5/16/19: I woke at 5:00 o’clock this morning to go birding, and I must say, I was not sure if I would be able to do this. Typically, I am a night owl and late riser, but waking up early was not too bad. The prospect of seeing beautiful birds seem to do the trick in getting me out of bed. And of course, I saw beautiful birds. It is the tropical rain forest we are talking about here!

In addition to some beautiful birding, today we set up the camera traps for our research experiment. Our research question is: Does the clearing for Las Cuevas Research Station impact the species richness and species abundance (i.e overall biodiversity) found near the station? I have never used camera traps before, but it went quite well aside from the fact that four of our cameras were not working. But hey! That’s fieldwork, so we improvised and made it work.  I am hoping that we get an answer to our question—-plus catch a jaguar or puma on camera traps!

Today was a spicy day for Arachnids. On the 50-hectare plot, I saw a Gastercantha cancriformis or Spiny Orb-Weaver Spider. It was black, yellow, and white, which was super interesting. It had the characteristic 6 spines and it was spinning a web in the middle of the trail. Also, we did see a spider (unknown) with a grasshopper in its grasp. On a final note, my favorite find of the day was a female wolf spider (genus: Hogna) carrying her egg sack across the trail. She looked so regal with her little children. I also saw my first scorpion and tarantula in the Las Cuevas clearing: a large Florida Bark Scorpion, Centroides gracilis, and a Red-Rumped Tarantula, Brachypelma vagans. Oh…. and…. let’s just say ticks also made an impact today. (Kaela had over 100 ticks!)