TBS 2

2-16-09
Today was our turn to do the “Jaguar Hike” we soon caught on that the merely put the word “jaguar” in front to make to hike seem more interesting. Although we didn’t see a jaguar it was a nice leisurely hike through the jungle, until it was 11:30 and we were farther away from camp that we should have been to get back on time for lunch. So we picked up our pace and took the shortest was back on a research trail, which are not as heavily used so more overgrown. I walk walking in the middle of the group with the 2 guides and a couple students in front of me when I saw a snake in the corner of my snake. I immediately turned around saying “snake snake snake…” It was a little snake but it startled me since it was almost on the trail. I was also surprised half the group walked past it without realizing. I guess it was a harmless garden snake but I obviously didn’t know that when I first saw it. Snakes are the animal that scares me the most in the rainforest, because they are the only animal that could quickly and easily kill you. We continued our light jog back to camp when we crossed a small stream. I looked down it as I was crossing and say a tortoise, this did not scare me as much as the snake but I was once again surprised no one saw it in front of me. We ended up getting to lunch about 30 minutes late, but there was still food so it was fine. After lunch we went for a dip in the Tiputini River, it was very refreshing after our long hike. After that we went out to start a mark and recapture experiment with bullet ants. This consisted of kicking a tree that bullet ants lived at the base of then marking all the ones that came out with bright nail polish, all the while trying not to get bit. Next we headed back to our pitfall traps to collect our bugs, this time I managed to not fall down at all. After dinner I went on a night hike with Carl, Jane, Eric, and Mark. We saw a tarantula as well as lots of frogs. Then Eric found a snake which he immediately picked up… I was not OK with this and kept my distance. He insisted he knew it wasn’t poisonous, but I told him “we are in the most biodiverse place in the world, if you can’t tell me the species I am not going near it.” He told me I was overreacting and continued to toy with the unidentified snake.
2-17-09
I woke up at 5:27 this morning to the horrible realization that my alarm had not gone off and I was supposed to be at the boat dock in 3 minutes to go to Tower 2. Luckily I had set out everything the night before in case this happened and was able to make it to the boat before it left. We got to tower and did some bird watching as the sun rose. The tower is about 45 m high and has an excellent view of the canopy. But after almost 3 hours of birding, which is very near my limit, I went down and took out a small canoe with Teal and Cath. The lagoon had lots of Hautsons, a prehistoric looking bird that is supposedly very sensitive to human disturbance and therefore their presence is a sign of a healthy forest. Before we docked to head back to camp, Cath showed us a tree that we could pull a prank with. The tree’s fruit had a black die in it that was invisible at first so you tell people that if they put it on their forehead they will “see spots” and they put it on in hopes of trying a hallucinogen, but then about 30 minutes later only see spots on the other victims’ foreheads. After lunch we went for a float down the river and a butterfly sat on my head almost the entire time. Then we went back to out bullet ant trees to finish our mark and recapture experiment. This time we just aggravated the nest and counted how many marked and unmarked ants came out, and with this information we were able to estimate the population on the nest.
2-18-09
Today was our first completely free day and our first day of rain. Every night since we have been here there is a tree frog that is very loud (his call sounds like “mot mot” so that has become what my roommates and I say to each other in passing – very comical.) He is a tiny tree frog that sits in bromeliads and uses them as a projection device. Last night was the first night he really kept me up because after a large crack of thunder we would get twice as loud, as if completing with it. I do enjoy thunderstorms, and this was by far the noisiest I have ever head, between the torrential down pour, the enormous cracks of thunder, and the tree frog it was quite a spectacle. During the morning I took a nap then woke and woke up when the rain started to pick up again so I sat on our porch to watch the downpour. The day before my roommates and I were talking about how much we like to dance in the rain and I thought there was no time like the present so I found them and we had a glorious dance party in the middle of the jungle (no need to shower today.) After lunch Nicole and I started to plan our research project. We were thinking about doing something with macro-organisms in streams. We are hoping to come up with something that involves fishing, but so far all we can come up with is a blind taste test to see it fish from black-water or white-water streams taste better, which is sadly not very scientific. Lecture today was about freshwater systems which was ironically very relevant to my and Nicole project. After lecture and dinner I continued my lazy day reading in our cabin listening to the rain drizzle on the roof and the thunder rumble in the distance.
