2018 CRIRE

Ngabe jewlery Ngabe bag   The lab was busy since everyone was trying to finish their posters to get to Scott to approve for tomorrow. We were able to get our abstract done and have some free time afterwards. I bought some cute purses and bracelets from the Ngabe-Bugle. I wish I had come down earlier to see the trees or plants the Ngabe used to make the purses. Their purses remind me of a wapaas they're traditional bags that my tribe uses.   There were nature hikes this evening but Cristy and I showed up late and they were already gone! We tried catching up with the group and we seen them coming back up the hill from the jungle trail. We turned our flashlights off and tried hiding. We thought we tricked them because we seen them all stop and walk slowly towards us.Someone came in front of us and Cristy jumped out to scare them but it was Celestino and apparently he already seen us because my backpack was sticking out hahahah, He was going to also try to scare us but d

We started our posters today, I thought it was going to be simple at first to put together a graph but it  wasn't. We knew we wanted to do a graph showing total number of species per strata, and total number of birds per strata. Scott helped us out by showing us some tricks on Excel. He showed us how to change our codes for strata to words (ex: 1=ground) He taught us how to change all the 1's to the word ground which simplified it for the graphs. He also showed us how to make Pivot tables and I love them they make things way easier I'll definitely be using it from now on. We also got the simple stuff done on the poster like title, objective, methods and acknowledgements. Overall I think we got a lot done and I'm looking forward to seeing the end results. Today my dream came true someone told us there were monkeys outside so we all rushed outside. One of the monkeys kept peaking at us from behind a leaf it was adorable 💗

San Vito Day of rest woot woot! When I woke up I didn't bother getting ready just went down to eat breakfast and went back up to my room and went back to sleep. It felt so good to get extra sleep,  I could sleep all day, wake up tired and take another nap 😂 After lunch we went to San Vito and explored. They have some stores with cute clothes I found a romper. I forgot to get these chips called Taqueritos they're so good they taste like Takis (shout out to Cristy)! Also forgot to get some Pepsi!! We stopped at this bakery they had bomb desserts we just sat and took our time since we had a lot of time to kill until dinner. Most of the stores were either closed or closed early since it was Sunday. I seen they had this 5 way which I bet is crazy on a busy day. We ate at a pizza place it was delish, I had about 4 pieces. Today was a good day 😎

Lessons' Motmot Angel's Trumpet Stick game Monet, Cristy and I Today was our last day to collect data. We started off by sitting at the bird feeder station to observe there but there wasn't much birds because they stopped putting fruit out when the bird watching group left. So we decided to go to the lower part of the garden where the oldest tree is located. We were looking first at these little birds trying to ID them but we ended up seeing a Blue-headed Parrot. It was so cute it looked like it was taking a "siesta" which I just recently found out means nap, every time people would say that I thought they were talking about fiestas. She or he was really aware of us you could see it looking right back at us :D   We eventually let it be and wondered off to our favorite spot in the garden! Behind Casa Wilson I would say is where we found a majority of our birds. It's so peaceful right there I like to just sit there and take it all i

Foggy morning Today we went out with Jason he is the expert here at the station with plants and birds. He showed us the different trees that grow in the garden and the certain plants that the birds really like. He has this really cool lens not sure if it's a camera or some sort of binocular camera if that's a thing? But you can look through and see the birds so clearly since it has a tripod it's much clearer than when using binoculars and my arms aren't as steady. He showed us this whole or nest in a palm tree, we didn't get to see any birds come or go from it because when we went back to check it out ourselves we couldn't find it!

Creepy crawlers Ngabe-Bugle   Today we went out to the watch tower again. There was a couple up there also bird watching. We heard this bird in the distance but wasn't sure what it was. It turns out it was a Toucan! To me they sound similar to the Crested Caracara I can't really differentiate them. They sounds like ducks to me .  Bridgette showed us this huge spider in a Bromeliad it was gross, when I got closer I noticed an even bigger one right underneath it!! They were on separate leaves but later that day they ended up in the same leaf .   We had a cultural exchange that evening it was pretty neat the Ngabe-Bugle showed us some of their dances and they even let us participate. Cristy presented the swan dance, I didn't know that I was going to do it but she "voluntold" me to haha. I've never done that dance before so she showed us all a real quick demonstration. It was fun! We ended the night with a round dance we went the wrong way at first (cou

Agouti Parrots  Today we went up to the observation tower a little after breakfast. There wasn't as much birds there than in the garden but we were able to see some hummingbirds. It was warm up on the observation tower and I forgot my hat at home so my head was hot -_-  We came back to the garden to see if we could find better luck here and the garden never disappoints! We seen a Crested Caracara it was cool reminds me of an Eagle almost. Usually we walk around but we decided to sit down and observe behind casa Wilson and we seen more birds there in that one spot than we have anywhere else. It's almost the perfect spot except the lighting isn't great so it's hard to see the birds colors!   There were these Parrots that Jonathan had been hearing going crazy all week but we could never really get a good look because they move so fast and wouldn't stay in one spot for long. But we finally were able to see them pretty clearly and they stayed for awhile,

Banana tree Bird feeding station     On Tuesday we had an early morning, well early to me I'm NOT a morning person at all and breakfast here at the station every day is at 6:30!! The breakfast is a little different than back home not the typical cereal/oatmeal/pancakes but it is still good I enjoy it. Rodo gave us a tour of the garden and showed us the plants and trees. It was pretty cool we seen some sting less bees in the trunk of a tree. Later that afternoon Jonathan and I met with our mentor Margaret to start our project.     For our project we'll be going out in the field and learning how to ID birds in different forest habitat types, learning how to use field guides, observe and record the birds behavior and strata. With our data we should be able to learn if certain birds are only found in certain habitat or are found in several different habitats. We are also supposed to be comparing our data with past data and hopefully also to traditional ecological knowl

Paramo Hummingbird at the restaurant Return of the tiny hand       On Monday we all traveled in a charter bus to the research station around 7 am. The bus ride took foreverrrrr but we had a pretty comfy bus. We took the mountain route this time and on the way back we'll be taking the coastal route(stay tuned for pics :p). The scenery on the mountain route was beautiful but I tried to sleep most of the way because I forgot my motion sickness medicine 😱 story of my life!We stopped at the Paramo it was nice it reminded me of the shrub steppe back home. We stopped for lunch at the highest restaurant in Central America (10,000 feet)! Ate lunch with some pretty Hummingbirds outside of the window. Was expecting it to be colder but one of the workers at the restaurant actually told us that it was warmer there than it usually is around this time      We still had quite a bit of ways to go after the restaumrant but finally made it to the station after 5 pm!! We're s

      On Sunday Cristy, Monet and I traveled to Hotel Aeropuerto. It was a little sketchy at first because we kept driving farther and farther outside of town. The hotel almost reminded me of the Las Cruces Garden because when you enter it is surrounded by pretty trees. The hotel was pretty cool it wasn't like others, the entrance had no walls or doors it was wide open so I really liked that. We were staying at the Hampton the night before and it was a nice hotel but this hotel really made me feel like I was really in Costa Rica :) I was pretty exhausted from traveling the day before so it was nice to just have a free day while we waited for everyone to show up. I wish we went to explore the town but I was being lazy and took a really long nap and was just straight up lounging :D                 Later that night those of us who arrived at the hotel met in the restaurant and had dinner together There was so many of us and the waiter who took the orders didn't write down our