5:45 and the alarm clock sounds, Wendy woke up and told me to sleep 15 minutes more and then work would start. When Wendy came back, she was with a GPS, a tool that researchers didn’t use much in this type of forest, they preferred compass, but this GPS had most of the male Manakins territories so we decided to give it a try and the results were stunning. We went to some many territories and realized that there were no Pipra-Pipras in many old territories marked in the GPS. We found 3 male Manakins out of the 7 male territories that we visited.
This is interesting because the government of Ecuador tried to help. The world told them that they could not cut down their forest to extract oil because the Yasuni region was a world heritage. The government gave the rights to nature in their constitution but they made a good point, the money gotten from the oil extractions would help Ecuador to keep on developing so if this was a world problem if the world got the money that the oil factories would have extracted, more than 30 billion dollars, then Yasuni wouldn’t be touched. Unfortunately the money collected didn’t make it to its “goal” so now oil companiesare seen in the amazon. The closest factory to TBS is just 12km away and you can still hear some of the noise the huge machines make. No wonder the species population has begun to drop. Something has has to be done if we want to conserve this diverse eecosystem.
Going back to our field work. It was time to set up the nets so we could catch the unbanned Manakins. We had to carry some metal bars (3 meters long) through the jungle and its nets. Researchers use 6m and 12m long and 2.8m tall nets to catch their desired birds. This time we set up three nets, two 12m and one 6m. Wendy taught me how to set up the nets by myself. In order to have the nets placed correctly you had to find a straight path were no vegetation would be touching the nets, so it was a challenging task. We tried to have the minimum disturbance possible in the male territories, so we tied and try to cut the least possible vegetation. We were able to place our three nets and I asked Wendy if we would leave them open all night and she told me: “No way, are you crazy? We would need to be checking the nets each 30minutes if not the bird could die. Generally we catch more birds than Pirpa-Pipras so we have to be really careful. We have them ready, so tomorrow when we get here super early we can start working immediately and have more chances to catch the birds”. When we were going back to the station, an investigator had told us that he had found a mammal clay lick; a place where animals such as mammals and birds come to eat a special kind of mud). Scientists believe that animals eat this mud for two reasons: (1) to complement their diet – this mud has been found to have micronutrients that animals eating mostly fruit cannot get from their diet and (2) to deactivate some toxins that animals might get from eating unripe fruit or toxic leaves (the mud helps them with this). We decided to go and see the clay lick When we were there something amazing happened, we saw a Tapir. Tapirs are extremely difficult to see in the wild! We also saw a family of spider monkeys jumping from tree to tree on top of us. During field work you get very dirty and sweat so much that you could probably fill a whole bath tub with just sweat. So once we got to the camp, we went running into the amazon for a swim, I thought it would be a little scary but investigators did it every day so it wasn’t that scary. After our relaxing and refreshing swim we were challenged to play a strange volleyball game with the “Tigres”. The “Tigres” are the workers (cooks, janitors, etc) at TBS and we accepted. It was a cool game and we had a lot of fun!
Today we had seen many new species in our birds list we saw: White throated Tucan, Red throated Cara Cara, Great Billed Hermit and a Fork-Tailed Woodnymph. We also saw some: Wooly Monkeys, Howler Monkeys, White lipped prionodactilus (lizard), Turniptail Gecko and many insects (Tarantula, Giant damselfly, Bull horned spider, Giant Locust, Blue Morpho and more). Our list was going to get even bigger because we had a night float arranged today. Santiago or Cuco Sanchez used to be in a indigenous tribe an now works as a worker at TBS would be our spotter, he was definitely great. With just a flash light and no binoculars he saw a Paca (giant rodent), Dwarf caimans, a Pauraque and two Potoos (Common Potoo and a Great Potoo) which are very difficult to spot. Today had been a successful and fun day and tomorrow we would be trying to catch our unbanned Manakins!
This is interesting because the government of Ecuador tried to help. The world told them that they could not cut down their forest to extract oil because the Yasuni region was a world heritage. The government gave the rights to nature in their constitution but they made a good point, the money gotten from the oil extractions would help Ecuador to keep on developing so if this was a world problem if the world got the money that the oil factories would have extracted, more than 30 billion dollars, then Yasuni wouldn’t be touched. Unfortunately the money collected didn’t make it to its “goal” so now oil companiesare seen in the amazon. The closest factory to TBS is just 12km away and you can still hear some of the noise the huge machines make. No wonder the species population has begun to drop. Something has has to be done if we want to conserve this diverse eecosystem.
Going back to our field work. It was time to set up the nets so we could catch the unbanned Manakins. We had to carry some metal bars (3 meters long) through the jungle and its nets. Researchers use 6m and 12m long and 2.8m tall nets to catch their desired birds. This time we set up three nets, two 12m and one 6m. Wendy taught me how to set up the nets by myself. In order to have the nets placed correctly you had to find a straight path were no vegetation would be touching the nets, so it was a challenging task. We tried to have the minimum disturbance possible in the male territories, so we tied and try to cut the least possible vegetation. We were able to place our three nets and I asked Wendy if we would leave them open all night and she told me: “No way, are you crazy? We would need to be checking the nets each 30minutes if not the bird could die. Generally we catch more birds than Pirpa-Pipras so we have to be really careful. We have them ready, so tomorrow when we get here super early we can start working immediately and have more chances to catch the birds”. When we were going back to the station, an investigator had told us that he had found a mammal clay lick; a place where animals such as mammals and birds come to eat a special kind of mud). Scientists believe that animals eat this mud for two reasons: (1) to complement their diet – this mud has been found to have micronutrients that animals eating mostly fruit cannot get from their diet and (2) to deactivate some toxins that animals might get from eating unripe fruit or toxic leaves (the mud helps them with this). We decided to go and see the clay lick When we were there something amazing happened, we saw a Tapir. Tapirs are extremely difficult to see in the wild! We also saw a family of spider monkeys jumping from tree to tree on top of us. During field work you get very dirty and sweat so much that you could probably fill a whole bath tub with just sweat. So once we got to the camp, we went running into the amazon for a swim, I thought it would be a little scary but investigators did it every day so it wasn’t that scary. After our relaxing and refreshing swim we were challenged to play a strange volleyball game with the “Tigres”. The “Tigres” are the workers (cooks, janitors, etc) at TBS and we accepted. It was a cool game and we had a lot of fun!
Today we had seen many new species in our birds list we saw: White throated Tucan, Red throated Cara Cara, Great Billed Hermit and a Fork-Tailed Woodnymph. We also saw some: Wooly Monkeys, Howler Monkeys, White lipped prionodactilus (lizard), Turniptail Gecko and many insects (Tarantula, Giant damselfly, Bull horned spider, Giant Locust, Blue Morpho and more). Our list was going to get even bigger because we had a night float arranged today. Santiago or Cuco Sanchez used to be in a indigenous tribe an now works as a worker at TBS would be our spotter, he was definitely great. With just a flash light and no binoculars he saw a Paca (giant rodent), Dwarf caimans, a Pauraque and two Potoos (Common Potoo and a Great Potoo) which are very difficult to spot. Today had been a successful and fun day and tomorrow we would be trying to catch our unbanned Manakins!