Today was a long day of hiking for our team as we set up our 7 working camera traps along the trails near the research station to see what wildlife crosses the paths when we aren’t there. Though there were light showers in the afternoon, today was a fairly sunny and dry day. However, in the morning I did find a broad-headed rain frog under a log by where we deployed our first camera trap. Broad-headed rain frogs can be easily identified as they are often found in the leaf litter and have a distinctive side stripe that extends over its eyes, sort of like a bandits mask in old westerns. In the afternoon on our way up the Monkey Tail Trail, I caught a glimpse of a Mexican Tree Frog of a khaki coloration. Unfortunately, it was already high up the tree by the time I saw him. This was an abnormal siting as Mexican Tree Frogs are typically more active at night, though perhaps the rains brought him out.

Today was an exciting day for sitings from outside my taxon group too. We saw a group of spider monkeys before lunch and a bunch of us ate termites under Scott’s instruction. In the afternoon we got to observe first hand the mutualistic relationship between the Bull Thorn Acacia tree and their ant protectors plus we saw the fresh claw marks in the dirt on trail where a puma or jaguar had crossed. We also saw three scarlet macaws in the canopy and I even managed to capture a video of them as they swooped past.
Back at the station I found, no exaggeration, at least 100 ticks on me. I spent probably an hour tweezing them all out. Unclear how I got wrecked by ticks when everyone else just found a few, but tomorrow I’m going to use a LOT of bug spray.
After our lectures, it was dark, aka perfect conditions for tarantula hunting. We found a huge red-rumped tarantula in its hole and managed to coax it out, revealing the broken shells of beetles it had been eating. We also found a different arachnid, the Florida Bark scorpion in a sink, but if you are reading this, don’t worry mom, I didn’t get my hand close to either of them.