{"id":4,"date":"2005-01-29T21:20:28","date_gmt":"2005-01-30T01:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/2005\/01\/29\/mist-netting-the-island-effect-and-a-"},"modified":"2012-05-04T10:16:28","modified_gmt":"2012-05-04T14:16:28","slug":"mist-netting-the-island-effect-and-a-party-bus-january-was-a-good-m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/2005\/01\/29\/mist-netting-the-island-effect-and-a-party-bus-january-was-a-good-m\/","title":{"rendered":"Mist-netting, the island-effect and a party bus–January was a good month"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

My life has been <\/span>a whirl-wind
\nsince arriving back on BCI after Christmas with my family in
\nMaine. After a week of family, too much food, old
\nfriends, new friends, really cold weather, an introduction to the OC,
\nswimming in the Belfast High School Alumni meet, and going to my
\nroommate’s “Beer Pong Formal” New Years party, arriving on BCI felt like
\na return to the quiet life. The illusion didn’t last long.<\/p>\n

Vilma and I dove into the January field work (which we actually
\nfinished in record time), tramping up and down hills after the
\ncapuchins. Dipteryx panamensis<\/span>
\nis fruiting right now, making monkey watching more hazardous than
\nnormal, as monkey groups will spend over an hour feeding in one of
\nthese huge canopy trees, periodically dropping the large seeds that
\nthey have scraped the flesh off of. Meanwhile, you are on the
\nground, neck craned back, trying to find a place where the understory
\nis open enough to give you a view of the monkeys high up in the canopy,
\nand dodging these heavy missiles that come whizzing past your
\nhead. So far, there have only been near misses, but it feels
\ninevitable that some day one of is going to get knocked out by a
\nfalling Dipteryx<\/span>. <\/p>\n

The upside of Dipteryx<\/span> is that, unlike the Coussarea<\/span>
\nfruits we were processing last month, each fruit has lots of pulp on
\nit, and harvesting 10 grams (dry weight) was easy. However, the
\nother fruits we were collecting this month made up for it. Apeiba (<\/span>commonly known as monkey-comb) and Lindackeria<\/span> gave us more than enough trouble to make up for the relative ease of Dipteryx.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
\n
\nFrom bottom left:  <\/span>Apeiba aspera, Mabea occidentalis, Lindackeria laurina<\/span> and some other pretty things I found in the forest<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Some of the fruits and flowers I’ve been seeing this month:  Virola, Paullinia, Ficus and others<\/p>\n

\nThe monkeys have also been eating a lot of nectar this month, both from
\nthe balsa trees that are flowering in front of my dormatory, and from
\nClitoria (proof that the botanists who spend years in the rainforest
\nand discover and name new species are sexually frustrated). <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

January also brought my 25th birthday, which I think was the best I’ve
\nhad so far. I got so many cards, packages, calls and emails from
\nmy friends, and just generally felt very loved. Additionally, my
\nfriends on the island arranged a surprise birthday party for me (and
\nAxel, whose birthday is the same day as mine) on a Panamanian pary
\nbus–a chiva pachangera. Basically it is just a typical
\nPanamanian bus that they had cut out one side of to make it open air,
\ntaken out a bunch of the seats, and installed huge speakers and a DJ so
\nyou can dance! We drove all over the city, dancing and drinking.
\nfrom time to time the bus would stop, and we’d dance on the sidewalk
\n(usually right next to the ocean) for a while before continuing with
\nthe driving, drinking and dancing. The liquor was of the gut rot
\nPanamanian Seco variety, the music was typical panamanian, and there
\nwas lots of latin style grinding going on. It was a debaucherous,
\nbut really fun night!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Axel, Dora and Sebastian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Andrea, Eloisa, Me (hidden), and Marta<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\nSpending too long on BCI turns you into something of a recluse–you
\nstart to get very annoyed by changes to the island routine, including
\nthe arrival of new people.  Right now feels like the calm before
\nthe storm, as there is a really nice community of interesting people
\ndoing really cool work.  However, the Magill undergraduate course
\nthat brought 40 students to the island sent a large portion of the BCI
\nresidents into hiding.  Now we are counting down to the arrival of
\nthe Princeton undergraduate course, who will be staying for even
\nlonger.  <\/p>\n

One of the groups that has been working on the island in January is
\nstudying the local bird extinctions.  BCI is unique in that a
\nfirst-rate ornithologist has been on the island almost continuously
\nsince scientists started doing research here.  As a result, there
\nare very complete records on the bird species living on the island
\nwhich reveal a dramatic series of extinctions.  Doug Robinson, of
\nOregon State, hypothesizes that these extinctions may be related to the
\nclimatic changes that he claims are making BCI, and Panama in general,
\ndrier.  The bird group was here conducting another survey of the
\nBCI birds, and setting up a long term study that will continue to
\nmonitor the population.  Part of their survey consisted of
\nmist-netting along trails to catch and tag birds, and I went along with
\nthem on what turned out to be the best netting day any of them had ever
\nseen.  In one morning we caught 78 birds in 28 mist nets. 
\nThere were so many birds that half of us were working up birds that had
\nbeen caught, while the other half was walking the nets to collect birds
\nthat had been caught.  We opened the nets at 6:30, and by 7 were
\ncompletely swamped!  It was an amazing day, trying my hand at
\nuntangling birds from the nets (more difficult and definitely more
\nstressful than trying to untangle kite lines that have been
\nbeginner-ified), banding and measuring birds, and recording the data
\nbeing shouted at me by 4 other people who were working up birds. 
\nWe caught some pretty interesting birds, but my favorites were some of
\nthe most common.  The manakins are little birds that you see all
\nover in the forest, but they are beautiful. 
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span>\"\"<\/font><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Golden-collared Manakin<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I wasn’t the only one who was excited about the manakins, though. 
\nEven the experienced birders who had untangled scores of them from mist
\nnets thought they were something to get excited over, especially when
\nyou caught a male in good condition.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I had some problems keeping a hold of the birds as I measured and
\nweighed them.  The first one I tried to work up escaped before I’d
\nfinished with him. I did finally get the hang of it, though!<\/p>\n

\"Meg_weighing:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\nToday was my day off, which I spend reading (for pleasure only) in the
\nhammock at my friends house in Gamboa.  Its been nice to have a
\nfew days off to do non-work related things.  February 1st is
\ncoming soon though, so I’ll be back in the field, following monkeys,
\nand trying to get all the work done before Bob Lessnau shows up on the
\n19th to help me collar a few more monkeys!
\n<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My life has been a whirl-wind since arriving back on BCI after Christmas with my family in Maine. After a week of family, too much food, old friends, new friends, really cold weather, an introduction to the OC, swimming in the Belfast High School Alumni meet, and going to my roommate’s “Beer Pong Formal” New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1454],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crofootstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}