Tiputini

the cute bat


the blue dye

froggy

monkeys at the hotel

Between the dates of Feb. 12- March 1 I was in Tiputini Station of Biodiversity which is located in Yasuni which is the most biodiverse place en el mundo (en the world).

On Feb 12 we all met at the airport at 7:30, the airplane ride only last 25 min and landed in Coca. After arriving we hung around a hotel called The Mission, sadly this hotel steals animals from the rainforest to create tourist attraction. and of course it works. The hotel had squirrel monkeys, toucans, turtles and kinkajous. It was cool seeing all the animals up close but really sad because the kinkajous and some of the parrots cages were super tiny. The monkeys were free to roam however. We then boarded a boat on the Napo River which lased two hours. We saw some flames from where the oil companies burn of excess gas etc that they don't use. Then we got off the boat and had to go through a secruity check point of one of the oil companies. We were not allowed to take any pictures in this area then we got on a bus down the Maxus road for two hours. Then another boat on the Tiputini river for another two hours. WE spotted some Hoerini on the Tiputini but they pretty much all have been "westernized" by now wearing levi jeans. but they still sometimes cause trouble for gringos and the oil companies. For an example one man walked in to the oil company swinging a chain saw asking for pineapples and mattresses (I was not there for this it was years ago, however my prof. was) this happened to be the man we saw on the river though. I guess he has killed quite a few people.....

My camara broke after the first day...it actually didn't even make it through the first day....But on the first day we did a long hike saw some wooly monkeys. On our hike we ate lemon ants! and they did in fact taste like lemon. Later after lunch we had to split off into groups and find something in the forest and try to identify it. My group caught a butterfly and a cool look grasshopper. Two people got lost in the forest for a bout two hours on this excurision but everyone was all right. While we were waiting for them to return we saw golden mantle tamarins really close, probably 6 feet away. They were very playful and curious.

On Valentines day we got up at 5 am and had a river float. We saw a bunch of birds adn lots and lots of Mealy Parrots. We also saw some red howler monkeys resting in the trees.

The next three days we split up into three groups and either went to the tower, walkway, or the laguna. On my first day I went to the tower, which was another early morning 5 am. The tower is I think about 100 feet and it overlooks the canopy. From the canopy we saw tons of birds my two favorite species that we saw were paradise tanager and scarlet macaws. We also saw some gueons..not that excitng they are EVERYWHERE. well kind of. they are really big birds sort of turkey like. On our way back from the tower we saw some semi active howler monkeys...they only eat leaves so they are a lazier monkey.

The next day we had the canopy walkway which is similar to the tower but not as tall and we didn't have to get up as early. Not getting up early leads to less animal sitings however.... More gueons and I saw a poison dart frog!!!! I was the only one inmy group to see it though (leading to no picture) everyone else was on the other side of the walkway or up higher on the ladder. On our way back from the walkway we saw spider monkeys! and we almost got peed on but luckily the non english speaking guide yelled p p p p p and we all figured we better move. In the evening we did mark and recapture with Bala ants. These ants are HUGE and they bit and sting causing people to swear....... a lot. I avoided getting bit the trip, Steve however did not. For mark and recapture we went to a Bala ant nest and poked around a bit until a bunch of them came out. As they were coming out we had to paint them with nail polish, ours was lime yellow and looked quit nice on the black ants. Colleen did a fabulous job and didn't get bit or stung, Amy was the brave sole who poked and prodded at the nest, I counted the number of ants that were painted, while Sheena kept a look out to make sure no one had ants crawling on them. At night we did a night float and saw some Caimens and a boat billed heroin. Once we got back we did some frogging. Lots of cool lil tree frogs and we saw a huge amazonian bull frog (i think that is the common name...scientific: Leptodacyalus pentadacyalus)

The last day of our group split my group went to the Laguna. We took a boat out to one end of the trail and then walked back and we also went a short little canoe ride where we saw Hoatzins. Hoatzins are a folivirous bird (vegetarian) which is quite strange and their young will also drop down into the water when a predator is near to avoid being eaten. This doesn't always work out because some predators are in the water too like Caymen (little crocodiley guys). Mayor (one of the guides) gave us all a piece of fruit after he cut them and told us to hold them in our hands for ten minutes so we all did and they left really dark blue tattoos. The tattoos lasted quit a few days. Squirrel monkeys were sited on this excurison and they are probably my favorite monkey that I saw. In the afternoon we checked on our ants and counted the number or marked and unmarked ants.

