E3B Summer 2010: Hola from Peru

Pucallpa is great! I'm currently about 2 hours away from the city, staying with a host family to be closer to the forest for the first half of my study. With me is my assistant Juan, a recently graduated biologist from the University of Arequipa. I was really lucky to find him - he's really cool and knows tons about Peruvian birds.

Our daily schedule is crazy and exhausting:

4:00am - wake up and get ready

4:30am - hike out to the forest

6:00am-12pm - mist netting

12:00-12:15 - lunch in the forest

12:15-5pm - taking down 18 nets, moving them, re-setting them up in a new location in the forest

6:30pm - arrive at home and take a "shower" in the nearby creek (once we saw a river otter!)

At first, we didn't realize how far the forest was from the house, or the fact that there are no trails, so we lost at least a week bushwacking our way into the forest, then making paths for the nets. We also had another setback when our local field assistant abandoned us without saying anything (or collecting his pay!) to go help the loggers...Loggers, one; Conservationists, zero.

Some of the stuff you see here is a bit depressing...there are fallen trees everywhere, most of them bigger in diameter than I am in height, and every day that we are in the forest we hear the constant sound of a chainsaw in the background...then every 2 hours or so, the sound of a massive tree falling. It sounds like thunder or dynamite going off.

I suffered a nasty leg injury (stepping into a giant hole then landing on a spike - I'll spare you the picture) and I have chigger bites from head to toe, but working with the birds more than makes up for it. This forest is totally understudied, if at all (I have yet to find a published study in this particular area), and everything we are finding is fascinating! We have already found two species with new distributions, and a foliage gleaner with blue eyes that is not in the field guide.

Here are some pictures...

Adorable birdie