20:30 Today I
took a semi-relaxed day, probably not relaxed in some people’s eyes but
I am doing what I enjoy. I spent the morning hours, after more much needed
coffee, reading up on fish behaviour in one of the hammocks – admittedly I
think it shows I really didn’t spend that much time in a hammock during my time
here. After an amazing chicken lunch I walked about the yard area collecting
the fluff covered Pochote tree seeds for DL and the OTS summer course (perhaps), at which point I caught a video of a little Butterfly "courtship" - see here (video 98).
I walked to
the lab and saw what I thought was either an Osprey, Grey-Headed Hawk or Forest
Falcon – you can tell I am not an Avian Biologist huh, which turned out to be
the last, a Forest Falcon. It flew down
the path in an area with a felled Pochote tree and with my sneaky photo
snapping I had a photo good enough to get an ID on the awesome bird.
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| An Illusive Forest Falcon (D.Philpot) |
I then cleaned
up the lab, inspected the volunteers as well as help one of the park guards sand
down the whole of the bunk or dorm house, I then found a gigantic quartz node
right on the beach (that took every ounce of my strength to lift and carry to
the lab), checked on the beautiful live bubble shell, put some previous shells
collected out back on the beach and digitized the photo/image pages of a good
bird book to use for future reference around Costa Rica.
The volunteers
and I played cards, I introduced them to “Chase the Ace” or “Skanky Queen” and
one of the girls was not so pleased to earn that title later on haha.
The sunset
today was incredibly beautiful but I resisted taking too many photos, and so took this film instead - Video #99.
.jpg) |
| Group Shot (D.Philpot) |
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| The Sky Around Us (D.Philpot) |
After dinner I
returned to the lab to sort out the last of my photos for now. On my return I saw a Racoon eating a
Harlequin Crab right on the trail so perhaps the ‘myth’ of the title
“Crab-Eating Racoon” (as opposed to the other Northern Racoon) could be in fact
true.
I am hoping I
can get back out into the water tomorrow...