Panama 2022 - Week 9
- 9 hours ago
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Day 57 – 18/11/22
Boquete is an interesting place. It's one of the larger towns in the area and is nestled in a valley surrounded by foothills. I assume there are larger mountains as well, including Volcán Barú the highest peak in Panama, but the cloud didn't lift at any point during our trip to let me confirm that assumption. The town itself is full of restaurants, cafes, bars and shops selling memorabilia and tourist excursions. By all accounts, those seeking a quieter, more authentic trip away would prefer the town of Volcán, on the other side of the mountain. As much as we'd have enjoyed a quieter town, Boquete allowed us to enjoy all the food we'd been thinking about for the last two months on the island, as we'd been eating rice and beans.
We left Boquete at around 9:30pm on a very slow bus that stopped every few hundred meters on the crawl to David. I managed to purchase the coach tickets back to Panama City entirely in Spanish, which I was very happy with. We got on the coach at 11:15am and didn’t get to Panama City until 8pm. It was a long and terrible journey, hitting the infamous Panama City rush hour.
PC has a friend, C, visiting the city for a CITES conference (he works on Pangolins) so we met for a late dinner. We got back to our hotel in the city at midnight, glad that we would only be spending one night in the terrible, three-bed, zero window room.
Day 58 – 19/11/22
A slightly stressful morning as we hadn’t heard back from any taxi drivers about getting to Gamboa. We went to Albrook Mall for breakfast and supplies and in the end we managed to get one of the city taxis to take us. It’s good to be back on the island after a couple of long days travelling.
Day 59 -20/11/22
After a week in the cool climate of the mountains, going back out in field was a shock to the system. EJ and I headed to KL's insect traps, arriving back just after lunch but feeling like we’d been out for a full day. After a week of failing to see a Quetzal, it was nice to see a different Trogon species (Slaty-tailed Trogon) on our first day back in the forest, as well as a Black-breasted Puffbird and a lizard that, for some reason, was hugging a rock and being used as vantage point for an ant. As well as refreshing the traps we cleared the leaves off of any of the exclusions seed plots that we passed. The next few days are likely to be similar to this.
Day 60 – 21/11/22
Rain drummed down at 5:30am, acting as a very effective alarm clock. It eased off but persisted throughout the morning so we stayed in the lab. In the afternoon it cleared enough for PC and I go out into separate sections of the forest and clear leaves off of exclusion plots. It took me two hours to do a one hour walk as I took in all the wildlife. Initially the most interesting species were a Black-throated Trogon and a Coati that was behaving strangely. Coatis are both incredibly curious and incredibly skittish. They will spend some time staring at you and then, after a few moments, completely panic and scatter into the nearest tree. Often though, they get half way up a tree trunk and then appear to immediately regret their decision. The one I saw today did exactly that, but from halfway up its tree it started swishing its tail at me. I don't know if this is a warning behaviour or a stressed behaviour, but I carried on and it climbed down and went about its day. They're adorable but slightly strange animals.
At one stage later on my walk. I heard a bird call, checked it with Merlin and spent a while looking for the Great-crested Flycatcher that it said it was. Whilst looking for the bird I heard a rustle from atop a palm tree, a rustle I assumed was being made by a monkey, but upon closer inspection turned out it come from a Tamandua. At that point a couple of woodpeckers flew over my head and behind where they landed was a Tamarin. Once all of these animals had moved off or hidden away I carried on walking, at which point a large Crane Hawk flew across the path. An unbelievable 20 minutes. I should head into the forest alone more often.
Day 61 – 22/11/22
After some deliberation about whether we could be bothered to do it or not, we decided that some of the early pods that we’d measured needed reclassifying. This took up most of my day, the highlight of which was dinner. An excellent lasagne followed by ice cream. I don’t want to come across as food obsessed, but when the days are dictated by fixed meal times and the work is hard, or as in this case, dull, a good meal can make or break your mood. Tomorrow is another office day, from then on it’s all go in the forest as we try to wrap everything up.
Day 62 – 23/11/22
After a fairly terrible night’s sleep, partly due to yesterday's overindulgence of lasagne and ice cream, this morning was a struggle. Fortunately, I was just sorting pods, so nothing too strenuous. One of the lianas in the tree outside of our office has started flowering and I spent some time watching the butterflies and birds that were now attracted to nectar on offer.
After lunch, PC and I went to cut more lengths of pipe to build more cages for plots. As the old saying goes, measure twice, cut once, or in our case, measure twice, cut once, realised we’d used the wrong measurement, cut the pipes accurately to the wrong length, find a whole other set of pipes, measure twice, this time to the correct length and cut again.
Day 63 - 24/11/22
It was hot today. EJ and I set out along Fairchild to re-survey KL's traps and also to try and find some more Jacaranda trees to fill gaps in the data. After much off trail searching we found just one tree. A lot of effort for little reward. We did however, come across an interesting clear wing moth
Back at camp we were late for the big Thanksgiving lunch which included a number of speeches. By the sound of it we were actually lucky to miss it. In the afternoon we waited for a rain shower to pass before creating a test plot for seedling transplantation. We want to see if:
1) The seedlings survive being transplanted
2) Whether any animals are attracted to the plots and whether they’ll damage them.
We skilfully avoided the light rain shower that passed over and got to work, only to be hit by a colossal downpour that came out of nowhere.
On our way back to our rooms, turning in for the night, we came across a steady stream of army ants. We followed them for a bit to see if we could work out where they were coming from or going to. Their path went perilously close to the series of Ant Lion pits outside B-block – a few wandered too far from the trail and fell into the traps. At one stage a huge, writhing mass of soldiers appeared and amongst them was the queen, huge in comparison to her minions, about 2-5cm long, mostly made up of a colossal abdomen. Even after nine weeks, there are still exciting things to see in camp.