Today was the second day I was able to get up to go birding! Let’s hope we can keep this streak up. This time, we got to see toucans, amazons, parrots, and more macaws!

We then began wrapping up our research project from yesterday, where we massed the weight of our leaves and calculated the average difference between. We found that the average difference between uncolonized leaves was greater than the difference between the colonized leaves. After lunch, we gave our first poster presentation! One down, many more to go.

The director of Friends for Conservation and Development (FCD) also stopped by and gave us a presentation on both the grassroots start of the organization and the differences between Belizean rangers and US rangers. We also learned a little more about the caves we’ll be exploring tomorrow, which I’m super excited for.

In the evening, we went out to examine the fungus gardens in leafcutter ant colonies, and even saw a queen!

We also went on our first night hike today! We saw some more crickets, but I did not get a picture fast enough. A katydid also flew right over my head, which sounded like a mini helicopter whir. But I did get a picture of an anole and it’s dewlap!

We also found a black orchid by the tree in the middle of the clearing, which was super pretty. It’s also the national flower of Belize.

A couple friends and our guide went back out to see if we could find some ripe breadnuts, and on our way we saw a blue morpho caterpillar.

We went stargazing as well, and made out the Big Dipper. That was about all we recognized so we started making up a couple constellations, finding a spiral and even seeing plenty of shooting stars. I never realized just how fast they move!

That’s all for today, see y’all in the caves!

Ian C