Hasta luego, La Selva

Well, it's almost that time... the days have flown by and "wow we have two whole months left" has quickly turned into "holy crap, we're leaving tomorrow!" For me, that means I'm leaving the station, but then I'll be joining my dad in San Jose, from where we will take off on our two-week vacation around Costa Rica!

As excited as I am for a vacation (and as exhausted I am after two months of working...), it is really sad to say goodbye to La Selva. For a while I wasn't really having a great time here, and as per usual it took me a long time to get into the swing of things. I really began to appreciate what a beautiful place this is, I got to know so many cool people here, I reaffirmed that I could be a field biologist, and I realized what an amazing opportunity this was to come down here.

Right in step with doing things late... I went on my first night hike/swamp adventure a few nights ago (about time!). It was awesome, we caught baby caimans, turtles, frogs, and almost got poop thrown on us by capuchin monkeys.

Tiny frog, caiman, caiman

Tree frog

Yesterday we finished up all of our big work, including our last day at Señor Macho's. It was a big haul to get all of that done... we spent essentially the last 2-3 weeks only going to the pastures to finish playback trials, and it was kind of miserable for a while because we kept getting rained out/on day after day! So it was a huge relief to be done!

Today we just mist-netted for one last bird, and did not catch her, but did catch a lot of other cool birds in the process, and we saw a flock of Swallow-tailed Kites migrate by. Now I really just need to pack and say goodbye!

Things I will miss from La Selva:

• The people! I am thrilled at how many cool, crazy people I got to meet here, from undergraduate assistants like myself, to PhD students, up to long-term researchers who have been coming to La Selva for many, many years. For someone who still has no idea what she's doing with her life... it was kind of inspiring to be surrounded by all of these researchers working on really cool projects, and to be able to talk to them and learn about what they're doing and how they got to where they are today. 

  

  Porch night: a guaranteed good night filled with music and conversation

  

  We had a lot of crazy events, such as a jousting/sword fight tournament and a toad race
  
  

• The pastures: the beautiful scenery, and the hills especially... I loved hiking to the tops of the really big hills and looking out at the gorgeous views

Turns out selfie jumping pics are super hard to take (attempt 5/5)

If the weather was right, we could see the top of the mountain!

• All of the amazing wildlife here:

  
  

  Snakes (Terciopelo)

  

  Bugs 

Birds! (King Vulture)

What a beaut! (Birds pt 2: Red-legged Honeycreeper)

Mammals (fresh puma tracks!)

Mammals pt 2: SLOTH ON A POLE

There are tons of other little things that I am forgetting to mention that I will surely miss. All in all, it's been an amazing experience that I'm so glad happened to fall right into my lap. After living here for what seems like a lot longer than two months, and being part of this tight little community, it will certainly be difficult to return to the "real world" (although I won't be upset when I am dry/cool for, say, an entire day, and ants aren't crawling all over me all the time and occasionally biting my butt, and I won't have to worry about all of my stuff molding, and I can eat real cheese, etc...).

Thankfully, I have a nice transition back into the real world, via vacation time with my dad. Safe travels, D-con! Can't wait to see you tomorrow!

Here's to you, Primm

Last week I heard the devastating news that one of my close friends from high school died in a bike/car accident. His name was John Brendan Primm, but I don't think I ever called him John. In high school I remember he introduced himself as Brendan. But for some reason we always called him Primm, and he'll always be Primm to me.

Primm and I met in orchestra, and bonded even more doing theater together. He was a brilliant actor, and an energetic, charismatic soul. We were pretty good friends in high school, but I would argue that we became even better friends after high school. I went away to Minnesota for college, and Primm stayed in Madison at Edgewood College. Every time I came home to visit, Primm was reliably one of the first people I called to hang out with. We would bake something delicious (he was an amazing chef), watch a nerdy movie, eat food, play video games, go to the farmer's market (where we ate more food), or do anything else that likely involved food.

Learning that "someone from high school" died in a car accident, and then finding out that person was one of my best friends was an absolute shock. The day I found out was probably one of the worst days of my life, made even worse by the fact that I am so far away from home right now. I didn't know what to do, how to confirm it, I couldn't call anyone. I just went through the day in a daze, trying to process it and not think about it at the same time. The people here who knew were supportive in their own ways, to which I am very grateful.