The next morning was our first day of working on our small group projects. My group was Karl, Liz, Kola, and I and we decided to study stratification of butterflies. We wanted to see if there was a difference in abundance, diversity, and coloration between different strata of the rainforest. So we set out to find bat lines which we could hang our nets from. We went out with Jose who was my favorite guide. We saw a yellow billed Jacamar which has a really long beak kind of like a humming bird but it is used for catching butterflies and then shaking them until their wings fall off, then consuming said butterfly. After we found one of the batlines we decided to do a little bit of off roading, and Jose walked a lot faster off the path then on..not sure why perhaps avoiding posinious snakes? We saw tons of tapir trials and foot prings, but not tapirs We followed the tapir trail and it led to a salt like so we sat there for perhaps 15 min hoping someone would come by, but no luck. We thought we heard some pigs however. We finally got back on the trail and found the other bat line. Jose then asked if we knew what Chambir was, lucky for me liz knew. It is a type of palm that is used to make woven goods such as hammocks and BRACLETS...and that is just what we did. After lunch we got our butterfly nets ready and started to hang them up which took a lot longer than I had hoped. We wanted seven sites, but only got 3 full sets up. Each site has three nets one in the upper story, middle, and understory. We had to stop early because we ran out of string...and we were REALLY crabby....

2-21

This was another early morning, we set up mist nests to catch birds. We set them up early enough that we caught some bats as well (on accident but I was still happy) The first bat we caught was a girl and she had a cute little leaf nose. The leaf nose is used to help find insects and other small flying creatures. The wings were membranous and the fur was so soft you could barely feel it. I GOT TO HOLD THE BAT AND IT BITE ME!!! Luckily rabies is not common in Tiputini (and I have my shots) The bite didn't hurt too bad it was more suprising then anything. We also got to hold some birds we caught some mannakins, antbirds, etc. Once I get my field notebook back perhaps I willl give more species names....

The rest of the afternoon we worked on our butterfly project. We baited the nets with rotten fish that we had caught a few days before....probably the worst smell I have ever..smelt... Fishing though was fun we used little wooden blocks for poles and just wrapped fishing line around them. We had used bread for bait.

The next day we went out to collect butterflies adn luckily caught a lot more then I had thought. We also had a cool long horned beetle in one of the nets. It was orange and yellow the antennae were really long and in some spots even looked fury.

2-23

This morning I got up to go Titi chasing with Dan "the monkey man" and Kola. Titis are a type of monkey. There was a lot of running through super dense brush to find them. On this day Dan was trying to habituate (trying to get the group used to people so they don't run away when researachers are trying to observe them) group B. This group is not well habituated because Dan is short staffed and can't follow the monkeys as much as he would like. Group B consisted of Bongo (the male), Banana (the female) and three infants: infant 07, infant 09, and infant 10. After chasing them for atleast an hour the Titis finally came out. They are a little bigger than a tamarin but smaller than a saki. They have ginger fur with a white eye brow. Then we chased them around a little more, they are tricky little guys and I think they know which areas are hard for humans to get through. After lunch we checked on our nets and had a lot less butterflies than the day before. We also ran across the group that came in the day before while they were supposed to be naked in the rainforest so they could become "one with the forest". This does not sound like a good idea to me because a lot of things bit in the rainforest.... this did not seem like a good idea to many of the their students either because when we came across them they were all clothed. whew. Their profs in general just seem crazy....one of the ladies has a rat tail. Went on a night hike and we saw a long horned grass hopper molt which was really cool. She was all white and tenure. Once we got back we also saw the night monkeys by the lab. The guys are super cute they always look like they are smiling and they have huge eyes.

2-27 had our exam and the two days before we finished our projects adn did a lot of studying :(

The field part of the exam went extremely well adn the written part took forever.

AFter the test though i headed straight for the river to do a relaxing swim in the Tiputini river which we did frequently after lunch when the water was high enough. the water would raise and drop rapidly.

2-28

this was our free day wahooo. I went with a small group to do the longest trail but before that we went to the black water river. On our hike we tried some wild Cocoa which was delicious! it is too bad you don't run into that flavor more often. Rimero ( a guide) also caught a piece of plant and the new leaves leave a blue pigment. So we chewed on the leaf and after awhile we all had blue tongues. Rimero also put a little bit on my shirt and it will stay there forever wahoo what a souvenier! We hiked to the pygmy marmoset tree and we saw four pygmies!!! they were really cute they looked like little lions. Pygmy mamosets are the smallest primate I believe. they could easily fit in the palm of my hand :D . While watching the pygmies it started to downpour and I was wet within three min so we started heading back to camp. Once we got back I ran into JOse and he helped me back another and better palm braclet.. then we went fishing Jean caught a cat fish.

March first we took mroe boats, buses, boats, planes and taxis back to Quito.