Outside BFREE: Part 1

A brief respite from the jungle. Turned out to be quite an adventure really. After making it out of BFREE without getting stuck on the road, Dan, Judy and I headed north to Gales Point. This crazy little peninsula that sticks out into a gigantic lagoon where manatees like to hang out. I guess normally you can see them (the manatees) bobbing around but the water was too choppy so I missed out on that. Did get to see some fun drumming.



















The next day we decided to be adventurous...never a good idea. There are a number of signs for sights and parks along the highways so we decided to check some of them out. First we attempted to see David Falls. Upon turning at the sign onto a dirt road we learned that it was another 8 miles to the falls. Ok, no biggie, right. So, we're driving through a bunch of citrus orchards...and driving (this is not the best of dirt roads by the way) until we come around the corner to a huge river that apparently you are supposed to cross because there was another sign on the other side for the falls. Not really in the mood to get the truck stuck in the middle of a river, we quickly nixed that. Next we decided to try 5 Blues Lake National Park. Maybe the state of the park office should have been a sign, but it didn't dissuade us. Driving down another dirt road, through more oranges. The road starts getting progressively worse, but we've already had one botched attempt so we really want to see this place. Eventually the road turns into a foot path, more or less, and maybe an occasional tractor drives through so there are huge holes. And then, we get stuck! In the middle of who knows where, in the mud. Happy Vacation, or not. Ok, so we manage to push the truck out and promptly put and end to that little adventure and get the heck out of there. Not sure what 5 Blues Lake is all about and not sure I care! Following that slightly stressful event, which we could replicate pretty much everyday at BFREE if we so desired, we headed into Belmopan (well, actually we couldn't give up that easily and ended up stopping for all of 15 min at Blue Hole National Park) and checked into a hotel with hot showers and TV! yeah, buddy! Belmopan, for being the capital of the country is actually fairly small and laid back (and more importantly has a couple of good coffee shops). So, let's see, we dropped off my defunct computer in the hopes it could be fixed (not so much), ran some errands and got paid. The following day we went to Belize City to pick up Dan and Judy's nephews in downtown. Now that is a mad house. It took a while just to find them and then to get back out with bikes and cars and people and one way streets. Craziness! The next adventure was finding the doctors office which involved a lot of driving in circles and stopping to ask for directions and driving in a few more circles. When we finally found it the doctor was out to lunch so we went to have lunch as well at a little restaurant by the municipal airport where the planes landed (and took off) right in front of you. Had my first taste of gibnut, not too shabby, then went back to the doctor to fix the parasite problem. Finally we were able to get out of the insanity Belize City and headed back to Belmopan for the night. San Ignacio was the next stop, where we checked out the Mayan Ruins at Cahal Peche and Xunantunich. Pretty impressive stuff.

Xunantunich



















More Xunantunich.














View from the top of Xunantunich



















The hand crank ferry to get to Xunantunich

Parasites and PC's

At long last...since it has been almost a month since the last post I suppose I will give a recap of, say, the last month! For starters, where's my search party? does anyone read this thing anyway? I could be long gone by now, trampled by peccary and turned into vulture food. But for real, the real reason behind the blog delay is primarily 2-fold (plus I'm a slacker, which I guess really makes it 3-fold). First, on our last trip into the Bladen I managed to contract a parasite. Nothing life-threatening (or flesh-eating, for that matter) but obnoxious none-the-less and incredibly itchy. I mean, when little things are burrowing under your skin, you are bound to feel them! Benadryl and Cortizone are being added to the jungle survival kit along with the ziplocs. I mastered the drugged-up, half-asleep (meaning eyes closed) application of cortizone. Slept with the stuff next to my pillow for a good week or so. Good times. Anyway, eventually I made it to the doctor who gave me some drugs and now my little itchy friends have died. Sorry, no good pictures of that...

Part two: Apparently the mold growing in my computer wasn't good for it. Who would of thought? The "L" key on the keyboard became permanently stuck and would not stop typing and typing...and typing. Makes it a little hard to do much of anything when you can't use the letter "L" and you never know when you will have an entire page of "L"s. Not to worry, after a brief visit to the computer store and a little online research I am now certified in back country computer repair. Ok, maybe not really but I did have to dismantle by computer to get everything to work and now have a sporty USB keyboard. Maybe not quite as portable, but hey, at least I can type what I want, when I want!

So, on to more exciting things...The trip into the Bladen following the last post didn't go exactly as planned, mostly because of the rain. We hiked up to Richardson Camp and did our banding. Caught some pretty sweet birds...













Red-capped Manakin



















Plain Xenops - very cute!

Rufous-tailed Jacamar



















Barred Forest Falcon - Hello!













The water possum that William ran/swam down one night.













