Jan 18 -- Herp Hike

Wednesday, January 18
La Mona

We have set our alarms for 4:30, so dutifully get up, dress, and appear under the casita  at about 5:00. Susan tells us that we can go back to bed. We cannot work the mist nets in the rain. If we handle the wet birds with our wet hands, we are liable to pull off feathers. Banding and data entry are difficult to do in the rain also.

Since I am an early riser anyway, I stay up. I give myself my B12 shot thinking it will help my aching feet and  I also take my malaria pill, the side effect of which gives me a stiff neck. The cooks have hot water heated on the stove and there are candles on the table, so in the candle-lit dark, I fix myself a breakfast of cereal and fruit and coffee. I listen to the rain dripping off the trees and leaves and to the distant howler monkeys and wonder that I am sitting in the cloud forest of Ecuador thousands of miles from home.

When Susan gets up, she finds that there was a leak upstairs directly over all of her data and the computer, which we run on a car battery. We separate the wet pages of a hummingbird poll she has taken in three villages within the Reserve (Loma Alta, El Suspiro, and Dos Mangos), and we lay out her other data to dry as best as possible. Then we move the equipment from under the leak and go upstairs to try to find and plug the source. Several of the tents upstairs have leaked also. Ricardo’s and Cathy’s are wet.

After everyone has eaten breakfast, Carlos asks who would like to go for a trek with him looking for frogs, snakes, and lizards. He will take one group in the morning and one in the afternoon. I volunteer, as do Chas, Dawn, and Cathy. We hike for about 3 hours, much of our time along a small creek, occasionally needing the machete to clear a path. We find little other than chaco frogs, flowers, trees, and vines. But what strange trees . . .  The leaves of one group of cecropia trees are so riddled with insect bites that they wave far overhead like lace against the sky. Carlos and I take photos of the lacy tree.

Another tree is called a walking palm. According to Carlos, this tree will move slowly by shortening roots on one side and lengthening them on the other side. It does this if  it stands too much in the shade of another taller tree.

Then there are kapok trees with their huge buttress roots, some buttresses well over 6 feet high.  In the cloud forest, all sorts of frogs and snakes like to shelter near the base of these root “walls.”

Ferns, moss and bromeliads grow everywhere on the trees, some providing nice water catchments for small tree frogs. Many, if not most, trees are also festooned with the vines of giant-leaved philodendron.

And then there is a bamboo-like tree (below) whose every joint is spiked with 1 to 3-inch thorns. One stood near Net #9 and we had to  be careful not to grab it when climbing to the net.

Bromeliads, philodendron twinnig up a tree, the tree that protects itself with
spikes to ward off vines until it reaches the sun; bright red Helconia
flowers stand or hang from their plants

Often we’d come across clusters of tiny umbrella-like white mushrooms. I suppose the dark damp cloud forest floor is an ideal nursery for such fungi. And we all had fun photographing the giant (about 2.5- inch) black beetle that Carlos turned up.

In the morning after the rain, we find a branch of yellow orchids that has fallen to the ground. I photograph it but of course the photo is lost

While we are off on our herp hike, the rest of the group inputs data on the computer and works at translating Susan’s hummingbird polls taken by those in the three villages within the Reserve.

When we return, Carlos takes measurements and photos of the snakes he had caught the night before and enters the data on his frog specimens. One of the snakes he has is quite long but thin and very pretty. It is called a parrot snake because of its green and yellow coloration. All of the snakes caught today have very large eyes, probably to see better in the dark forest.

Parrot Snake with its slim body and enormous eye

Tiny "umbrella" mushrooms

That afternoon we all swap duties and I find myself translating Spanish polls . . . how can this be when I do not speak Spanish? Most of the answers are variations of the same old same old, so I can get so far with them and then turn them over to Ricardo or Marlene or one of the Ecuadorian staff for the more difficult answers.

Scales that create "eyelashes"; this
one not the color of ours, below

When Carlos’s afternoon group comes back, they excitedly report that they have seen an eyelash pit viper . . . according to Carlos, the most poisonous snake in the forest. Carlos leads those of us who have not seen it back to where it was found, and there it still is curled atop a stem not a foot from the trail. It is green striped and looks like all the rest of the undergrowth. The untrained eye would have passed right over it. It is curled tightly with its back to us and unmoving  as we pass within a couple of feet of it, apparently waiting for game that is more its size to pass by. It’s called an eyelash viper because of raised scales above its eyes—its “eyelashes.”

Just before we are to sit down to supper, flying termites swarm out of the thatch above the picnic table and casita. The air is filled with them. They get in our hair, clothes, and food.  Some volunteers and staff shut themselves in their tents, while others of us move as far out of range as we can and wait it out. Some time after dark, most of the termites have lost their wings and we can finally sit down to our dinner of rice, beans, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and pepperoni in a sauce. It is fine dining as we watch the last of the termites fly into the candles to their deaths. Yes! When I next open my journal, I find one perfectly pressed between the pages.

The wee termite that was accidentally pressed between the pages of my journal

Below is a page  of photos of our Herp Hike from my journal account: