Hi friends,
WE FINALLY SAW SNAKES TODAY!!! We saw a fer-de-lance snake too, and I recognized it!
We started the day getting our camera traps ready for our big experiment here in Las Cuevas. We decided to walk through two different trails, the Hectare Plot and the Monkey Tail Trail, and place camera traps periodically on- and off-trail to hopefully get footage of animals passing by.
Hiking the Hectare Plot was a pain because it had to enclose a set area, and so some of the trail ended up going over steep hills and we had to hike up and down a lot. I saw a Mexican porcupine (Coendou mexicanus) on the way down from a hill which was awesome! First mammal in the wild that I spotted! We also managed to find a lot of other organisms on the forest floor and in the canopy which was nice. We saw a scorpion eater snake and a few interesting lizards too.
We placed a total of 6 camera traps around the trail, and headed back to LCRS for lunch. After lunch, we went into the Monkey Tail Trail, which was a much flatter terrain and thus easier to navigate. We placed 2 cameras every 1km, and so ended up hiking a considerable distance. However, most of the time spent was going in and out of the forest to place an off-trail camera, and we took 40 minutes just to get out of the last one. It was exciting stuff as things could have been bad if we didn’t get out before dark but we managed to do it so it’s all good. On the way back, it was dark and we had to use our headlamps. Halfway back to LCRS, I was walking with Jordan when she suddenly yelped out in excitement. As she was walking she had spotted a snake and just about stepped past it. We looked more closely and it was definitely a poisonous snake, and the markings on the back of the snake seemed to indicate that it was a fer-de-lance. I got to say I got plenty excited for that as it was the snake that I really wanted to find and so I stooped low to take a shot. But Scott pulled me away as it apparently was able to jump backwards to bite. The only picture I have was quite out of focus but here it is!
I wonder how we will be able to find our off-trail cameras as they are pretty far off the track and we took so long getting in and out of the areas where we placed them. But that is a problem for another day.
Till then,
Damien