Photos! Days 1 & 2 of Base Camp.

As soon as we had our briefing and tent allocations were sorted, we started our first activity or spreading out our bird Mist Nets that were made of very thin fibre netting that catches birds for sampling etc.

It was a very hard task to complete, as the net wasn't allowed to get tangled or even touch the floor, as debris may rip the fibres, and so might cause a loss in species capture.

On the second day, we went down our first transect down the river and Nick here placed a trap at the start of the transect and managed to capture a Mexican Deer Mouse. OpWall had recently discovered a new species of water mouse and so have been conducting transect trapping to find and estimate a possible population statistic for the new species.

The transect was very slippery and I managed to slip and and put half my leg into very cold, flowing water, which was extremely unpleasant, especially seeing as the humidity levels were very high, and my leg actually didn't fully dry until day 4 in BC.

Later on, we used the mist nets to capture 2 species of Aves (bird species). Here is a Common Bush Tanager!

And here is a Strong-Billed Woodcreeper, that had only been caught once since OpWall started working in the park. It cut Louis' hand with it's razor sharp beak and I was given the painful opportunity to release it back into the forest.

Once we got back, we had our first lecture in the Science building and we all experienced our first rainforest downpour and it lasted hours. I left clothes out to dry so I had to run to save my already still wet clothes.

The area outside our tent essentially became a pond.

Some of us had some fun though!

Later that night, after the rain stopped, we went on our first Herpetology Walk, or Herp Walk for short, and we did our best to try and find any reptiles and/or amphibians. We found this small lizard hiding on a leaf and took it back for sampling.

Many types of lizard play dead when their stomachs are exposed, in order to catch predators off guard, as they know the predators won't eat dead prey.

I found this cute little frog camouflaged on a leaf, just off the side of the transect. It was still going through metamorphosis and so was just trying to get rid of a tail stump it had from where it's tadpole tail would've been.