When it came time to go up to the lookout it rained and poured and then got dark so that didn't so much happen. The next couple days we attempted to make it up to Oro, but again the rain kicked in. We ended up spending a lot of time sitting in our jungle hammocks and eventually decided we could be more productive back at BFREE. Once we were back at BFREE the rain stopped (classic) and we were able to do some banding up at Blue Pool (and snail searching, which can be quite lucrative).



















The guys, hard at work...looking for snails that is. Found a new species! Can't say we've done as much with the birds.













Slaty-tailed Trogon













The not-so-small tarantula we found while looking for snails.

Mold, mold, mold

Seriously considering becoming a mold farmer, or maybe studying mold. I mean it grows on just about everything and not slowly either. For a brief moment I thought my wallet might grow legs and walk away it was so fuzzy. Even my computer was sprouting, which has to be a good thing...Or maybe I should buy stock in Ziploc bags and silica beads since those are the main combatants of mold around here.


Anyway, headed back into the jungle again in a day or so for another 10 days. We've had a couple of good days of sun which pretty much guarantees that it will rain on us. So, in the mean time, a few more pictures from the last trip.

Ruddy-tailed Flycatcher: another member of the teeny-little-super guy family (along with Bushtits). this guy like our nets so much we caught him twice.



















View from the look out at Oro prior to the sky falling out.













A few of the nets at Calera. yeah, kind of hard to see. that's how the birds feel too.













The Bladen River. One of the few places you can actually drink straight out of the river...and not get horribly ill.






































And a few more pictures of our Ornate Hawk-Eagle friend. The super close shots, yeah, not mine. Stole them from a co-worker, so I should probably give him credit...they're Wilfred's pictures.









































































oh, and a stalactite or is it a stalagmite. blast! you figure it out and let me know! still cool regardless.

additional jungle pics

dinner: white rice....yummm














Dan with his titanium spork














what, we actually caught birds. crazy!














Tody Motmot, very nice.














Stub-tailed Spadebill (a member of the cutie-pa-tootie family)














A PO-ed White-whiskered Puffbird














A rather large boa that Dan found stalking bats.














Kentucky Warbler, trying to escape the wrath of Sharna (to no avail).














Orange-billed Sparrow (aptly named)

Harpy what?

11/22/07-12/1/07













And we're back...that's right, we had a harpy sighting. Can't say I saw it, but I suppose that's somewhat irrelevant. and it was a fly by, so no pictures...We saw a lot of other crazy stuff too. Take the tapir that almost walked into my jungle hammock in the middle of the night for example...
The first day we hiked up to Cabrada de Oro. Let's just say that I couldn't actually lift my pack when we started. We were all pretty exhausted by the time we got to Oro. It's not a short hike. Spent the next couple of days setting up nets and banding. Not super productive. 12 birds. The next two days were "Harpy days". Henry and I spent them up on the lookout, while Wilfred and William walked the creek bed transect. They saw a Harpy, we saw a whole lot of tree tops, some parrots, king vultures and white-winged tanagers. Getting to the lookout involves climbing a ridiculously steep hill, which is pretty fun (hint 'o sarcasm). coming down in the pouring rain is even better and as a result I am personally responsible for mass errosion in the Bladen Nature Reserve. Nice view though. We had an Ornate Hawk-Eagle perch directly in front of us for quite a while, twice actually because it liked us that much. sweet!

We were supposed to spend the next four/five days at another site further up stream but all the rain made the river start to rise so we headed down stream instead to Calera. Lots of caves at Calera, fun birds, a big boa.

Here's a list of the birds we caught since I know everyone is dying to know these stats (61 birds, 28 species):

Black and White Warbler	1
Gray-fronted Dove	2
Greenish Elaenia	1
Hooded Warbler	1
Kentucky Warbler	4
Long-billed Hermit	3
Lousiana Waterthrush	1
Ochre-bellied Flycatcher	2
Olivaceous Woodcreeper	1
Olive-backed Euphonia	2
Orange-billed Sparrow	1
Ovenbird	2
Red-capped Manakin	2
Red-throated Ant-Tanager	4
Ruddy-tailed Flycatcher	1
Scaly-throated Leaftosser	2
Sepia-capped Flycatcher	3
Stub-tailed Spadebill	3
Sulphur-rumped Flycatcher	4
Tawny-crowned Greenlet	4
Tawny-winged Woodcreeper	1
Thrush-like Schiffornis	1
Tody Motmot	1
Violet-crowned Woodnymph	2
Wedge-billed Woodcreeper	5
White-breasted Wood Wren	4
White-whiskered Puffbird	1
Wood Thrush	2

Other fun birds we saw: Harpy Eagle, King Vulture, Ornate Hawk-Eagle, Brown Hooded Parrot, White-winged Tanager, Nightingale Wren (sweet song too), Wedge-tailed Sabrewing (a hummingbird)
Animals: White-lipped Peccary, Agouti, Tapir, River Otters, Tirha, Red Brocket Deer


wild cacoa




















The infamous jungle hammock...don't get me started.













The inner workings of the jungle hammock.
claustrophobic much??