What a great day!! Waking up at 5:30am was worth it! We had to be ready to go to Harpia Plot early so the Pirpa-Pipra that we wanted to catch was not able to see our nets and would fly through them and get trapped. We had placed our three nets strategically in the male’s territory. Our first net (6 meters) was in front of a fruit tree from the family of Melastomataceae, Pipra Pipras love to eat all day. Their stomach processes the fruit really quick, they poop each 20-30 minutes and eat again; this cycle continues throughout the day. Our second and third net (12 meters) were placed between a small ravine were the white crowned Manakin likes to fly by (we learned this by observing the bird the day before). Once we got to the males territory we opened the nets and went 50 meters out of the territory. We would be going to check the nets each 30 minutes, but while we were sitting down Wendy taught me some information about Manakins, birds in general, and the Yasuni region. We started to talk about colors and how birds, most of them, mainly see three colors: red, purple and orange. This is because the food that they consume, especially fruits, have this colors generally. Then it’s amazing how organized the bird’s species tree is. Each specie has its own scientific name made from the genus (which is the first word) and the species specific name (second word) and its English name, but they also belong to a certain family for example: Manakins belong to the Pipridae family, Flycatchers to the Tyranidae family, Woodcreepers to the Dendrocolaptidaw family, Antbirds to the Thamnophilidae family and Hummingbirds to the Torchilidae family. We went to check our nets about 5 times and didn’t catch our male Manakin, luckily in the jungle there are so many other birds that we were able to catch some and keep on learning the “catching steps”. Even better we caught two unbanned Pipra-Pipra juveniles. You can’t know if a Juvenile is male or female until they start changing feathers, they all look like females, completely green during their first year. The main difference between a young birds and females is that females have red eyes while juveniles have brown eyes. We banned our two juveniles with 3 color bands and an aluminum band (with a unique code), weighed them and measured them, once we finished we let them go. Once you catch a bird in a net, you have to have a special bird bag, were you place them and take them to your banding station so you can record what birds you caught and report the captures to TBS. Immediately after you identified the species of you caught and take any data you needyou release it, everything with a special technique of course. You need to grab the birds in a special way. First you place the birds head in between your middle finger and one of its neighbors and then softly place the bird’s body in your palm, this way the bird does not get hurt in any way. Then, if you want to take a picture with a bird, you can grab it by their legs with a similar technique, two fingers in between the legs (which is really the tarsus, the equivalent bones that humans have in their feet) and a third one placed on the birds leg joint (ancle) so it doesn’t go flying and no harm is done. Apart from our two white crowned Manakins we caught 10 other birds, I learned how to hold them correctly and it was my first time with a wild bird in my hand. The birds that flied in the net were: Blue Crowned Manakin (same family as the Pirpa-Pipra), Tawny crowned Greenlet, Long Winged Antduren, White Plumed Antbird, Spot-Backed Antbird, Wedge-Billed Woodcreeper, Dusky Throated Antshrike, Ruddy-Tailed Flycatcher and a Rufus-Rumped Foilage Gleaner.
We realized that our nets were too close to the ground compared to the flight pattern we observed in the territorial male and that we would probably need to set up a super net (6m tall net instead of 3m tall net). We decided to go and place four normal nets into our second unbanned male to try to capture it the next day. Each net needs two metal sticks, this means that we had to carry 8 metal sticks which are kind of heavy after a while through the jungle (outside the trail system). When we got to our second unbanned male territory we started to search again strategic spots for our nets (such as fruiting trees or areas where the bird like to perch and sing). We found our spots and placed the nets, checked that they were correctly set up, closed them for tomorrow and returned to the station.
We walked to the station fast as always and got there after a 40 minute walk. While we were walking we saw some Dusky Titi Monkeys, Cool! At the station Tomas one of the “Tigres” (Workers) told me to follow him that he was going to give me a tour. Since I was with flip flops Wendy almost got a heart attack but she didn’t know that it was just a joke. Thomas lead me to a Crested Owl that was in a palm tree in the station. Wendy could not believe this because this owls are hard to see (even harder during the day!!!!); as any other bird watcher we took our binoculars and cameras out.
It was 7pm and it was completely dark, it looked like the day had finished… It hadn’t. We were going to do a night walk after eating (7:00pm-8:00pm). Our night walk started at 8:40 aprox, we walked towards the Canopy Tower and tried to see as many animals as we could. During the walk towards the tower we saw two snakes, very close to us, a Salamandra, a tone of insects including a Spider that’s the size of my palm that can kill a kid with its powerful venom and some Night Monkeys that were in the canopy and are hard to see. When we got to the Canopy Tower our plan was to climb to the top and try to see if we could spot any light from the closest oil company. At the Canopy Tower we saw another small snake and a redish light blocked by some other trees towards the West; South, North and East were completely black. We guessed that the moon looked strange and had some redish powerful light or there was an oil company kilometers away, hopefully the moon option was correct.
We realized that our nets were too close to the ground compared to the flight pattern we observed in the territorial male and that we would probably need to set up a super net (6m tall net instead of 3m tall net). We decided to go and place four normal nets into our second unbanned male to try to capture it the next day. Each net needs two metal sticks, this means that we had to carry 8 metal sticks which are kind of heavy after a while through the jungle (outside the trail system). When we got to our second unbanned male territory we started to search again strategic spots for our nets (such as fruiting trees or areas where the bird like to perch and sing). We found our spots and placed the nets, checked that they were correctly set up, closed them for tomorrow and returned to the station.
We walked to the station fast as always and got there after a 40 minute walk. While we were walking we saw some Dusky Titi Monkeys, Cool! At the station Tomas one of the “Tigres” (Workers) told me to follow him that he was going to give me a tour. Since I was with flip flops Wendy almost got a heart attack but she didn’t know that it was just a joke. Thomas lead me to a Crested Owl that was in a palm tree in the station. Wendy could not believe this because this owls are hard to see (even harder during the day!!!!); as any other bird watcher we took our binoculars and cameras out.
It was 7pm and it was completely dark, it looked like the day had finished… It hadn’t. We were going to do a night walk after eating (7:00pm-8:00pm). Our night walk started at 8:40 aprox, we walked towards the Canopy Tower and tried to see as many animals as we could. During the walk towards the tower we saw two snakes, very close to us, a Salamandra, a tone of insects including a Spider that’s the size of my palm that can kill a kid with its powerful venom and some Night Monkeys that were in the canopy and are hard to see. When we got to the Canopy Tower our plan was to climb to the top and try to see if we could spot any light from the closest oil company. At the Canopy Tower we saw another small snake and a redish light blocked by some other trees towards the West; South, North and East were completely black. We guessed that the moon looked strange and had some redish powerful light or there was an oil company kilometers away, hopefully the moon option was correct.