.
I'm going to bed now. It's going to be great.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Photo update!
I just discovered that the internet connection here is good enough to post photos to the blog. so here's a little catch-up. There's the Pentaclethera macroloba seeds Becky and i are doing our IP on -- eaten by parrots and uneaten. Amanda in front of a beautiful tropical stream. And leafcutter ants! I can't get enough of them. They're really cool. Oh, and the photo of me with my scuba buddy, Margaret, in Cabo Blanco. Maybe I'll put up more tomorrow.
Peanut Head Day
Today was a lovely day. I slept in, until 7 am! It was delicious. I spent the morning writing and nailing down a sampling scheme for my independent project, and then Becky and I went out in the afternoon and collected lots and lots of data. Most of the projects we do on this course have really small sample sizes, so it's extra fun to get more. We'll probably have around 200 data points when we're done. And I get to think about natural selection, which is good clean fun.
I saw two new birds today: black-throated trogon and scarlet-rumped cacique (which is apparently pronounced "ka-seek", sounds crazy to me...). I also saw a fabulous insect, the Peanut Head, aka Machacha. It looks like a moth with a peanut for a head, but it's actually a neuropteran, close to the true bugs, with a long piercing-sucking mouthpart it uses to slurp phloem out of the single tree species it specializes on. We happened to run into this guy working on a travel guide who was looking for the Peanut Head. We befriended him, so he brought it by when he found it. Becky and I took turns holding it for him to photograph. Look for my left hand in the 3rd edition of the guide to Costa Rica's national parks. :)
In the evening we heard a talk by David Clark, hero of tropical tree ecology. He gave a lightning intro to remote sensing in forest research. It's amazing what you can quantify from a satellite photo, and the things you really can't do any other way -- random sampling away from roads and rivers, sampling in dangerous places like northern Colombia, and actually seeing any one of these huge canopy trees from the top. There is so much we don't know!
Amanda and I decided to write a post-course grant proposal together to further the FLP study we did on the effect of floral shape on rates of interspecific pollen deposition. I'm excited about it, it's a great idea and the two days we had just wasn't nearly enough to do it justice. There are plenty of other people applying for the money, but it's certainly worth a try. We'd get to come back to La Selva in July if it comes through.
We got the official word on internet and phone contact for the next few sites: none. We leave La Selva Friday morning, and then no contact for 16 days! I'm sure we will all build character. As if there wasn't already a surplus in this group.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
quick update
Just a quick update. Things are hectic here! We finished the FLP and presented it this morning; Amanda and I have 3 days to write it up. I also have a second draft of my first independent project due in 3 days, and Becky and I are collecting data for our joint IP over the next couple of days, analyzing, and presenting. Not enough time to enjoy the forest properly! But no worries, I'm making time somehow. We'll be here at La Selva for the rest of the week.
The last couple of days the station got really busy. A group of undergraduates from Dartmouth arrived, they'll probably be here for the rest of the week. There have also been one or two big birding groups, retired US Americans with really nice binoculars, spotting scopes, and cameras. They hire guides to show them the birds. It looks like fun, but not nearly as much fun as roaming the forest alone, doing science and catching birds on the fly (so to speak.) Plus I don't think they ever look down to notice the plants and non-feathered animals.
I saw two more fer-de-lances today, both little fellers (1-1.5 feet). I also got to see an anole flaring his red and yellow dewlap. The most exciting bird was the keel-billed toucan, which has an amazing bill -- not as big as the chestnut-mandibled toucan, but so colorful! We spotted that while walking between sites for our IP, looking for Pentaclethera seed pods. Apparently the macaws are elsewhere this time of year, but I'm happy to report that I did finally see both local species of manakins. Very charming birds! I haven't seen them do the moonwalk, but I hear you can see it on YouTube. :) Somebody saw a kinkajou on the bridge, but I missed it.
On to the bird list so I can get to bed! (Hopefully in a few more days things will be less hectic and I can write more descriptive, less bird-centric posts.) This is 3 days of birds: long-billed hermit, mangrove swallow, violaceous trogon, chestnut-colored woodpecker, northern barred-woodcreeper, plain-brown woodcreeper, cocoa woodcreeper, western slaty-antshrike, bright-rumped attila, gray-capped flycatcher, cinnamon becard, masked tityra, white-collared manakin, red-capped manakin, bananaquit, golden-hooded tanager, orange-billed sparrow.
The last couple of days the station got really busy. A group of undergraduates from Dartmouth arrived, they'll probably be here for the rest of the week. There have also been one or two big birding groups, retired US Americans with really nice binoculars, spotting scopes, and cameras. They hire guides to show them the birds. It looks like fun, but not nearly as much fun as roaming the forest alone, doing science and catching birds on the fly (so to speak.) Plus I don't think they ever look down to notice the plants and non-feathered animals.
I saw two more fer-de-lances today, both little fellers (1-1.5 feet). I also got to see an anole flaring his red and yellow dewlap. The most exciting bird was the keel-billed toucan, which has an amazing bill -- not as big as the chestnut-mandibled toucan, but so colorful! We spotted that while walking between sites for our IP, looking for Pentaclethera seed pods. Apparently the macaws are elsewhere this time of year, but I'm happy to report that I did finally see both local species of manakins. Very charming birds! I haven't seen them do the moonwalk, but I hear you can see it on YouTube. :) Somebody saw a kinkajou on the bridge, but I missed it.
On to the bird list so I can get to bed! (Hopefully in a few more days things will be less hectic and I can write more descriptive, less bird-centric posts.) This is 3 days of birds: long-billed hermit, mangrove swallow, violaceous trogon, chestnut-colored woodpecker, northern barred-woodcreeper, plain-brown woodcreeper, cocoa woodcreeper, western slaty-antshrike, bright-rumped attila, gray-capped flycatcher, cinnamon becard, masked tityra, white-collared manakin, red-capped manakin, bananaquit, golden-hooded tanager, orange-billed sparrow.
Friday, February 15, 2008
army ants!
Today I spent most of the daylight out collecting flowers for the current faculty-led project. It was great! Maybe 30 minutes of rain the whole time. The six of us split into two groups, and I was the only botanist in mine, so I got to do all the dissecting of flowers in the field. We were looking for flowers we could get pollen and receptive stigmas from, and it was amazing how hard it was to find those basic structures in some of the flowers! Really diverse shapes. We probably got a total of 40 different species -- we're still trying to figure out exactly what we have. I was working on making slides of pollen and stigmas until 9:30. By then I just couldn't work anymore. We'll start again tomorrow at 7:30.
Being out in the field we saw lots of great stuff besides flowers, of course. The highlight of the day for me was seeing a whole colony of army ants on the move. It's something I'd been really hoping to see. It's totally different from the column of ants you usually see crossing a sidewalk. The moving front of the colony was really wide -- I could see several meters into the forest, and the edge wasn't visible. The ants were thick, covering everything, crawling all over each other and up the vegetation to waist height, foraging to feed the colony. There were insects running and flying away from them in every direction A few of the birds that specialize on following army ants were hanging around, picking up the insects that were stirred up by the ants. It was so cool. We stood and watched them for a long time.
There are several features of the forest that are becoming familiar, friendly things now. The height, the humidity, leaf cutter ants, lots and lots of palms. Smells that come and go as you walk past: a flowering plant, a high density of overripe fruit, or a peccary. There are even a few bird calls that are becoming familiar; pauraque, parrot, oropendula, various wrens.
I saw my first fer-de-lance today, a juvenile that was in the grass just outside the lab. Of course one of the herp guys in the class had to poke it until it coiled up, then put a strong light on it and take lots of pictures. Poor little snake. I was excited to get a look at it, though. Now I have a search image for things not to step on. I also saw a cane toad, a native species here. Big and toady-looking.