I've never lost someone I was this close to, and it's still so hard to believe. I think I'm so far removed here, and I'm so busy that it's easier to not think about it. I'm afraid of the day it really hits me, when I get home and I realize I won't be able to call him. I'll never bake anything with him again, never see him act again, never go on another camping trip together, never watch Doctor Who with him. But I'm so thankful that after I came home in June, we were able to share one last adventure before I left for Costa Rica. We drove out to the Sassy Cow Creamery, got lost in the country, eventually found it, ate ice cream, and pet some cute baby goats. A classic adventure with Primm.

I wish I had more to say. I feel like he deserves more. But I've tried to write this a million times and I've scrapped it and started over a million times. So here's to you, Primm. You were taken from us far too soon. I will never forget what a talented young man you were, and what great friend you were to me and to so many others. Goodbye.

Edit: Primm's family also set up this wonderful theater and arts memorial fund in his honor, and it is amazing to see the outpouring of love and generosity it has inspired from his friends and family.

Trogon-y trogons

Today was a great, productive day out in the pastures. We buzzed through a bunch of our playback experiments in record time, and even had time to explore the ranch for more potential groups/territories.

In the process, we saw our first owl of the trip, a Spectacled Owl, a super cool-looking bird:

This was in the same area that we saw a Tamandua (collared anteater) just a few weeks before:

Then we got to explore some more of the ranch, and hiked up one big hill, for a gorgeous view of the surrounding land:

And on the walk home through the forest, we came upon this guy perching right on one of the bridges. One of three species of trogons found here, this is the Black-throated Trogon. For some reason I think trogons are really cool; they're just little colorful birds with long tails and big funny-looking eyes. A year ago, I wouldn't have had any idea what a trogon even was... a few months ago my friend Angela was describing them to me for the first time, simply telling me that "they just look so trogon-y!" At the time, I found this a perfectly unhelpful description, but now I must say, there's a lot of truth in that statement... This guy sat still for a surprisingly long time and allowed me to get some great pictures!

Pretty trogon-y, huh?

Here is my video from a few weeks ago of a pair of Slaty-tailed Trogons duetting. Not a particularly great video, but I love that you can indeed tell how "trogon-y" they look, just from a silhouette, and that you can see their tails flick up every time they sing.

The Project: Band-backed Wrens

It's now been a month since we arrived here in Costa Rica, and almost as long since I've posted anything here... It seems like time moves too slowly and yet flies by all at the same time. I meant to write more regularly, but it turns out you get really busy when you're working your ass off all day. Then it seems like everything we do is the same from day-to-day so I feel like I have nothing to share, and yet I see awesome and spectacular things almost every day here. And now, I'm completely backed up I don't even know where to begin, so I'll just jump in and we'll see where this takes me...

I really just want to share pictures/stories of all the cool animals I see here (I'll get to that, don't worry - if you just want to look at pictures, see the end of this post for the link to my flickr page), but I guess I could start out with a little more background on what I'm doing here.

This past year I volunteered in a lab and through our weekly lab meetings with a few professors and grad students I met Mike, who is working on his PhD at Minnesota. A few weeks before the end of the school year, right around the time I was becoming very stressed about not having any jobs/plans for the summer/future, Mike ran into me and asked if I had any plans for the summer and if I would be interested in going to Costa Rica as one of his field assistants. The catch was that he couldn't pay me, but he could pay for the flight and all of my housing/food. The upside was that I would get the opportunity to travel to Costa Rica for free, essentially, and get a lot of field experience working with birds. Seeing as I had no other plans set up, it was a pretty easy decision.


The project - Mike has worked here at La Selva for a few summers on his project, looking at the sociality of this particular species of wren, the Band-backed Wren. These wrens are interesting in that they often exhibit cooperative breeding, where one or more offspring ("subordinates") will stay around and help the dominant pair when they are mature, instead of going off to breed themselves. So we are looking at how relatedness of subordinates relates to how much they invest in territory defense or care of young. This involves catching birds to mark them and taking blood samples to determine relatedness. We also do playback experiments, in which we play their song (mimicking an intruding wren) and observe how the birds react. (Click here to here how funky these guys sound)

Adult Band-backed Wren

We also spend a lot of time just looking for them. Even if we hear them call or sing, it can be almost impossible to find them moving along the trunk or branches of a tree with a lot of vegetation, like this:

Where we work - These birds are also interesting because they don't really live in the forest. They like to nest in isolated trees that are not touching other trees, so they usually set up territories on edges or in clearings. So we have two groups of wrens that we can observe on/very near the station itself, but most of the groups we work with are on a cattle ranch that is adjacent to La Selva.

To get there, we go on a quick hike through the forest, slide down a muddy slope, cross some barbed wire, and ford a stream. We are then at "Señor Macho's."

