They don't call it the rainy season for nothing... It is currently raining (thunder-storming), as it has almost every afternoon/evening since we arrived at La Selva.
The most shocking things here are probably the constant heat, the amount of rain, and all of the amazing sights and
sounds. The first night I got here, I had to walk across a long (wet) suspension bridge over a river, from the dining hall to my cabin, in the dark, alone. I'm not going to lie... it was a little scary. There were tons of bug noises, plus who knows what, plus the occasional howler monkey or two to mix it up.
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| Howler monkey on the suspension bridge |
In the daytime, the sounds of bugs and howlers are joined by the beautiful sounds - and sights - of birds! Everywhere! Birds! I think on our first day in the field I saw about 20-30 lifers. I'm now up to 50 or so.
The first few days, our fearless leader Mike showed Charlie and me the ropes of our field work. We scouted out a few of the wren groups on/near the station, and identified a few of the individuals (by colored bands on their legs). One important part of our research is
catching the birds, and putting those colored bands on them, which we do by mist-netting. We set up a great big, very fine net, like so:
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| Big ole net... hard to see, but you can see the tall pole off to the left. |
And then the little birdies hopefully can't see the net and fly into it, falling into a nice little pocket:
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| Hummingbirds are actually quite good at avoiding the net... this guy was unlucky. |
Then we go in and carefully extract the bird from the net. Some birds struggle and bite and peck, and some are a bit more docile:
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| Mike working on a tody-flycatcher |
Then you do stuff like measure tail and wing length, mass, and if necessary put on bands and take a blood sample. (We have not caught any of our study birds, so we haven't done any banding or blood samples yet.)
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| Wing measurement |
And then you take pictures with the bird. Because we are serious scientists.
After a few days of work, we had our day off today, so Charlie and I went on a hike through some cool old-growth forest and "swamp" trails. We did not get lost. But we did hear a jaguar in heat, catching a tapir, and fighting off an ocelot. Fortunately we survived. Okay, not really...but we did hear some odd deep rumbling sound and something crashing through the woods. Other than that we had a lovely hike AND made it back for lunch.
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| Huge trees! |
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| One of many shady bridges... |
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| Beautiful "waterfall" sort of thing |