2-19-09
I woke up today and it was still raining, went to breakfast – still raining. My group was supposed to go on a float down the black-water river in the morning but because of the rain it was postponed till the afternoon. In the morning Nicole and I worked on our research project again. We have giving up on the fishing idea and are just going to compare small clear-water streams. After lunch it was still drizzling, but we went on the float anyways. The boat ride was about 3 hours long, and for about 10 minutes of that there was no rain. I made the decision not to bring my rain gear on the boat because it was already wet, but I was cold and miserable for most of the time because of my choice. Finally we saw some Red Howler monkeys and I started to get in a better mood. Black-water Rivers are regularly flooded and right now the Tiputini River is exceptionally high, so we were navigating through submerged trees getting stuck multiple times and having to machete our way out. We eventually got to a somewhat open area so that we could start fishing. The poles consisted of a piece of wood with line wrapped around it and the bait was a chuck of chicken, mainly for catching piranhas. Yesterday, Joe said that if we caught enough fish we may be able to do our fishing experiment. We didn’t catch any… On the way back we saw a 3-toed sloth and a laughing falcon.
2-20-09
This morning we wrote our proposal for our research project and decided to do morpho-species in small clear-water streams. To collect data we made a kick-net. We had to make do with the limited resources at the station and made the net out of a stiff net, not the best for catching fish, and a wire frame. The hardest part was trying to talk tot the Ecuadorian construction workers so they would cut our wire. After lunch we finished the net and wet to go try it out on a nearby stream. We were fairly worried about not catching anything and therefore having no data, but not only did we catch insects we catch FISH! When I say fish I mean a small minnow, but still we were pretty excited. Today a group of about 20 USFQ exchange students from Boston University came. They are not studying science or very interesting in it at all, so we were fairly territorial of the station and fairly angry when we found out they saw an anaconda on their first boat ride. Tonight at 3am we are planning on going on a nioght hike in hopes of seeing a Tapir, but we will see if that actually happens.
2-21-09
Last night we didn’t wake up for our night hike because it was raining. Also, at 5:30 we were supposed to go mist netting, but it was raining. Instead we spent most of the morning sleeping and then having meetings with Joe and Cath about our research project. They obviously had some doubts about our project so after lunch we went out again and did a full test run, taking turbidity, temperature, depth, width, flow rate, and using our kick net to identify morpho-species. We caught water striders, minnows, and nymphs, so it was definitely a success and we would most likely be able to collect enough data in 4 days to analyze. We came back for lecture and dinner, and went to bed in hopes of no rain in the morning so we could go mist netting.
2-22-09
This morning at 5:27 we woke up to NO RAIN! Then rushed to met everyone at 5:30 to leave. Mist netting is a way to catch small understory birds that are usually very hard to see and study by setting up thin net that birds fly into and get caught. Once caught you can remove them take the data needed and release them again. We caught some pretty tanagers, a ant bird (which doesn’t actually eat ants, but fallows army ants and eats the insects running away from them.) We also caught a humming bird, which is very fragile so we let it go right away. After we got back Nicole and I started our first full day of data collection. We ended up getting some good data and getting very wet. Some of the pools were above our knees, and as we were kicking downstream the water would splash everywhere. Eventhough the water was about 24˚C (75˚F) it seemed cold because the air is so warm. After we were done we emptied our boots of water and headed back for lunch. after lunch we went into the field again. This stream was a lot wider, shallower, and clearer, so we could see wildlife a lot better and saw some fair good sized fish, which only mean about 2 inches long. Nicole got really excited about the larger fish and after collecting data she insisted we try and catch one, but they were too fast for us.
2-23-09
Today was another day routine day. Breakfast at 6:30 fallowed by going into the field. We came back for lunch at noon then went back into the field to another stream, came back to read/study before dinner then bed.
2-24-09
This morning we went out into the field. When we got to our stream there was a hummingbird sitting on one of the branches over the water. Soon it left the branch and started hovering over the water dipping down periodically to bath itself. It was definitely the favorite thing I have seen here so far. After lunch we were able to do a float down river. Usually the boat stays fairly close while we are in the water, but today they went out of view, which had us a little worried but then we started playing out chain game so we forgot about our boat leaving us in the Tiputini. (Note: Peru is about 4 hours downstream so we always joke about just floating to Peru.) Our chain game consist of finding a tree that is partially submerged so someone can hold onto it while everyone else grabs on to the persons’ feet in front of them creating a long chain. The challenge is trying to get everyone attached before someone breaks the link. The most we got today was about 10 people. When we got back we had a short hike to review plant families, and we pleasantly interrupted but a capuchin monkey and later some squirrel monkeys. After dinner we went on a night hike to a large stream and some some huge toads and crawdads.