Jan 22--Hummingbird Pasture

Sunday January 22, 2006
La Mona to La Casita

Today is moving day. We sleep in, eat a leisurely breakfast, fill our packs with bars and snacks and then set out, each team to a different destination. The Mapping Crew will stay at La Mono until they have finished mapping the five remaining plots; then they will hike directly to La Casita and begin setting up camp and all of the tents—all of which will be transported by the mules and horses that came up last night. Mauricio’s son, Jose, brings water on his horse, which is followed again by its darling foal. The Plot Dimensions team, Chas and Erica, will hike directly to La Casita and begin marking the plots around the 20 dry area nets near the camp (lower down the ridge), as these were not completed on the previous Earthwatch Expedition. The Ecuadorian naturalists (Mauricio and Pascual) will transport the mist nets to the new site and then begin erecting them in moist areas along the ridge above our camp.

The rest of us (Cathy, Susan, Evelyng, Dawn, Marlene, and I) once again tackle the strenuous climb past the trail down to La Casita and hike to the hummingbird pasture at the top of the mountain, keeping an informal  bird count (both those seen and those heard) as we go. We like it up at the pasture because there are cooling breezes and this is an semi-open spot where one can look out over the mountains to the ocean. We feel freed from the tall trees and dense vegetation of the Cloud Forest. While called “the pasture,” this area is treed, but most of the trees are short and sparse and there is grass growing below them. This grass contains ticks (the smaller red variety actually balled atop the stems) and chiggers, so we are very careful not to wade into the grass, and we always seat ourselves on plastic bags. I’d give a lot for one of those camp chairs at the moment, or even one of those three-legged camp stools.

Swallow-tailed Kite, Plumbeous Kite, and Mississippi Kite

I see white birds way across the valley in a tree. When we get our binoculars on them we discover about 30 Swallow-tailed Kites, 8 Mississippi Kites, and 7 Plumbeous Kites flying in the updrafts and dipping below the ridgeline on the next mountain range over. We also see Black, Turkey, and King Vultures, some of which fly right over our mountain top.

Cathy and I walk the small mountaintop pasture and spot a Scarlet-backed Woodpecker, a pair of nesting Blue-gray Tanagers, several pairs of Lemon-rumped Tanagers (the male black with a yellow rump and the female yellow with greenish brown cap, wings, and tail), and a motley looking summer tanager, which may have been a brooding female or a second year male.  

Male Lemon-rumped Tanager, Female Lemon-rumped, Blue-gray Tanager, and Scarlet-backed Woodpecker

Cathy and I had started out ahead of the rest and so have about 45 minutes to ourselves in the pasture. We are sitting on plastic bags with our boots off giving our feet a rest when we hear a snicker in the bushes. A small foal has come up to the pasture from the other side of the mountain and is startled to find us here. It is standing not 15 feet from me. Cathy, who has horses and much experience with them, tells me to stand up. Foals will playfully paw at and trample things smaller than they she explains. She also tells me that the foal’s mother must be somewhere near as the foal would not stray very far from its mother. She is right. I stand and walk back down the trail and there are the mother and foal, standing in the shade of a tree. They’d come up for the grass, which doesn’t grow in the shade of the forest. Domestic animals are often on their own as far as finding food and thus roam at will. Some of the cattle and horses we’ve seen have hurt my feelings as they are tick ridden and look half starved, their ribs painfully evident.

View from the hummingbird Pasture. With binoculars, we could actually see the ocean in the far distance

Erica with bottle of drinking water; most of us wore long sleeves and long pants in the jungle because of the biting insects and snakes. I wore short sleeves but long pants, my Ex-officio Buzz off pants serving me well.

When Susan and the rest of the crew get to the meadow, Susan pairs us off and gives each pair of us a data sheet on which we are to keep track of the hummingbird species that visit our assigned feeder and the behavior of those that come in to eat. I am paired with Dawn. We find that the violet-bellied hummingbirds rule the roost, so to speak, guarding the feeder and chasing off all, including their own females who come to drink. Nevertheless, Andean Emeralds, Speckled, Green-crowned Brilliants, and Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds all manage to feed at our feeder. Often the feeder is ringed with females of different species who don’t seem to be as much of a threat to the guarding Violet-bellieds as the males of these species. The Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds we nickname “Woody Allens” because they are so nervous and flighty. They rarely perch more than a few seconds to feed and when they do, they strain to look for danger in all directions, occasionally “forgetting” to take a sip of nectar before flying off.

Green-crowned Brilliant at our feeder

After three 45-minute observations, we hike back down to the banding table which is where the trail diverges and goes down very steeply to our new camp, 30 to 45 minutes below, depending on one’s hiking speed. Donna and the rest of the Plot Measurement gang have managed to set up most of the tents, but mine and a couple of others that they could not find. Donna, Cathy, the cooks—Isadora and Emilia—and Carlos and Evelyng’s tents are set up under a large-diameter bamboo framework that is draped with black plastic and tarps. The rest of us are set up upstairs at La Casita in one large room. The stairs to this loft space are nearly ladder-like in their steepness. The showers at this site are similar to those at La Mono but they are on the hillside and slant down; also the black plastic has not been tacked as high, so tall people like me are not only exposed from the trail coming into camp but can also be seen from the dining area. (The Ecuadorians, who tend to be short, probably thought the plastic was adequate when they tacked it up.)

The dining area is not in a separate shelter as at La Mono but is under the casita, running along one side. There is a rail behind the benches, which gives those of us who sit on that side of the table the first backed seats we’ve encountered since leaving the Eco Lodge. I always try to seat myself on this side of the table. This camp is on a ridge so there is not much flat area around it. The worst part of this camp are the toilets, which are not actual toilet seats set over holes as in La Mono but pit toilets made low and of very rough timber. Near the first toilet is an old toilet seat, set on end and covered in moss, into which is engraved “R.I.-Pee.” The toilets are at the end of a trail through the jungle. We loop a piece of orange tape to trees at the trailhead when we want to signal that the toilet area is occupied.

We have barely gotten to camp when Donna yells: SNAKE! A long, brown snake has emerged from the second pit toilet. Though Carlos dives into the underbrush as usual, he cannot find the snake. Later that evening, after enviously listening to Carlos’ reports of seeing a kinkajou the previous night and after examining his latest frog and toad specimens, he confides to me that there is a large tailless scorpion under the pit toilet and did I want to see it. I’m almost sorry that I said yes. 

He takes me back, moves a board and there emerges the largest, most fearful creature that I’ve seen. It is an arachnid, according to Carlos, but it has hooked front legs like a scorpion, and it also has two antennae (I guess that’s what they are) that are about 10 or 12 inches long with which it captures food. It’s body is odd shaped too. There were actually two of them under the toilet, but the biggest one scooted out and onto the toilet wall, where I took several photos of it. Of course these photos were lost in the Guayaquil mix-up, so until/unless Carlos sends me his photos, the one below from the Internet will have to do. Notice that the photographer could not even get all of the antennae into the photo.

Tailless Whip Scorpion

I am one of the last in the shower, so shower in the dark, finding the new sloping flooring a challenge in dexterity. After the shower, I gratefully take the backed-bench side of the table and enjoy a well-earned meal. I also drink two cups of coffee—fool that I am. Thus I have a perfectly wretched  night --WIDE AWAKE -- for most of it, and when not tossing and turning on my light-as-air air mattress, negotiating the steep steps and running to the scary pit toilets three (count ‘em) times through the jungle in the dark. Each time I shine my headlamp only where needed. Ostrich-like, I do not want to see too much. Nonetheless I spot a hairy tarantula on the spare lumber near the trail on one of my trips down.