Thursday, January 21, 2010

Out and about

Earlier in phase, a visit to our old neighbours revealed that, compared to some, we were actually getting off lightly as the rains hit at the start of the month.
Training complete, snow-delayed volunteers arrived and the torrential rain of the first week seemingly passed; the staff and volunteers have been getting out and about on surveys. We're still tasked with converting our beautiful new home into a recognisable biological station, and so for the first few weeks, along-side our mammal and jaguar surveys, we've been devoting our free time to making some basic species lists for the surrounding area for some information displays areas being designed to go up around base.
As the sun has been out in the last two weeks, it wasn't just the volunteers who made most of it (some more than others, judging by a few pink faces and shoulders on base - cover up and wear sunscreen!). Across the way a huge crocodile was spotted by staff and park rangers, basking in the sun to warm up. We'll be happy to watch that one from a very safe distance!

As well as the forest and incidental work, the volunteers managed to get out on the local canals last week to start spotting some of the local bird life - racking up half of our study species in just one morning! This week the team is heading out with the Head Ranger, Edwin, to explore some of the local canals which are closed except for researchers (lucky-lucky!), as we locate our regular study sites for the relocated Aquatic Avifauna study.

And as the interns take charge of setting up the incidentals study for the new station, inquisitive minds, on noticing the abundance of monkeys in the area, in particular Spider Monkeys (see below) have begun taking notes on some of their basic behaviours to see what they are getting up to. Judging by this picture though, maybe the monkeys are thinking the same thing!

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1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Go birds! Yay!