18:55 Just got my first footage of the
illusive ‘ninja’ racoons (mapaches), one was actually brave enough to pass
fairly close to me. A mysterious bike
was left at the main lodge all day, we were half thinking some tourists got
lost and we were going to have to send a rescue party…
Beforehand we had heard a cat/owl but
saw nothing. Reading this now,
post-placement I realised that it was most certainly a Bare-Throated Tiger
Heron
Many bats woke up just after sunset, it
seemed more than the usual group of 4 or 5, which were a joy to watch mastering
the air (and insect attracting lights) of the main lodge.
We had a prolonged encounter with
white-faced Capuchins, that got very very close to me and they hung around for
ages drinking from the stream, fighting and taking care of two babies. They can be seen in this video here if you look closely - Video 47
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| Lazy Capuchin (D.Philpot) |
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| Brave Capuchin (D.Philpot) |
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| Loud Capuchin (D.Philpot) |
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| Balanced Capuchin (D.Philpot) |
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| The Monkey Pose (D.Philpot) |
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| Capuchin Over My Head (D.Philpot) |
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| Running With A Baby (D.Philpot) |
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| Hang On (D.Philpot) |
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| Mum + Baby Capuchin (D.Philpot) |
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| Running Across The Yard (D.Philpot) |
The German guy and I played a game of worms on my laptop, of course German worms versus English worms haha, was quite
entertaining during lunch.
The mysterious bike turned out to be
owned by one of the parks plumbers kids so that was alright. The rest of the day consisted of snorkelling,
where we saw many fish that you don’t normally see or in great numbers but
nothing especially new so that was great.
Afterwards I sat down and did some art where I decided to draw the
outside yard area and everyone in the station was pretty impressed by my
somewhat childish drawing. I included a
particular Capuchin in a tree, which later turned out to be true, an excellent
representation of a Ctenosaur and the Coati that had earlier touched his nose
on a football... and got scared!
19:25 Just saw THE biggest grasshopper
in the world!!! The aptly named Giant American Grasshopper (simple enough) was about 15 cm long, with crazy paint-looking colours on it
and hidden under its wings, which clearly showed when it flew about the lodge
like a bird and insisted on landing on people. In fact as it flew you were somewhat dazzled by flickers of luminous red. Anyway, here it is modelled on my friend for scale...
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| Never Before Was Man Intimidated By A Bug (D.Philpot) |
Some close-ups:
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| By My Hand (D.Philpot) |
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| Freestanding (D.Philpot) |
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| Scaling (D.Philpot) |
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| Normal-Sized Lady Hands... (D.Philpot) |
23:40 Lots of (first) pictures and Video (#48) of those dear Racoons tonight. I
heard them squabbling in a tree, there was only one way down the tree for them
down the trunk and so I waited at the bottom as they came down almost in my
face so really did get some close-ups!
Also learnt a bit more Spanish vocab, starting to get a lot of helpful
words now like rocks (pierdras), sand (arena), waves (olas), tide (marea),
firewood (lenya) etc.