We collected the camera traps this morning. It was so much faster the second time around when we knew where we were going and didn’t have to clear any paths. It was also a good idea to go out and collect them in the morning before it got too hot.

We waited until evening to look at the results, in order to make sure that the lighting conditions were optimal and we weren’t dealing with an annoying glare. That meant that we had a lot of time in the afternoon. We’re going to have a long day tomorrow, so we used that time to do the presentations for both today and tomorrow. We still had some time, and we were sitting around relaxing when we saw a group of macaws! We were amazed, and the best part was that more kept flying by. In total, I think we collectively saw 15, all before dinner. It was incredible.

The animal sightings didn’t end there, of course, because we had to unpack the camera traps. Some of them only caught us setting them up and taking them down, but some of them caught impressive wildlife. The most common animals were turkeys and curaçaos. The most impressive thing we caught, though, were pictures of a puma on three different traps! Not to brag, but my trap was one of the ones that picked it up. Our original experiment was looking at whether there was more biodiversity on trails or in undisturbed areas. We found that there was certainly more abundance on trails, and also more biodiversity, although with a limited sample size. Only one of our off-trail cameras caught any animals at all.

We ended the day with a bonfire near the station, in a clearing a little way down the Maya trail. It was a sweet way to end our time at the station. We shared our favorite  experiences and what we were looking forward to at the reef, and then we talked into the night. Tomorrow’s we leave Las Cuevas bright and early—what a stay it’s been!