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| Sunrise (D.Philpot) |
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| Chilling On The Edge (D.Philpot) |
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| Palm View (D.Philpot) |
11:10 The German guy had left to go work
on painting some local buildings for the community whilst I was left to explore
Cabuya station in the daylight. Managed
to spot another Parakeet with my binocs. which had a red eye-stripe, a red and
green front, and a striped but pointed tail.
There was also a white bird with a black eye-stripe through its eye but
I didn’t get a good look at him and I saw a Coati scratching its back on a tree
which was kind of amusing. There was another
Coati that was sharing some watermelon with a Racoon which was rather fun to witness unless they noticed me and I snapped a
great picture.
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| Centre Of Attention (D.Philpot) |
I also saw about 5 Agoutis which ran off
but I got some good shots of them too, and I then found two teethed jaw
bones. I also took photos of all the
labelled plants and trees that were about to start learning them.
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| On A Cliffedge Chair (D.Philpot) |
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| Cliffedge Hammock (D.Philpot) |
On the Cabuya trail again I saw and
learnt the calls of a couple of birds, got a couple of photos and spotted a Red-Headed
Woodpecker(?). Another bird had a beautiful call and there was one which had a
very raspy call whilst flying which sounded like that instrument where you rub
two ridged ‘sticks’ together. It was
small, white and flew somewhat oddly. On
top of all this I also sighted at least 5 blue Common Morpho butterflies which
was beautiful to be surrounded by, where I still have only a single photo, and
whilst walking along a piece of the trail a Hummingbird flew and hovered right
at my face as I was wearing red which took me by surprise (some Hummingbirds
are attracted to certain colours e.g. some to yellow, red, etc.).
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| Back At The Panama (D.Philpot) |
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| Trying To Scale Height (D.Philpot) |
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| Indy In The Jungle (D.Philpot) |
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| Jaws Of... A Fish - Apparently (D.Philpot) |
13:40 Just saw a load of tracks half way
across Playa Balsitas: A Racoon, a big bird (my guess is a Black Vulture), a
Ctenosaur and another, possibly a cat or coyotes footprints all parallel and
right next to each other in a long line along the top of the beach. Naturally, I followed this path adding my own
line of prints and discovered at the end of it 3 Turtle Body Pits which had been
unfortunately dug up by animals. This
must have occurred last night as there certainly were not any footprints on the
way out yesterday, and now I am seriously debating camping out on this beach
for one night at least should I get the opportunity.
23:20 Ok it’s official… I’m dreaming!!!
Tonight I had a proper burger and it was one of the best I’ve ever had, in all
seriousness, so I owe a huge thanks to the amazing cooks here. The Organisation of Tropical Studies (OTS)
group have now settled in, I have been looking forward to working with this
group just from the name and sound on paper.
I took part in a mini shell-o-rama with DL to practice by myself a bit
more and right after saw a Common Opossum, 5 Cane Toads and the first of any
type of small rodent, a cute little mouse of some sort. Yet another great day to end my first
month. It feels like I should be leaving
soon, as the longest I’ve spent away was 6 weeks on a remote island in
Indonesia yet there is still another 6 months left… can’t complain!