I'll put today's bird list with tomorrow's, need to go to bed now.
Being out in the field we saw lots of great stuff besides flowers, of course. The highlight of the day for me was seeing a whole colony of army ants on the move. It's something I'd been really hoping to see. It's totally different from the column of ants you usually see crossing a sidewalk. The moving front of the colony was really wide -- I could see several meters into the forest, and the edge wasn't visible. The ants were thick, covering everything, crawling all over each other and up the vegetation to waist height, foraging to feed the colony. There were insects running and flying away from them in every direction A few of the birds that specialize on following army ants were hanging around, picking up the insects that were stirred up by the ants. It was so cool. We stood and watched them for a long time.
There are several features of the forest that are becoming familiar, friendly things now. The height, the humidity, leaf cutter ants, lots and lots of palms. Smells that come and go as you walk past: a flowering plant, a high density of overripe fruit, or a peccary. There are even a few bird calls that are becoming familiar; pauraque, parrot, oropendula, various wrens.
I saw my first fer-de-lance today, a juvenile that was in the grass just outside the lab. Of course one of the herp guys in the class had to poke it until it coiled up, then put a strong light on it and take lots of pictures. Poor little snake. I was excited to get a look at it, though. Now I have a search image for things not to step on. I also saw a cane toad, a native species here. Big and toady-looking.
I'll put today's bird list with tomorrow's, need to go to bed now.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
rainy rainforest
Another day running on not quite enough sleep because I was so excited to be here I woke up before I needed to. We'll see how much longer that lasts. :) Spent the morning wandering around the trail on my own and with a couple of other students botanizing, birding, and pondering IP topics. I decided to discard my ideas for pollination projects, because no single flower species is dense enough to make my idea for a 3-day project feasible. Now I'm thinking about an observational study of parrot frugivory. More on that as it solidifies.
We had a surprise-addition resource person when we arrived here, Kathleen Kay. I was excited to meet her, because her work is super cool. Plus she's a relatively recent Schemske lab grad, so I've heard a lot about her. I'm in her FLP. We have 2 days for the project, start to finish, so it will be a simple one, but still definitely the most interesting to me on the course so far. We're going to collect flowers from as many different plant species as we can find tomorrow and compare amounts of pollen from other species on the stigmas. The small idea is that bilaterally symmetrical flowers are less likely to have pollen from the wrong species. The big idea is that this is part of why bilaterally symmetrical groups are more speciose. We might even have time to do a fancy-pants pairwise phylogenetic analysis. I'm too tired to translate, but if we do end up doing it I promise I will!
The thing about the rainforest is that it's rainy. Apparently there is a noticeable dry season here, but I haven't noticed it. With 4 meters of precipitation a year, I guess there is plenty for the dry season too. It has rained every day, and most of the day today. I was outside for a lot of it. It makes me so tired to have wet clothes! But it didn't dampen my enthusiasm for plant systematics and hiking around the trails. It just increased my enthusiasm for sleep, which I am about to go indulge.
But first, the quick bird update! No great green macaws, sorry Jay. But I'm scoping out the wild almond trees. What I did see today: ruddy pigeon, broad-billed motmot, spotted antbird, black-headed tody-flycatcher, band-backed wren, chestnut-sided warbler, summer tanager, variable seedeater, buff-throated saltator, black-cowled oriole.
We had a surprise-addition resource person when we arrived here, Kathleen Kay. I was excited to meet her, because her work is super cool. Plus she's a relatively recent Schemske lab grad, so I've heard a lot about her. I'm in her FLP. We have 2 days for the project, start to finish, so it will be a simple one, but still definitely the most interesting to me on the course so far. We're going to collect flowers from as many different plant species as we can find tomorrow and compare amounts of pollen from other species on the stigmas. The small idea is that bilaterally symmetrical flowers are less likely to have pollen from the wrong species. The big idea is that this is part of why bilaterally symmetrical groups are more speciose. We might even have time to do a fancy-pants pairwise phylogenetic analysis. I'm too tired to translate, but if we do end up doing it I promise I will!
The thing about the rainforest is that it's rainy. Apparently there is a noticeable dry season here, but I haven't noticed it. With 4 meters of precipitation a year, I guess there is plenty for the dry season too. It has rained every day, and most of the day today. I was outside for a lot of it. It makes me so tired to have wet clothes! But it didn't dampen my enthusiasm for plant systematics and hiking around the trails. It just increased my enthusiasm for sleep, which I am about to go indulge.
But first, the quick bird update! No great green macaws, sorry Jay. But I'm scoping out the wild almond trees. What I did see today: ruddy pigeon, broad-billed motmot, spotted antbird, black-headed tody-flycatcher, band-backed wren, chestnut-sided warbler, summer tanager, variable seedeater, buff-throated saltator, black-cowled oriole.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
virus outbreak
Today at lunch Jess asked me if I'd heard about the last-minute 1:00 meeting about the virus outbreak. My stomach jumped. It took me a full minute to establish that it was a COMPUTER virus. (There were a lot of people at the table, everyone was distracted). It seems somebody introduced a virus to the course computers at Cabo Blanco, and it jumps from computer to computer on USB drives. Everyone on the course has at least one, which we stick in each other's computers liberally. Out of about 25 drives, all but 4 were infected. We're not sure yet what the virus does. Either it attacks your operating system, or steals your gaming passwords. Which is worse? Luckily I have a Mac, which is immune, so all my gaming passwords will be safe. :) And Raffica's Mac-Hero boyfriend Ben has given me pro advice, so soon I'll be squeaky-clean.
Today we had another set of orientation walks. One was plant-intensive, with Orlando Vargas; the other was more herp-intensive. We saw a couple of species of poison-dart frogs, a brown leaf litter snake, and a few other frogs. I had the afternoon off, and used it to take a nap and start brainstorming independent project ideas. One of the afternoon orientation groups ran across the first fer-de-lance (a big pit viper; venomous, relatively aggressive, and common). There are lots of other viper species here too, but I haven't seen any yet.
I'll be getting my last IP paper back tomorrow, and have to finish the first of two rewrites in the next few days. I'll also be working on and writing up a new FLP, and conceiving and carrying out a new IP. I think La Selva is the most stressful site. It only makes it harder that there are loads of amazing things to see, so I want to spend all my free time outside investigating! Tonight we saw a porcupine with a prehensile tail. Ellen Reid saw it walking along the wires on the suspension bridge, and from there it crawled into a tree where we could all see it very nicely. The face was recognizable as porcupine, but the hair and spines were short, maybe an inch, and it was otherwise more the size and shape of a north american opossum. It was a treat.
We had a german table at dinner, 3 US-Americans and an Austrian. It was fun to speak a foreign language that I'm comfortable in for a change! I've been picking up a lot of Spanish here, but I still only ever use present-tense and craft my sentences in my mind before letting them out. I've been playing with the idea of coming back in the next year to follow up on project ideas, though -- if I do that, I will definitely get more serious with the language. I love it.
I compiled my bird list for the last 3 days, and it's long! I've started birding in the mornings with Katja Poveda, one of the instructors who is closer to my level. The other two birders are way ahead of me, so birding with them makes it harder for me to learn how to identify them myself. It's slower but more satisfying this way. But just by being interested in birds I've gotten enough of a reputation in the course that people come to me once or twice a day to ask about a bird. It's a microcosm of expertise development. Being conspicuous definitely helps.
