Kelly Nelson: May 2010 Archives

Today Elise and I decided to practicar nuestras espanol para todos el tiempo. So far is going asi-asi.  We keep switching to more of a spanglish but whatever works.. 

What HAS been working are our stellar bird skills.  We are slowly picking it up.  Today we did our first official day of bird counts.  This morning we found 40 different species and 114 different individuals total.  We're really impressed with the diverse community we have found already and we're sure that as we continue, the diversity will increase.  We sighted a Volaceous Trogan and a Dusky-Capped Flycatcher along with a Long-Tailed Hermit Hummingbird.  These were all really cool to see.  We don't have any pictures of those for yall but we do have some other great pictures for yall we'll try to upload. 

After the morning count and feast, we drove--well rode with Oscar--to Monterey for grocery shopping and Mass in a very pretty church. Definitely a cultural experience.  

By the way, today was a veryyy rainy day.  We ended up not being able to go out for our evening bird counts because of it.  We were bummed, but we got to organize our data and collaborate with Dr. B.  We kind of modified our plan of action for our area of study--we're going to analyze the diversity at each bird point along with noting the specific tree they may be perched on to see the connection between bird sighting and vegetation. We're pretty excited about this! 

Lesson of the day...as our title suggests...don't let Hector into your cabin because bugs follow close behind. 

Word of the week: Xiabalba (thank you Chris)

PURA VIDA!

3am makes for a fantastic start to the day.  3 hour layover in Atlanta due to clutzy co-pilots having unfortunate mishaps followed by thunderstorms, we took off for COSTA RICA! When we got here we were met with a van and Michael to drive us 3-4 hours to Leaves and Lizards only to find that the power was out! But that didn't stop us, our view of the volcano from our cabin combined with rufous hummingbirds and a candle-light Costa Rican feast totally made up for everything.  

This morning we started with a 6am hike around the property to relocate the bird points from previous years adding two new ones because of vegetation growth since last year.  We found half before breakfast--another feast--and then hiked a few more hours to find the last half.  During our hike we noted all the birds sited so that later we could bust out our books and learn all about 'em.  Elise and I both found out that our favorite bird so far is the Passerini Tanager--LOOK IT UP!  Now that we got some mad skillz, we hope to be able to identify as many as we can tomorrow (with the help of our rad guide Ocsar and Dr. B) on our first official day of data collection!

PURA VIDA!