February 6, 2013
It’s day 6 in the jungle! I’m in Refugio Bartola, Nicaragua- a gorgeous stretch of neotropical rainforest along the San Juan
river, and just across the water is Costa Rica. It’s remote out here. There
are a few ecotourists that have been staying at the field station, and a crew
of locals who work here, but otherwise it is just our group. 15 students, 2
professors and their 2 children, and 2 of us teaching assistants. All of the
students are working on research projects in pairs or groups of 3, and the rest
of us are providing support and advice. That leaves me quite a bit of time to
explore the forests, which is incredible. I’ve visited the rainforest before,
but this is my first extended experience and there is so much to learn.
JP, my fellow teaching assistant, has been working in
the rainforests of Panama and Costa Rica and Mexico on and off for the last 10
years and is an incredible source of knowledge. He’s also an avid birder,
and for the first time I really feel like I’m learning how to watch birds (and
how enjoyable it can be!). It helps that there are 400+ species of birds at this
site, and most of them are beautifully colored, have pretty songs, and many of them are easily observed from the breakfast table.
In addition there are some pretty cool mammals, though they
are much trickier to find and watch. Agouti, which look kind of like giant
guinea pigs, run around in the grassy areas and the forest. There are a
squirrels here too, which I’ve seen a few times. Same with the bats, though I
am not good at all in figuring out which species I am seeing (usually it’s way
too dark and they are too fast to tell). During a dawn hike we saw a skunk(!)
on the trail. I had no idea they are out here, but there is no doubt it was a
striped hog-nosed skunk. There are 3 types of monkeys in the forest. Howler
monkeys are a natural alarm clock- they start calling at dawn, and it almost
sounds like lions roaring. Spider monkeys are the most prevalent. They will
come into the caimito trees next to the “hotel” area and eat fruit in the
morning. We’ve seen quite a few babies in the canopy as well. White faced
capuchins are the least conspicuous, but I was lucky enough to see a few of
them foraging in the canopy a few days ago, just steps from the start of the
trail behind the kitchen.
There are tons of reptiles and amphibians too- caiman (similar to alligators), a boa constrictor and baby fer de lance (a venomous snake)
were found right near the field station. Lots of strawberry poison dart frogs,
quite a few green and black and yellow striped poison dart frogs, anolis
lizards, Central American whiptail lizards, and a ton of other things I don’t
know much about. Not to mention the fish, the insects, and all the plants!!