Okay, here's the list. On the ferry across the gulf, laughing gulls. In San Jose, rock pigeons (I know, I'm sure i saw them before!). In La Selva: gray-headed chachalaca, great blue heron, green ibis, double-toothed kite, mealy parrot, rufous-tailed hummingbird, slaty-tailed trogon, chestnut-mandibled toucan, collared aracari, black-cheeked woodpecker, ruddy woodcreeper, long-tailed tyrant, wood thrush, gray catbird, ovenbird, buff-rumped warbler, red-throated ant-tanager, passerini's tanager. Several people have seen manakins in leks doing their little dances. It would be great if I could see that!
Today we had another set of orientation walks. One was plant-intensive, with Orlando Vargas; the other was more herp-intensive. We saw a couple of species of poison-dart frogs, a brown leaf litter snake, and a few other frogs. I had the afternoon off, and used it to take a nap and start brainstorming independent project ideas. One of the afternoon orientation groups ran across the first fer-de-lance (a big pit viper; venomous, relatively aggressive, and common). There are lots of other viper species here too, but I haven't seen any yet.
I'll be getting my last IP paper back tomorrow, and have to finish the first of two rewrites in the next few days. I'll also be working on and writing up a new FLP, and conceiving and carrying out a new IP. I think La Selva is the most stressful site. It only makes it harder that there are loads of amazing things to see, so I want to spend all my free time outside investigating! Tonight we saw a porcupine with a prehensile tail. Ellen Reid saw it walking along the wires on the suspension bridge, and from there it crawled into a tree where we could all see it very nicely. The face was recognizable as porcupine, but the hair and spines were short, maybe an inch, and it was otherwise more the size and shape of a north american opossum. It was a treat.
We had a german table at dinner, 3 US-Americans and an Austrian. It was fun to speak a foreign language that I'm comfortable in for a change! I've been picking up a lot of Spanish here, but I still only ever use present-tense and craft my sentences in my mind before letting them out. I've been playing with the idea of coming back in the next year to follow up on project ideas, though -- if I do that, I will definitely get more serious with the language. I love it.
I compiled my bird list for the last 3 days, and it's long! I've started birding in the mornings with Katja Poveda, one of the instructors who is closer to my level. The other two birders are way ahead of me, so birding with them makes it harder for me to learn how to identify them myself. It's slower but more satisfying this way. But just by being interested in birds I've gotten enough of a reputation in the course that people come to me once or twice a day to ask about a bird. It's a microcosm of expertise development. Being conspicuous definitely helps.
Okay, here's the list. On the ferry across the gulf, laughing gulls. In San Jose, rock pigeons (I know, I'm sure i saw them before!). In La Selva: gray-headed chachalaca, great blue heron, green ibis, double-toothed kite, mealy parrot, rufous-tailed hummingbird, slaty-tailed trogon, chestnut-mandibled toucan, collared aracari, black-cheeked woodpecker, ruddy woodcreeper, long-tailed tyrant, wood thrush, gray catbird, ovenbird, buff-rumped warbler, red-throated ant-tanager, passerini's tanager. Several people have seen manakins in leks doing their little dances. It would be great if I could see that!
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
into the jungle
This morning after breakfast we got on the same old bus and headed west out of San Jose, into the mountains. It was only a couple of hours' drive to La Selva, but up and down the mountains, so we drove through cloud forest. It was beautiful, you could tell even just from the bus that plant diversity suddenly went through the roof. And there were lots of clouds, some of them low wisps clearly blowing to the west.
Then we drove back down, down further than we went up, and we landed in the lowland wet tropical forest... rain forest.. JUNGLE!
La Selva is a luxury resort for tropical biologists. It has electricity, great internet, hot water, toilets that you can put toilet paper in, a cafeteria that serves gringo food, paved paths... plus lots of amenities that will only interest those of you who are biologists. I'm going to mention them now, so if you're not a biologist you may want to avert your eyes. Or just skip to the next paragraph. So La Selva is a Long Term Ecological Research site. There has been research here for over 40 years, with lots of long-running projects. The whole reserve is mapped out with pipes set in the ground every 100m E-W and every 50m N-S (or vice versa), and every pipe has altitude, lat/long, and soil information associated with it. There is a big sheet-covered board with a black light on it set up every night, attracting all manner of cool insects. Herbarium, library, and lab space that is public in addition to the private offices and lab spaces for more or less permanent researchers. (There are apparently six in residence at the moment). There are also a pile of knowledgeable and available staff. GIS specialists, Orlando Vargas (who it sounds like is personally acquainted with every individual plant in La Selva), a staff of great local naturalists... it's pretty dreamy.
Actually, the paved paths are a little weird. And they have tremendous theft problems... from what they told us, anything from your laptop to your lunch will disappear if you leave it alone for 5 minutes. But it is a comfortable place (a nice change), and seems like working here would make research in the tropics far easier, if less adventuresome.
We had our first orientation walks in the afternoon, and it really blew my mind. I spent a rushed afternoon in a slightly degraded fragment of cloud forest in Guatemala in 2006, which was amazing, but it didn't prepare me for this. Today reminded me that in my soul I'm a plant person. There are huge trees here. The biggest tree in La Selva is over 50 meters. They have huge buttresses, structures that come out at the base like wings, supporting them in the shallow soil. And supported on the tree are innumerable other plants. Lianas, epiphytes (living on the branches or trunk), epiphylls (plants living on other plants' leaves!). Everywhere you look there is a different species. We learned plant families this afternoon like you learn species in the temperate zone. It's an exponential increase in species number. Perhaps you biologists are having a good titter at me raving about biodiversity in the tropics, because that's all ecologists have been doing for 200 years, but wow! Why ARE there so many species in the tropics? or so few in the temperate zone...
Especially exciting things to mention: I saw the world's largest odonate today, a damselfly larger than any dragonfly. Bullet ants, too, the world's largest ants, fully an inch long. We spotted an agouti (huge rodent that looks like a tiny deer). My first toucans. Spider monkeys. Birds -- I'll pool today's list with tomorrow's and put them at the end of tomorrow's post for those of you who are interested. I've seen a LOT of new ones today, even though I hardly gave any energy to it. My head is filled with plants.
We'll be doing another faculty-led project here, and then an independent project. I'm looking and listening and thinking hard to come up with a good idea for my IP. I'll let ya'll know how it develops. Thanks for the emails and comments; even though I don't have time to answer right now, I love to hear from you.
Then we drove back down, down further than we went up, and we landed in the lowland wet tropical forest... rain forest.. JUNGLE!
La Selva is a luxury resort for tropical biologists. It has electricity, great internet, hot water, toilets that you can put toilet paper in, a cafeteria that serves gringo food, paved paths... plus lots of amenities that will only interest those of you who are biologists. I'm going to mention them now, so if you're not a biologist you may want to avert your eyes. Or just skip to the next paragraph. So La Selva is a Long Term Ecological Research site. There has been research here for over 40 years, with lots of long-running projects. The whole reserve is mapped out with pipes set in the ground every 100m E-W and every 50m N-S (or vice versa), and every pipe has altitude, lat/long, and soil information associated with it. There is a big sheet-covered board with a black light on it set up every night, attracting all manner of cool insects. Herbarium, library, and lab space that is public in addition to the private offices and lab spaces for more or less permanent researchers. (There are apparently six in residence at the moment). There are also a pile of knowledgeable and available staff. GIS specialists, Orlando Vargas (who it sounds like is personally acquainted with every individual plant in La Selva), a staff of great local naturalists... it's pretty dreamy.
Actually, the paved paths are a little weird. And they have tremendous theft problems... from what they told us, anything from your laptop to your lunch will disappear if you leave it alone for 5 minutes. But it is a comfortable place (a nice change), and seems like working here would make research in the tropics far easier, if less adventuresome.