A rare glimpse at the mountain from one of the pastures - it's often shrouded in clouds 

Once there, the going is fairly easy. We mostly trudge through pastures with the occasional scramble under barbed wire fences and a few stream crossings to get to certain sites:

This is where the rubber boots come in really handy

We will usually spend a full day out there, bring a pack lunch, and basically be on our feet looking for birds for up to 7-9 hours. It's exhausting. And we always have to watch out for these guys... not dangerous, but definitely curious:

Moo

There are at least two herds of cattle, probably more, and they are rotated fairly frequently, so we never know where they'll be when we get there each day. The day we met this particular group, we were in the process of setting up one of our nets across that barbed wire fence. I gradually became aware that the constant moo-ing we were hearing in the distance was getting louder and I turned around to see this herd charging in through the open gate at the other end of the pasture I was standing in. We frantically got all of our equipment over the fence and I crawled under just before they arrived, ready to head over and check us out.

-------

Until next time, mis amigos! I will just keep writing about what I think might be interesting, but if anyone is actually out there reading this and has anything they are dying to know more about my trip, let me know!

I've been taking a ton of pictures, so if you want to see more of the cool critters I've seen so far, check out my flickr photo set:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76038115@N00/sets/72157634211768609/

I update it fairly frequently, so check back often! (FYI: I add a lot more pictures to it than I do to my facebook photo album)

Mist-netting and a jungle hike

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.

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:

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:

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:

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.)

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.

Huge trees!

One of many shady bridges...

Beautiful "waterfall" sort of thing

Quick update (fyi I'm in Costa Rica)

Hey ya'll, it's been a while. Here's a quick update:

I graduated from the University of Minnesota! Wooooo!

The Ninjas went to Nationals! It was great. We broke seed, plus we beat teams that were seeded ahead of us, and we pushed other top teams to the limit! Couldn't be prouder of my ladies.

And now, what am I doing with that new B.S. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior? NO idea. But for the time being, I'm spending the summer assisting a grad student from the UofM on his research project studying a bird species called the Band-backed Wren. It should consist of some fun romping around the rainforest catching birds.

After waking up at 3am and a LONG day of traveling (a drive to Chicago, two flights to make it to San Jose, and another drive out to the station), we finally arrived at our final destination about 2 hours ago. I am now exhausted and, after checking in with my parents, will probably go right to sleep. ¡Buenas noches, amigos!

Eagles and hidden love

Today I went for a walk. It was absolutely gorgeous outside, and after having a pretty shitty week, I needed to get out and cheer myself up with nature and birds. Especially since we're supposed to get freezing rain and snow soon... I thought I'd go spot an eagle or two while the weather was nice.

I walked down to the path that runs along the Mississippi just east of the boathouse, and headed south. There was not much out... a pair of male Hooded Mergansers (with a third mystery merganser) right away, and then just a few Mallards and a lone Canada Goose.

Duck tracks

I passed a woman with a dog, twice, and both times she gave me a huge grin. I'm not sure if she thought I was crazy, or thought it was cool that I was looking at birds... or both?

I kept on walking and found a nice little lonely park that I had never noticed before from the upper path. I hiked across the snow to reach the water's edge and found some duck prints. My feet also got soaked trudging through 1-2 ft deep snow... but alas, that is the price you must pay for pretty-ful nature.

Pretty little park

I passed a couple with a video camera, and I'm not sure what they were filming, but at one point the guy was making snow angels...

I kept going and found a Hairy Woodpecker. Nothing special, but still pretty cool.

I texted my mom a picture of the park, and she told me to watch out for muggers. I said I would, but so far I had only seen people with dogs and people making films and crazy people walking in circles. For at that moment, there was a woman walking on the main path about 50 yards away, but she appeared to be stopping and walking in small circles every so often...

Then my phone died so I decided I'd better scoot before a mugger found me.

I booked it back to the main path, got my feet very wet, and made sure to check out the woman's snow circles on the way. And then I realized, she was not just a crazy woman walking in circles... she was making careful shapes in the snow:

#1

#2

#3

I'm not sure who they were for, or if they were just for the world, but it felt like they were for me. A random message of love. So I stood there for a while in the snow, with the sun on my face, and the sound of people and traffic off in the distance, but the peace and quiet of nature much closer to me, and thought about how serendipitous it was that I should come across this woman's kind offering when I so needed it.

She was long gone, so I just said:

I finally saw my eagle unexpectedly when I was almost home, soaring in and out of view behind houses, far off in the distance.