Beginning our first full day at Las Cuevas Research Staton (LCRS), we had a scrumptious breakfast before we began our first project. We were tasked to come up with a question and design an experiment, using camera traps, to collect data to hopefully answer it. We landed on the question “How does the presence of man-made trails impact the biodiversity of vertebrates in the immediate surrounding area of LCRS?”

To test this, we set up camera traps on small, medium, and large trails/roads along with undisturbed areas. I set mine up along the LCRS Access road, on a semi-cut down tree!

We also saw a lot of new and fascinating animals today. As I was about to set up my camera trap, we heard a really loud banging noise, and it turned out to be a woodpecker!! Here’s a (blurry) video I took of it: IMG_7122

We saw a fresh track of a large cat scratch, which was really exciting and hopefully a good sign for the rest of the trip.

There was also this really beautiful blue dragonfly that kept flying around us for part of our hike.

My favorite of the day, though, was this baby scorpion that was crawling along the road. It was my first time ever seeing a wild scorpion, and as far as wild baby ones go, they’re not as scary or intimidating as I thought. That being said, we still have to worry about them crawling into our shoes and boots every time before we put them on.

That wraps up our first full day in the field—sadly without any Orthoptera. However, I’m giving my Orthoptera taxon briefing today, so we’ll still get to “see” a few. Hopefully we’ll actually get to see some in the field tomorrow. Until then!

Ian C