We had our first orientation walks in the afternoon, and it really blew my mind. I spent a rushed afternoon in a slightly degraded fragment of cloud forest in Guatemala in 2006, which was amazing, but it didn't prepare me for this. Today reminded me that in my soul I'm a plant person. There are huge trees here. The biggest tree in La Selva is over 50 meters. They have huge buttresses, structures that come out at the base like wings, supporting them in the shallow soil. And supported on the tree are innumerable other plants. Lianas, epiphytes (living on the branches or trunk), epiphylls (plants living on other plants' leaves!). Everywhere you look there is a different species. We learned plant families this afternoon like you learn species in the temperate zone. It's an exponential increase in species number. Perhaps you biologists are having a good titter at me raving about biodiversity in the tropics, because that's all ecologists have been doing for 200 years, but wow! Why ARE there so many species in the tropics? or so few in the temperate zone...
Especially exciting things to mention: I saw the world's largest odonate today, a damselfly larger than any dragonfly. Bullet ants, too, the world's largest ants, fully an inch long. We spotted an agouti (huge rodent that looks like a tiny deer). My first toucans. Spider monkeys. Birds -- I'll pool today's list with tomorrow's and put them at the end of tomorrow's post for those of you who are interested. I've seen a LOT of new ones today, even though I hardly gave any energy to it. My head is filled with plants.
We'll be doing another faculty-led project here, and then an independent project. I'm looking and listening and thinking hard to come up with a good idea for my IP. I'll let ya'll know how it develops. Thanks for the emails and comments; even though I don't have time to answer right now, I love to hear from you.
Monday, February 11, 2008
hotel time
We got back to San Jose this afternoon at about 3pm. There was a mix-up with the rooms; we were supposed to be four to a room with 2 beds (which is pretty cozy even for people who have been six to a room in bunk beds), but several of the rooms only had one bed. So in the process of fixing it, the hotel gave out some single rooms. I got lucky, so in addition to internet and a hot shower, I've been enjoying privacy, the most precious commodity of all on this course.
The trip out was great, especially the 1.5 hour trip on the ferry. I got a spot on the second deck (of three) right in the front left corner where there was shade, a wide view, and lots of wind in my face. It felt wonderful.
I'm narrating the day backwards, it seems... the last bird I saw before getting on the bus this morning was a pale-billed woodpecker, the closest living relative of the ivory-billed woodpecker that made headlines a few years ago by being rediscovered after everyone thought it was extinct... except now most people believe it's still extinct. Anyway, the pale-billed is a spectacular bird, and seeing how much it looks like its sister-species only makes it cooler.
In case you don't want to read all the posts I put up just now from the last week, I'll give you the abstract: I snorkeled and it was great. I saw an anteater, lots of cool bats, and many new birds. I learned a lot about the humid dry forest. There wasn't a tsunami. I got sick, but now I'm recovered.
There you go! Tomorrow we drive to La Selva, our first rainforest site. Extremely diverse in all kinds of life. I'm very excited. We'll also have excellent internet!
The trip out was great, especially the 1.5 hour trip on the ferry. I got a spot on the second deck (of three) right in the front left corner where there was shade, a wide view, and lots of wind in my face. It felt wonderful.
I'm narrating the day backwards, it seems... the last bird I saw before getting on the bus this morning was a pale-billed woodpecker, the closest living relative of the ivory-billed woodpecker that made headlines a few years ago by being rediscovered after everyone thought it was extinct... except now most people believe it's still extinct. Anyway, the pale-billed is a spectacular bird, and seeing how much it looks like its sister-species only makes it cooler.
In case you don't want to read all the posts I put up just now from the last week, I'll give you the abstract: I snorkeled and it was great. I saw an anteater, lots of cool bats, and many new birds. I learned a lot about the humid dry forest. There wasn't a tsunami. I got sick, but now I'm recovered.
There you go! Tomorrow we drive to La Selva, our first rainforest site. Extremely diverse in all kinds of life. I'm very excited. We'll also have excellent internet!
February 10th -- BAT CAVE!
Last night a sea snake washed up on the beach. There are only two reasons sea snakes ever leave the sea: breeding and sickness. It’s not the breeding season. This was one sick snake. Craig tried to throw it back, but it just washed up again, so we settled for inspecting it at a respectful distance. Sea snakes have deadly venom, and there is no antivenin, probably because bites are so rare (they aren’t aggressive or common). It was a beautiful animal, long and dark with a laterally flattened tail with bright yellow dots on it. Definitely made for swimming. Craig did an autopsy, but didn’t figure out why it died. It’s bittersweet to see an amazing animal under those circumstances.
The tides have been extreme during our visit here. Lots of rock was exposed on the low tide, and high tide in the evening brought water to the very top of the beach. Fierce waves threw boulders twice the size of my fist around, making a musical rumbling noise. The sound of the ocean lulls us to sleep at night; I don’t think the traffic of San Jose tomorrow will do as well!
Mist-netting last night yielded only one bat species, but it was a cool one – a frog-eating leaf-nosed bat with tentacles on its chin for detecting poisonous frogs before ingesting them. We also caught a huge beetle in the mist-net; from the sidelines it looked big enough to be a small bat.
I’ve started to get a handle on some of the tropical plant families. It’s something I’m fairly comfortable with in the temperate zone, but down here it’s not oaks and ashes and maples. Some of the families I’ve learned are Heliconiaceae, Annonaceae (paw-paw is the only temperate species), Marantaceae, Melastomataceae (gorgeous leaf venation), Rubiaceae (coffee family), Piperaceae (black pepper family), and Bombacaceae. There are lots more, but at least I have a start! La Selva should be a great site for learning plants.
I saw king vulture today, one of the birds I’ve always wanted to see. It was way up in the sky, circling in a thermal with a bunch of black vultures and what looked like a peregrine falcon (but I wasn’t sure). Hopefully I’ll get a closer look later in the trip – I’d like to see their colorful heads. A walk in the evening yielded and green-breasted mango (I think that’s the name… it’s a humming bird) and a rufous-and-white wren. The long-tailed manakin continues to evade me – it’s at the top of my Cabo Blanco wish list. I have until 7:30 tomorrow morning. ☺
We collected our model anoles this morning and found marks of predation on 14 out of 80 – more than we expected, and enough to get borderline significant results. We found more food in the litter than the canopy, and more predation on the beach than in the forest. The presentation went well, and I’m glad to not be writing the paper – it’s due tonight, and we only finished analyzing data at 2:30.
Before lunch Bob took 12 of us out to see the local bat caves. One of the sub-caverns is full of vampire bats. You can recognize them by their smelly black feces (partially digested blood, mmm!) and the way they move – most bats hang in the cave, at most propping themselves up with their forearm/wings, but vampires RUN AROUND. They have to be able to creep up on their prey, so they can walk on all fours. If you disturb them in their cave, some will fly, but many scamper. It looks pretty weird. We also saw small leaf-nosed bats, larger predatory leaf-nosed bats, and sacwings. And the largest cockroach in the western hemisphere, which eats all the different tasty things you find in bat caves. I can elaborate later if you’re interested. The vampire bat population is out of control here because the surrounding agricultural communities provide so much food: chickens, cattle, and dogs mostly.
We leave for San Jose tomorrow. Before breakfast at 6:00 we have to have carried our bags out 500 meters; we’re supposed to be on the bus and rolling by 7:30 in order to make our 10:00 ferry across the Gulf of Nicoya. There are guaranteed to be cool birds on the gulf. We might get to see dolphins, whales and (healthy) sea-snakes too! I’ve got to get packing now before we lose the daylight; packing by headlamp doesn’t sound like much fun. Tomorrow night it will be back to internet, hot showers, and electricity (in order of importance).
