Panama 2022 - Week 7

Day 43 – 04/11/22

We were up in the 50-hectare plot again today surveying, which is more fun working as a three again. There was a constant threat of rain throughout the day, but we were lucky. It had obviously rained in other parts of the forest as we kept coming across areas where the leaves on the ground were soaked.

In the afternoon we booked our accommodation for a short holiday we’re planning in the Chiriqui region of Panama. We’re going away for almost a week from the 13th and are very excited.

Day 44 – 05/11/22

Another supposedly easy day that ended up being harder than planned. Kane took us to the other side of the island and from there El and I struggled through dense palms and failed to find one of the target trees. We gave up and managed to survey five others before it started raining. Paddy had been on a nearby route and found us as we were finishing the last tree. The most eventful moment was a close encounter with a bullet ant, where one was wandering around on a branch that El was leaning on. This wasn't as close as the occasion when Paddy had trod on a nest of them though. Luckily no stings so far, otherwise the day would have been awful.

Day 45 – 06/11/22

For only the second time in 45 days, I slept past 7am. I did half wake at 7, but managed to roll over and go back to sleep until my alarm went off at 8:30am.

Another day measuring pods. Once again, by bringing in lots of material from the forest we’ve absolutely ruined the lab. The lab is now worse than the forest for chigger bites, so as soon as I finished with lab work I returned to my room, took a shower and worked there on my laptop instead. As a group, we all managed to avoid the large tour group of Americans from the Nat Geo cruise ship that had anchored off the island.

At 4:30pm Paddy and I went for a brief birding walk around camp. It was overcast and breezy, so aside from the usual flycatchers and hawks that are always about we weren’t expecting to see much much. We were, however, surprised by a Painted Bunting. This is a small bird with a red body, blue head and green wings. It looks like it’s been coloured by a child who’s never actually seen a bird before. Interestingly, according to both the bird book and Merlin, it doesn’t occur in this region of Panama. Whether it was lost, the book is wrong, or whether it was just passing through, we were very lucky to see it.

Day 46 – 07/11/22

We thought that we had a meeting after breakfast today with Sofia, but we’d completely forgotten that we’d rescheduled. That meant we were able to get into the forest in good time for what should be the penultimate day of pod collections.

Our route took us out to Harvard, the longest peninsula on the island. Fortunately, it doesn’t undulate like those on the other sides of the island, so although it's longer, the walking isn’t so bad. In terms of wildlife, we saw a fairly dull bird, aptly named a Plain Brown Woodcreeper. We also saw a small, almost pure white bird that, after some time studying the book and Googling, we came to the conclusion doesn’t exist. The most likely option is a leucistic individual of some species. One thing we could ID (to family level at least) was a clear-wing moth with some electric blue colouration on the abdomen and orange on the wings, going crazy for some honeydew on a leaf.

In terrible news, I had my first attached tick since being out here. The ticks are a mix of tiny bastards and big buggers. The big buggers are fine because, as I found out today, you can really feel when they bite and latch on. The small ones are stealthy and apparently you don't feel them for a while. I don't think I've had one of them yet but who knows? The tick from today though - it’s dead now.

Day 47 - 08/11/22

After a mostly dry yesterday, the rain returned this morning with a vengeance. The rain fell so hard that the noise of it pounding on the roof woke me before my alarm, which I probably wouldn’t have been able to hear if it had gone off anyway. During a slight lull in the weather, I made my way down to breakfast where I was shortly joined by the others. Going out in these conditions was a no-go, so we just did office work until lunch.

In the afternoon the rain cleared so I went with Paddy to check on the seedling exclusion experiment. This involved walking to four points in the forest and counting how many of the seeds we’d planted had germinated. At the last point (on Fairchild), Paddy noticed that the GPS was showing we were only 300m from camp, rather than the 500 or 600-meter route that the trails would take us. We cut across country, up and down a gully or two and were back by half four, a little damp from the now falling again rain, but otherwise none the worse for wear for our off-trail excursion.

Day 48 – 09/11/22

It’s done. Pod collecting is complete. Unless we have data gaps of course, but that’s a problem for future us.

We set off this morning on the long walk to the Standley peninsular on the other side of the island. The first tree that we surveyed was an absolute monster growing on a steep slope. The other four were much easier to sample and completed the surveys. Although we didn’t see any new species in the forest we did get another view of a Purple-throated Fruit Crow and I spotted a Three-toed Sloth slowly making its way up a tree. I didn’t think we’d get to see one on the island so that was a nice surprise. Back at camp I went for a little wonder, but it was fairly quiet. I finally put some time into IDing the swallows that fly around the dock. Although we’ve seen them every day I can only now add Grey Breasted Martin to the species list.

Day 49 -10/11/22

We completed measuring the pods today. Or at least, we thought we had. We may have a few left to do, but we’re a bit confused about where they’ve come from. After lunch, we set about cleaning and tidying the lab in the hopes of killing all the little biting things that currently infest it.

I collected the camera trap today and was really happy with the results. I’ve managed to capture a video of an ocelot in the daytime, so I’ll have to think of a new location for the camera as I won’t top that. Whilst I was collecting the camera the forest suddenly went strangely quiet, until a troop of Spider Monkeys started alarm calling. Knowing that I'd captured footage of an Ocelot right where I was standing I looked around to see if, by some unbelievable chance, the animal was still around. After a few minutes scanning the forest with my binoculars I gave up and took a look at the monkeys instead. It was then immediately obvious what was the cause of their alarm calls. The first one I looked at was looking directly at me. I was the animal that they were warning about, not an Ocelot.