I woke up today to the sound of my alarm and immediately fell back asleep. Instant coffee and sausages helped revive me this morning. We immediately went to the classroom and tried to design experiments that could answer the question as to how young trumpet trees against herbivores because they do not form a symbiosis with Azteca ants until they’re older. We then hit the trails again, though not as intensely as yesterday. We found a line of army ants, discovered a young queen inside a young trumpet tree, and recovered many leaf samples.

After lunch, we stayed in the proximity of Las Cuevas and dug up leaf cutter ant hills. We did so in a way to not kill the queen and allow the colony to recover. We dug vertically down into the soil on the side of the opening of the ant nests until we discovered a chamber containing the fungi and pupae. What’s incredibly neat is that these ants are farmers of the forest. They cut leaves and drag them back to the nest in order to farm this fungus, which can only survive by the aid of these ants. The soldier ants bit Michael, which was pretty funny.

We could hear howling monkeys today. I knew they were farther away than they sounded but I loved listening to them and am hoping we get the chance to see them. The other highlight of my day included seeing the scarlet macaws again. I was inside the building when they flew over and landed in the gutters. I ran over to the bridge between the kitchen and main building to take photos. One of them decided to fly over and pay me a visit. It was AWESOME. I slowly took out my camera and snapped a great photo, which I won’t include here. Find me later in person if you know me and would like to see.

I saw what I believe to be a large bumblebee today, as well as the same little black Euglossini bee. Tomorrow I am setting up my contraption to attract some orchid bees. Right now it is 9:30 pm and I am hitting the hay. I have a 5:30 am wake up call and no desire to get under 8 hours of sleep.