Tonight there will be a driftwood-bonfire party on the beach. Yay!
The tides have been extreme during our visit here. Lots of rock was exposed on the low tide, and high tide in the evening brought water to the very top of the beach. Fierce waves threw boulders twice the size of my fist around, making a musical rumbling noise. The sound of the ocean lulls us to sleep at night; I don’t think the traffic of San Jose tomorrow will do as well!
Mist-netting last night yielded only one bat species, but it was a cool one – a frog-eating leaf-nosed bat with tentacles on its chin for detecting poisonous frogs before ingesting them. We also caught a huge beetle in the mist-net; from the sidelines it looked big enough to be a small bat.
I’ve started to get a handle on some of the tropical plant families. It’s something I’m fairly comfortable with in the temperate zone, but down here it’s not oaks and ashes and maples. Some of the families I’ve learned are Heliconiaceae, Annonaceae (paw-paw is the only temperate species), Marantaceae, Melastomataceae (gorgeous leaf venation), Rubiaceae (coffee family), Piperaceae (black pepper family), and Bombacaceae. There are lots more, but at least I have a start! La Selva should be a great site for learning plants.
I saw king vulture today, one of the birds I’ve always wanted to see. It was way up in the sky, circling in a thermal with a bunch of black vultures and what looked like a peregrine falcon (but I wasn’t sure). Hopefully I’ll get a closer look later in the trip – I’d like to see their colorful heads. A walk in the evening yielded and green-breasted mango (I think that’s the name… it’s a humming bird) and a rufous-and-white wren. The long-tailed manakin continues to evade me – it’s at the top of my Cabo Blanco wish list. I have until 7:30 tomorrow morning. ☺
We collected our model anoles this morning and found marks of predation on 14 out of 80 – more than we expected, and enough to get borderline significant results. We found more food in the litter than the canopy, and more predation on the beach than in the forest. The presentation went well, and I’m glad to not be writing the paper – it’s due tonight, and we only finished analyzing data at 2:30.
Before lunch Bob took 12 of us out to see the local bat caves. One of the sub-caverns is full of vampire bats. You can recognize them by their smelly black feces (partially digested blood, mmm!) and the way they move – most bats hang in the cave, at most propping themselves up with their forearm/wings, but vampires RUN AROUND. They have to be able to creep up on their prey, so they can walk on all fours. If you disturb them in their cave, some will fly, but many scamper. It looks pretty weird. We also saw small leaf-nosed bats, larger predatory leaf-nosed bats, and sacwings. And the largest cockroach in the western hemisphere, which eats all the different tasty things you find in bat caves. I can elaborate later if you’re interested. The vampire bat population is out of control here because the surrounding agricultural communities provide so much food: chickens, cattle, and dogs mostly.
We leave for San Jose tomorrow. Before breakfast at 6:00 we have to have carried our bags out 500 meters; we’re supposed to be on the bus and rolling by 7:30 in order to make our 10:00 ferry across the Gulf of Nicoya. There are guaranteed to be cool birds on the gulf. We might get to see dolphins, whales and (healthy) sea-snakes too! I’ve got to get packing now before we lose the daylight; packing by headlamp doesn’t sound like much fun. Tomorrow night it will be back to internet, hot showers, and electricity (in order of importance).
Tonight there will be a driftwood-bonfire party on the beach. Yay!
February 9th -- sticky-trap adventures
Feeling better today, not at 100% but able to take part in all activities. I think it was dehydration after all. Don’t worry, Mom, I’m wearing my insect repellent! We’ve seen the species of mosquito here that carries Dengue Fever – Anopheles with long bent-back legs with white tips.
We did 1-hour observations on the plasticine anoles today. Nobody saw any predation happen. One of the anoles was bitten in half and there were 10 bird feathers stuck to a sticky-trap, that’s all the excitement on the FLP front. We brought in the traps today and are counting arthropods stuck to them, recording order and length/width. Tomorrow morning we’ll bring the anoles in and quantify attack marks. It’s a very low-key project, so we’ve continued to have considerable free time, at least a couple of hours today.
One of the nice things about Cabo Blanco is the mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks. Fruit in the morning and some kind of bread in the afternoon, with juice. After mid-morning snack today I went back up in the forest with Yoel, a student on the course who specializes in anoles. He’s got this great tool, a retractable fishing pole designed for panfish (very lightweight). He’s attached a tiny noose to the end and uses it to catch small lizards. He picked up a little iguana-looking fellow on our way up the hill. Then we parted ways and sat on different parts of the stream for about an hour. I saw a kingfisher, it landed just 10 feet from me. The forest (like anywhere) unfolds layer after layer when you sit quietly. The howler monkeys made noises I hadn’t heard before. I watched the sun move over spider webs, showing me strands I hadn’t seen and hiding ones I had. The creek babbled and reflected on overhanging leaves. It put me in a good place.
There isn’t much planned for the rest of today. I’m giving half of our FLP presentation tomorrow, but the Powerpoint is mostly put together already. I’ll go birding with Becky, and after dinner we’re setting up the mist-nets for bats again. Hopefully we’ll get a vampire, I’d like to get a look at those diagnostic teeth. ☺
There are ants crawling all over my computer, it’s making me a bit nervous; Kellie got so many ants in her keyboard that several keys froze and the computer stopped working. She had to vacuum the ant-bodies out, luckily that fixed it.
Tomorrow is our last day here; we leave early Monday morning for San Jose.
New birds: spotted sandpiper, green kingfisher
We did 1-hour observations on the plasticine anoles today. Nobody saw any predation happen. One of the anoles was bitten in half and there were 10 bird feathers stuck to a sticky-trap, that’s all the excitement on the FLP front. We brought in the traps today and are counting arthropods stuck to them, recording order and length/width. Tomorrow morning we’ll bring the anoles in and quantify attack marks. It’s a very low-key project, so we’ve continued to have considerable free time, at least a couple of hours today.
One of the nice things about Cabo Blanco is the mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks. Fruit in the morning and some kind of bread in the afternoon, with juice. After mid-morning snack today I went back up in the forest with Yoel, a student on the course who specializes in anoles. He’s got this great tool, a retractable fishing pole designed for panfish (very lightweight). He’s attached a tiny noose to the end and uses it to catch small lizards. He picked up a little iguana-looking fellow on our way up the hill. Then we parted ways and sat on different parts of the stream for about an hour. I saw a kingfisher, it landed just 10 feet from me. The forest (like anywhere) unfolds layer after layer when you sit quietly. The howler monkeys made noises I hadn’t heard before. I watched the sun move over spider webs, showing me strands I hadn’t seen and hiding ones I had. The creek babbled and reflected on overhanging leaves. It put me in a good place.
There isn’t much planned for the rest of today. I’m giving half of our FLP presentation tomorrow, but the Powerpoint is mostly put together already. I’ll go birding with Becky, and after dinner we’re setting up the mist-nets for bats again. Hopefully we’ll get a vampire, I’d like to get a look at those diagnostic teeth. ☺
There are ants crawling all over my computer, it’s making me a bit nervous; Kellie got so many ants in her keyboard that several keys froze and the computer stopped working. She had to vacuum the ant-bodies out, luckily that fixed it.
Tomorrow is our last day here; we leave early Monday morning for San Jose.
New birds: spotted sandpiper, green kingfisher
February 8th -- first illness!
