Field Life (Allpahuayo Mishana)

So I've thought about this a bit and I think I found a way to organize photos and blog postings from my time in AM that makes more sense than a day by day recounting (which I don't even have written down anyway). This post will be all about the generalities of field life in the reserve- how we set up nets, what we did in our down time waiting for birds (including some wtf moments), people, snake encounters, bugs, etc. I'll add to it as I continue to edit and sort through photos so scroll down every so often to see if it's been updated.

That being said: Day 1 of actual field work is the only day I have a complete list of all the things we did- namely because the day's main task was just: set up mistnets. It meant we got to wake up a little earlier and hang around camp longer because we weren't actually catching anything that day but there was an associated tradeoff we really didn't think too much about at the time.

First morning in AM, Aug 26th

But here's the catch, ladies and gentlemen: a midday slog through the rainforest. Hello, sweat! On days where we set up nets, we get to leave a little later but 11-2 pm is the worst time bracket to begin a hike. You can't even really see anything neat because the animals know better than to be at all active during the hottest parts of the day. Only the insects are out in full force.

Todd looking decidedly maniacal, Adam in the background carrying a set of mistnet poles. They look long even when he's carrying them and he's a little over 6 feet. Now. Picture me hauling those things. Imagine the physics at work.

I didn't take any pictures of net set up because that's fairly boring. If a trail exists, you can string the nets along the already cleared path. If not, the guys bust out the machetes and slaughter all plant life along the transect so we have enough clear space to sling 20, 3 meter high and 12 meter long nets. And it's 20 nets per site- when we got good enough at banding, we split into two groups each in charge of 20 nets. Nets have to be checked once every 30-40 minutes. Quick math reveals that each time you walk a string of 20 nets, from one end to the other, you're walking a quarter of a kilometer. Add all these net checks up + the walks to the actual sites, and we were averaging on total around 8-10 miles of walking each day.

And here's what a typical banding station looks like. Tarp on ground. Tarp on top. A line to hang bird bags. This was during training day so all 15 people are clustered around this one tarp, watching birds get handled and banded. You can see why we were relieved to finally break up into smaller groups.

Banding station during our training day. Sadly, this was one wet, wet morning

But breaking up into smaller banding teams involved moving further from base camp, longer walks, and earlier mornings. An the problem with the latter was that it put us tromping through the forest in morning so early it was still technically night.....and snakes like wet nights.
Our longest hike (a little over 3 miles) involved crossing a wide stream on a crude branch bridge but we always stopped on the sand banks around before we crossed for a bit of a breather. We had just arrived at our designated rest spot one morning around 5 AM when Chris looked down at his feet, said "Fuck!" very loudly and backed away in a hurry. "Snake," he shouted, pointing at the 2 meter long fer-de-lance that had just started to coil back on itself in full defense mode. It had been no more than a foot from the toe of his boot.

In case you didn't know, fer-de-lances are highly venomous. Note the shape of the head of this bugger. It's got some serious venom glands.

Between the snakes, the wasps, the early mornings, and the work load, it was no wonder that people started going a little insane in the field.
In particular,
Adam's sense of fashion was an early victim:

And I had a morning realization that everything melts in the tropics. Note to self- never, ever sleep on top of a Ross bag in South America unless you want some blue tattoos! Luckily it was only my hand. (Hope you can at least still see the trademark R in its circle- snapped this with the itouch!)

I also learned that I really like taking pictures of some of the bugs we had hanging around our banding stations. This was especially fun on slower days when we had no birds to process.

Tongue!

Our constant companions- these guys chewed on everything

And my nemesis. I tried for so long to get a good picture of this guy. EDIT: Mom tells me this is a Hamadryas butterfly. Thanks for the ID!

And this is by no means bird or insect, but look what fell into our nets  late morning one day:

This is a tent-making bat. It got spooked out of its roost by the noise of net checks and flew into the net itself. Cute guy. He kept grinding his teeth together in a mini tantrum the entire time we were extracting it.

I'd like to break here and say that days off were a nice change of pace: that cooking food was a simple, relaxing, and straightforward task. That one could look forward to the simplicity of a day at camp in the face of all the bugs and bats and banding. But that would be a lie.
Nothing in the field is normal. For example, this is how we purchased our daily supply of bread- by flagging down the caballero de pan on his tiny motorcycle which wheezed and chugged and threatened to die every time he drove it up the hill to our camp.

The super hero of the Amazon: Pan Man!

And to get water, you had to hitchhike about ten minutes down the road in a bus, a car, a truck, or any combination thereof that had room. ('Room' by the way, is a flexible term in Peru- if you can manage to squeeze one butt cheek onto a seat in some of these vehicles, you're doing great. It doesn't help either that, compared to the typical Peruvian, you're some bloated giant trying to clumsily navigate down the aisle/to the back of the vehicle, dragging water buckets and your backpack in front of you and trying not to bash anyone's head in). This is where we got water-
 

Adam, Gerson, and Daniela in 'town'

The 'town' of 13 of February (founded on the 27th of April) is a collection of poor houses, shops that sometimes double as poor houses, a single restaurant, a soccer field, and roadside stands that sell an assortment of crackers, cookies, and drinks. My favorite shop was the corner tienda that boasted a giant cooler in the corner where you could buy cold cokes, beers, orange sodas, or just plain bottled water that didn't taste like someone's swimming pool. It became customary for water groups to sit for a bit on the scarred benches around the scarred table and drink their cold poison of choice while watching ten minutes of the bad soap opera that was continually on the tiny TV. Then, moment of bliss over, we walked down the road, down the bank, and into the water shed where we filled the pictured buckets and hauled them back uphill to wait a ride back.

When we were running low in food in camp, we also scoured 13. de Feb for anything edible. Our search for 'papas' (potatoes) led us to this strange thing which the woman assured us WAS a potato but is actually something that sounds like 'mandi.' It was excellent boiled and mashed up.

And this was another town buy- easily the best lollipop I have ever had.
 

It even has fake seeds!

And that's really about it in terms of the major events of A.M. The beginning of our stay dragged on and on but by the end when we had completed training, broken into smaller teams, and gotten into the swing of things- time flew. Before we really even knew it, the 10th had arrived and it was time to pack all the crap back up. Oh. And find a ride back to Iquitos. Because, apparently, the bus company Judit had contracted to come pick us up conveniently forgot they had ever agreed to such a thing. With all our gear again in a mammoth pile by the side of the road, we had to flag down passing roadside buses and ask if they could send two or three empty vehicles to come get us.

In the end we got a single car (a family stopped to see if they could squeeze any paying gringos into their vehicle on their way to Iquitos) and a single "bus."
This is how everything fit:

Tetris for biologists

 On top. And 11 people squeezed inside that 'bus' for the hour long ride back into the city. This is where we calculated that all together, that vehicle was carrying around 1 and a half metric tonnes of human and gear. The only comforting fact was that the braces inside that support the roof had, at one point, caved in far more under far greater strain. So. Technically we had nothing to fear right?
 Right.
:P

And that's it. That's all folks. Chapter 1 concluded. Believe it or not, chapter 2 begins tomorrow at noon but in the meantime it's cold cokes galore, oreos aplenty, and *hopefully* manatee watching today.

Until late September:

Pura Vida and

 Aloha!