Today we started on the FLP. We are looking at what habitats would be easiest for anoles to invade. There are two aspects we’re focusing on: available food and levels of predation. For food, we’re putting out sticky traps (like the kind you can buy for catching mice) and counting how many insects and spiders land on them. To measure levels of predation, we’ve made 80 plasticine anole models, attached them to sticks, and put them out. Hopefully things will attack them and then release when they realize it’s not a tasty anole after all, leaving bite marks for us to tally. The habitats we’re looking at are ground/tree-trunk vs canopy, and beach forest vs. upland. That means 20 trees on the beach and 20 trees in the upland habitat have an anole-on-a-stick leaning against their trunks and a second one stuck high in the canopy (either wedged in a hole or hanging from fishing line!) I’m skeptical about the method, but it’s been done before, and whether or not it works it’s interesting and worth a try.
One of the things I think I’m absorbing here is that good field biology involves a lot of creativity and a willingness to try things that seem unlikely. Because once in a while something works, and you find out interesting things you never would have discovered any other way! I’ve been told to just go and try, but I’m not sure I really understood what that meant before.
After lunch I headed into the upland forest by myself for a while, which was lovely. Then I had to head down quickly when I found the GI system was feeling sub-prime. I knew I’d have to get sick sometime, but it’s no fun. I have a huge collection of symptoms, which all might be just due to dehydration. So I’m drinking a lot and going to bed, hoping it doesn’t last.
I did get some cool birds today, though: streak-headed woodcreeper, red-crowned ant-tanager, yellow-throated euphonia, squirrel cuckoo, and gray-necked wood-rail.
One of the things I think I’m absorbing here is that good field biology involves a lot of creativity and a willingness to try things that seem unlikely. Because once in a while something works, and you find out interesting things you never would have discovered any other way! I’ve been told to just go and try, but I’m not sure I really understood what that meant before.
After lunch I headed into the upland forest by myself for a while, which was lovely. Then I had to head down quickly when I found the GI system was feeling sub-prime. I knew I’d have to get sick sometime, but it’s no fun. I have a huge collection of symptoms, which all might be just due to dehydration. So I’m drinking a lot and going to bed, hoping it doesn’t last.
I did get some cool birds today, though: streak-headed woodcreeper, red-crowned ant-tanager, yellow-throated euphonia, squirrel cuckoo, and gray-necked wood-rail.
February 7th -- charismatic mediumfauna
I think this is the last day here that we get to really take it easy. After breakfast I went up into the forest birding with Becky for an hour, and saw my first mixed flock moving through. We only identified a couple of species (ivory-billed woodcreeper and lesser greenlet), but just the experience of seeing and hearing them progress slowly through the low canopy was exciting. I love the forest here. It’s only partly deciduous, so unlike at Palo Verde I can walk out without my hat and sunscreen.
Then I ran down the hill to catch up with my snorkel-buddy, Margaret, for an hour in the lagoon. We stayed in the shallower (warmer) water, and saw a cool eel, dark with light spots all over it. It was at least a foot long, and at one point came completely out from its hiding place under a rock. We had to float quietly for a long time to see that. But you get cold fast out there, so I came out in time for a shower before lunch and some time to write. We’ve got lectures on statistics and plant systematics in the afternoon, but I’m still hoping to be able to sneak out to walk around one more time today. I’ve heard long-tailed manakins hang out in the tree right outside the lecture hall, so I’ll try to catch one of them.
I spotted an anteater in the low beach-forest canopy. There were lots of leaves falling, and I looked up and saw this furry fellow light tan with a dark “shirt” and some really amazing claws. He was surprisingly agile climbing along the branches.
I definitely feel torn in my free time – should I snorkel, or go birding, or take a nap? I guess I should be glad there’s no internet here, it keeps me from spending any free time checking email. Realistically, there is no way to see everything. So I just do whatever I feel like at the moment. It helps that I already know I’m not going to be the best at any one thing, I can settle for trying to be the best all-around naturalist I can be.
Then I ran down the hill to catch up with my snorkel-buddy, Margaret, for an hour in the lagoon. We stayed in the shallower (warmer) water, and saw a cool eel, dark with light spots all over it. It was at least a foot long, and at one point came completely out from its hiding place under a rock. We had to float quietly for a long time to see that. But you get cold fast out there, so I came out in time for a shower before lunch and some time to write. We’ve got lectures on statistics and plant systematics in the afternoon, but I’m still hoping to be able to sneak out to walk around one more time today. I’ve heard long-tailed manakins hang out in the tree right outside the lecture hall, so I’ll try to catch one of them.
I spotted an anteater in the low beach-forest canopy. There were lots of leaves falling, and I looked up and saw this furry fellow light tan with a dark “shirt” and some really amazing claws. He was surprisingly agile climbing along the branches.
I definitely feel torn in my free time – should I snorkel, or go birding, or take a nap? I guess I should be glad there’s no internet here, it keeps me from spending any free time checking email. Realistically, there is no way to see everything. So I just do whatever I feel like at the moment. It helps that I already know I’m not going to be the best at any one thing, I can settle for trying to be the best all-around naturalist I can be.
February 6th -- I love snorkeling!
This morning was my introduction to snorkeling. Most of the other students had done it before, but no problem – it’s much easier than swimming, and we can all swim, so no one had any trouble. It was effortless, and amazing to see all the fish and other little animals living all over the reef. There were lots of bright-colored little fish, electric blue and red, pink, blue, yellow, black, orange… okay, every color. Lots of stripes and dots. I don’t know my fish at all, but I can tell you that I saw several pufferfish, and a couple of really cute blennies. A blenny has eyes that move independently, and the ones I saw were tiny (the size of the last two joints of my pinkie finger), brightly colored, and hiding out in the rocks. My favorite fish was the Moorish Idol. We also saw coral. There isn’t much coral on the pacific side apparently, so it wasn’t like coral reef at all – mostly just rocks covered in green fuzzy plant material and shells. We also saw a SEA TURTLE! I WAS SWIMMING WITH A SEA TURTLE!! Okay, maybe “with” is an exaggeration. It swam away pretty fast. But I spotted it.
Before lunch I got some quiet time on the beach, and then in the afternoon we got an intro to the forest, which has grown up from pasture in the last 40 years. There are lots of palms, including some impressive Royal Palms, and lots of lianas and aerial roots. All in all, the forest is taller, darker, wetter, and more viney than Palo Verde. It feels more like your stereotypical tropical forest, but is still a far cry from what we’ll see at La Selva (wet tropical forest site). This is characterized as “moist” forest.
I got the nap I was looking forward to so much, and then there was a talk on geology and the history of ocean currents. A candlelit dinner was followed by a lecture on bats with some amazing photos of the types that are found around here. In 7 or so years of netting, they have found 38 species so far. There are the vampires, of course, and then fruit-eating bats, insect-eating bats, fish-eating bats, and big scary-looking predatory ones that eat, among other things, bats. We had a mist net set up that we opened after the lecture, but it was a bit late – we’d missed the prime time for bats, and only caught a few insect-eaters. Over the next few nights we’ll hopefully get out a little earlier. Only 6 of the 22 students have had their rabies vaccinations, so they are the only ones allowed to handle bats. (I didn’t do it – too expensive!)
I found out which faculty-led project group I’m in; Craig Guyer’s. We’ll be doing something on predation on anoles, I’ll learn more about it tomorrow night. It looks like an excellent group, I’m looking forward to it.
I saw a few new birds today; plain wren, band-backed wren, and melodious blackbird.
Before lunch I got some quiet time on the beach, and then in the afternoon we got an intro to the forest, which has grown up from pasture in the last 40 years. There are lots of palms, including some impressive Royal Palms, and lots of lianas and aerial roots. All in all, the forest is taller, darker, wetter, and more viney than Palo Verde. It feels more like your stereotypical tropical forest, but is still a far cry from what we’ll see at La Selva (wet tropical forest site). This is characterized as “moist” forest.
I got the nap I was looking forward to so much, and then there was a talk on geology and the history of ocean currents. A candlelit dinner was followed by a lecture on bats with some amazing photos of the types that are found around here. In 7 or so years of netting, they have found 38 species so far. There are the vampires, of course, and then fruit-eating bats, insect-eating bats, fish-eating bats, and big scary-looking predatory ones that eat, among other things, bats. We had a mist net set up that we opened after the lecture, but it was a bit late – we’d missed the prime time for bats, and only caught a few insect-eaters. Over the next few nights we’ll hopefully get out a little earlier. Only 6 of the 22 students have had their rabies vaccinations, so they are the only ones allowed to handle bats. (I didn’t do it – too expensive!)
I found out which faculty-led project group I’m in; Craig Guyer’s. We’ll be doing something on predation on anoles, I’ll learn more about it tomorrow night. It looks like an excellent group, I’m looking forward to it.
I saw a few new birds today; plain wren, band-backed wren, and melodious blackbird.
February 5th- traveling to Cabo Blanco
Got up early my last morning in Palo Verde to spend a little more time in the woods. Got a few more plant photos, saw a mot-mot and another trogon, and my first roadside hawk. We loaded up the bus at 7:30 and were on the road by 8:00. This bus wasn’t air-conditioned, which made me happy (although not everyone felt that way). As long as it was moving, it was very comfortable in the front. Dusty in the back, apparently. It was mosty dirt roads down the Nicoya peninsula; a 7-hour trip. 60 km as the crow flies, and not really all that far the long way around, but we probably averaged 20mph. With a couple of Dramamine I was happy, and awake enough to enjoy some of the scenery. We scanned the rice fields hoping to see a Jabiru (rare stork relative) without luck, but the agricultural landscape was interesting. There were lots of living fences recently macheted, several teams of oxen pulling wagons, lots of people herding cattle horseback.
We stopped at a gas station for a break and to pick up a couple of new resource faculty for Cabo Blanco. Across the street there was a huge statue of a bull, the big grey variety with hump at the withers and floppy ears. The guys in our group were fascinated by the to-scale genitals, of course, and had to take lots of pictures! Anyway, that’s the most common type of cattle out here.
At the next stop we had lunch and I bought my very first pair of flip-flops, $5. I’m glad to have them, because I think this is the only side where we’re allowed to wear open-toed shoes, and my feet could use the air. I don’t want them to start rotting before we even get to the wet forest!
When we got to Cabo Blanco we had to hike in 2km, the last 500 m carrying all of our belongings. Everyone said my bags were huge, but they weren’t bigger than average – I think they just look that way because I’m small. ☺ I was glad to put them down at the dorm, though, and am considering what I might be able to leave behind when we hike into our last site, Corcovado – 20 km.
I’ve decided to swear off being melancholy about leaving a site, because the next place is bound to be even more amazing. And there are pochote trees here, too, which are my favorite this week. Cabo Blanco is on the very tip of the Nicoya Peninsula. It’s an Absolute Reserve, so no one is allowed here except 12-14 invited groups a year. So there’s very low human impact. There is beautiful rocky/sandy beach, amazing tidepools and a lagoon that is safe to snorkel in at low tide, and a steep hill away from the beach with thick forest and cool birds. All 22 of us are staying in one small building, minimal walls (mostly just screen), porch all around, with steps down the front to the beach. There is no electricity here, just a generator that they run a few hours a day for the course needs. We’ve got running water, though, and I don’t miss hot water at all. It’s much more humid here, so the heat feels hotter.
They have scheduled more free time in here, which I’m looking forward to. We can snorkel every morning if we want to. The dangers here are different from Palo Verde, except for scorpions. There are a lot of vampire bats because of the high concentration of livestock around. That explains the large mesh on our dorm, which wouldn’t keep mosquitoes out – there don’t seem to be any here! When we’re snorkeling have to watch for the changing tide in the lagoon because of the waves and also because sharks come in at high tide. Apparently lots of them. Other than that, the only thing to watch out for seems to be a tsunami. Very unlikely, of course, but there are two tectonic plates meeting 40km off the coast, so if there was a quake there we’d have about 15 minutes to get uphill. No worries, if you’re reading this, it means it didn’t happen! Or I grabbed my computer on the way up.
I’m really looking forward to catching up on sleep here – barely made it through the couple of lectures we had.
I saw a few new birds on my way in. Lots of brown pelicans, they fly over regularly; magnificent frigatebirds are also very common here. A white-necked puffbird was a real treat, and I saw my first social flycatcher, too. They’re apparently very common, but I hadn’t noticed one before.
We stopped at a gas station for a break and to pick up a couple of new resource faculty for Cabo Blanco. Across the street there was a huge statue of a bull, the big grey variety with hump at the withers and floppy ears. The guys in our group were fascinated by the to-scale genitals, of course, and had to take lots of pictures! Anyway, that’s the most common type of cattle out here.
At the next stop we had lunch and I bought my very first pair of flip-flops, $5. I’m glad to have them, because I think this is the only side where we’re allowed to wear open-toed shoes, and my feet could use the air. I don’t want them to start rotting before we even get to the wet forest!
When we got to Cabo Blanco we had to hike in 2km, the last 500 m carrying all of our belongings. Everyone said my bags were huge, but they weren’t bigger than average – I think they just look that way because I’m small. ☺ I was glad to put them down at the dorm, though, and am considering what I might be able to leave behind when we hike into our last site, Corcovado – 20 km.
I’ve decided to swear off being melancholy about leaving a site, because the next place is bound to be even more amazing. And there are pochote trees here, too, which are my favorite this week. Cabo Blanco is on the very tip of the Nicoya Peninsula. It’s an Absolute Reserve, so no one is allowed here except 12-14 invited groups a year. So there’s very low human impact. There is beautiful rocky/sandy beach, amazing tidepools and a lagoon that is safe to snorkel in at low tide, and a steep hill away from the beach with thick forest and cool birds. All 22 of us are staying in one small building, minimal walls (mostly just screen), porch all around, with steps down the front to the beach. There is no electricity here, just a generator that they run a few hours a day for the course needs. We’ve got running water, though, and I don’t miss hot water at all. It’s much more humid here, so the heat feels hotter.
They have scheduled more free time in here, which I’m looking forward to. We can snorkel every morning if we want to. The dangers here are different from Palo Verde, except for scorpions. There are a lot of vampire bats because of the high concentration of livestock around. That explains the large mesh on our dorm, which wouldn’t keep mosquitoes out – there don’t seem to be any here! When we’re snorkeling have to watch for the changing tide in the lagoon because of the waves and also because sharks come in at high tide. Apparently lots of them. Other than that, the only thing to watch out for seems to be a tsunami. Very unlikely, of course, but there are two tectonic plates meeting 40km off the coast, so if there was a quake there we’d have about 15 minutes to get uphill. No worries, if you’re reading this, it means it didn’t happen! Or I grabbed my computer on the way up.
I’m really looking forward to catching up on sleep here – barely made it through the couple of lectures we had.
I saw a few new birds on my way in. Lots of brown pelicans, they fly over regularly; magnificent frigatebirds are also very common here. A white-necked puffbird was a real treat, and I saw my first social flycatcher, too. They’re apparently very common, but I hadn’t noticed one before.
Monday, February 4, 2008
packing up again
I'm taking a break from packing to write my last post from Palo Verde. It was a long day. 4 hours of presentations in the morning, with everybody talking about their independent projects. It was fun to see how they more or less came together at the last minute. There were projects on turtle shell symmetry, foraging habits of iguanas, color change and temperature regulation of iguanas, different aspects of black-backed frog calls, job partitioning in acacia ants, pollination biology of morning glories... 16 different research ideas. The afternoon was for finishing our first drafts of papers on the independent projects.
I printed mine out at 5 so I'd have an hour to run around the woods and swamp before dinner. I saw a streaked-back oriole, white ibis, and black-headed trogon! I think it was my first trogon ever. Becky took a picture of me looking at it, I look pretty excited. I also got 4 acacia ant stings on the walk... a reminder not to focus too much on birds.
Everybody has been scratching away at their bug bites, but until early this morning I was relatively unscathed. But I woke up at about 4:30, and it seemed the accumulating bites had reached some threshold. Since then I've been scratching here and there pretty much constantly. I'm not sure exactly what they are... tick bites, mosquitoes, chiggers certainly.
We load up the bus tomorrow morning and set out for Cabo Blanco at 7:30. It's south and slightly east of here, on the tip of the peninsula that forms the west side of the Nicoya Gulf. A six-hour drive, apparently, if all goes well. There is no internet access there, and the phone is only for emergencies, but I'll try to collect blog entries and the upload them all at once on February 11th, when we spend a night in San Jose on our way to La Selva on the other side of the country. It's been wonderful hearing from some of you, I'll miss being able to read emails and chat online! But the schedule at Cabo Blanco is supposed to be more relaxed than Palo Verde was anyway, so hopefully I won't need to decompress as often. :)
We had a party to celebrate finishing our first independent projects and our time at Palo Verde. It was mostly just sitting around on the front porch of the biological station, passing the guitar around, grabbing and inspecting the insects attracted to the lights at night. There were a couple of really cool long-horned beetles. One of them wouldn't leave the beer can alone; we thought probably it was excited about the moisture condensing on the side. Craig passed around a really nice bottle of rum, and we played (and sang) everything from Bob Dylan to Tenacious D. It was the first time nobody was talking science; we just sat around crafting inside jokes and laughing hard. I'm getting up early tomorrow morning to say goodbye to Palo Verde before breakfast. We'll all catch up on sleep on the bus.
Next update in a week!
I printed mine out at 5 so I'd have an hour to run around the woods and swamp before dinner. I saw a streaked-back oriole, white ibis, and black-headed trogon! I think it was my first trogon ever. Becky took a picture of me looking at it, I look pretty excited. I also got 4 acacia ant stings on the walk... a reminder not to focus too much on birds.
Everybody has been scratching away at their bug bites, but until early this morning I was relatively unscathed. But I woke up at about 4:30, and it seemed the accumulating bites had reached some threshold. Since then I've been scratching here and there pretty much constantly. I'm not sure exactly what they are... tick bites, mosquitoes, chiggers certainly.
We load up the bus tomorrow morning and set out for Cabo Blanco at 7:30. It's south and slightly east of here, on the tip of the peninsula that forms the west side of the Nicoya Gulf. A six-hour drive, apparently, if all goes well. There is no internet access there, and the phone is only for emergencies, but I'll try to collect blog entries and the upload them all at once on February 11th, when we spend a night in San Jose on our way to La Selva on the other side of the country. It's been wonderful hearing from some of you, I'll miss being able to read emails and chat online! But the schedule at Cabo Blanco is supposed to be more relaxed than Palo Verde was anyway, so hopefully I won't need to decompress as often. :)
We had a party to celebrate finishing our first independent projects and our time at Palo Verde. It was mostly just sitting around on the front porch of the biological station, passing the guitar around, grabbing and inspecting the insects attracted to the lights at night. There were a couple of really cool long-horned beetles. One of them wouldn't leave the beer can alone; we thought probably it was excited about the moisture condensing on the side. Craig passed around a really nice bottle of rum, and we played (and sang) everything from Bob Dylan to Tenacious D. It was the first time nobody was talking science; we just sat around crafting inside jokes and laughing hard. I'm getting up early tomorrow morning to say goodbye to Palo Verde before breakfast. We'll all catch up on sleep on the bus.
Next update in a week!
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Final Stretch in Palo Verde
I don't feel ready to leave Palo Verde. I'm just getting used to being here, starting to remember the plants and easily identify the most common birds. I can even sometimes subconsciously recognize the rustle of a peccary in the dry leaves. Today, for the first time, I noticed a baby capuchin hanging out on its mother's back, grasping with all four limbs and tail. Apparently there are some in every troop, it's been right in front of me every time I ran into the monkeys, but I was too overwhelmed with everything to see the details. Anyway, I'd better get used to it, because that's the way this course operates -- stay in one place long enough to get a small foothold, and then move on. Maybe someday I'll get to come back here again and cement the prickly Pochote tree, the Guacimo with it's cardboardy-sweet fruits, and bright orange flowered Jaquinia in my mind.
Today I crept off just before sunset with my friend Becky (a fellow believer in enjoying every day) to check out the water hole. We keep hoping to see some big mammal besides a peccary -- maybe even a cat! No luck, but there were frogs, parrots, capuchins, and a male curassow tromping through the woods. By the time we were nearly back to the station, it was properly dusky. We scared up a Pauraque (or maybe it scared us up). It flew off making a beautiful sound like drops of water in a metal container, amplified and slowed down. Birds are weird and cool. In fact, life is. That's why I'm a biologist. :)
If you check out earlier posts, you'll see that Raffica the Magnificent has begun putting up photos for me. I'll try to get a few more to her before we leave Palo Verde. I think there's one from the first capuchin troop I encountered, plus a photo of a Malvaviscus flower and it's excellent nectar-stealing bug.
So, we finished analyzing data for our first independent project today. We were looking for differences in how the acacia-leaf-sucking coreid bug (from our first study) interacts with different species of acacia and ant. We were expecting to find differences (that the bug would prefer one species of acacia, and that some ants would be more aggressive than others), but nothing was significant in our analyses. But this is interesting too! (It might be more interesting if our sample sizes was big enough to give us any confidence in our results...) Anyway, it was fun and I learned a lot about how to think about study design, statistics, and thinking in a group. If you want the details, ask me sometime -- I think they'd probably bore just about anyone who reads this! Now that it's time to write up the study, I'm learning to truly understand, in my soul, how slow the internet here is and how long downloading a pdf can take.
Life lessons, ladies and gentlemen. Next week: how to think longingly of the slow connection at Palo Verde when stuck in Cabo Blanco with no internet at all. Am I addicted? Seriously though, I'm going to have to wait 8 days to find out what happens on February 5th.
Entertaining anecdotes section! Yesterday, two ant-crazy guys (Joe and Bill -- all the fellas here have very normal names) independently managed to get acacia-ant stings on their lips. I got to see my second scorpion, too -- this one's back was completely covered by tiny baby scorpions! It was kind of cute, and at the same time gave me the creeps. This morning after breakfast there was a cinnamon hummingbird throwing a fit about the hooting ferruginous pygmy owl next to the station. The owl didn't seem to care one bit.
New birds for the list: white-tailed hawk, mangrove cuckoo, and olive sparrow.
Friday, February 1, 2008
On a cool and windy evening
Today was a lot like yesterday, we spent time in the field testing ant reactions to bugs and collecting materials for an overnight experiment. The honeymoon stage is over, all of the strong personalities have begun to react. The soap opera stage has begun. I'm working on observing it, i.e. being aware but not involved. Wish me luck!
Today I saw a white-tailed hawk and a mangrove cuckoo (in an abandoned field, not a mangrove!) I also went the 4 km down to the river looking for some acacia and got to see 2 adult crocodiles swimming in the muddy water. An acacia ant stung me in my armpit. Those are pretty much the highlights of the day.
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