Day 8: Stargazing from the Canopy Top

Remove all of the light pollution, stand above the tops of the trees, and look up. Wow. The Milky Way. The southern cross. The jungle night sounds. What a beautiful place in the universe to be. 🦋
The day ended with a canopy walk in the dark. On our night hike we saw a sloth, and possum, tarantula, scorpion spider, fuzzy little rodent of some sort, katydids, and moths with glowing/reflecting red eyes. Quite an adventure. The day started with data collection for our first tree fall plot. We went back to our sight to finish our two remaining transect lines. We also set up two butterfly nets to see if there was any variation in butterfly prevalence in the shade vs a sunnier spot. Turns out that the magical butterfly bait is smushed banana mixed with local rum. Tomorrow we will see what we caught!
In case you were wondering about the weather, check out our data sensors. When we were in the field this morning the humidity level was 99.9%!!! 😂 I have never sweat so much in my life.
This afternoon we learned how to safely remove butterflies from our traps and helped a bit with the butterfly research project. They are comparing how many butterflies are caught in the canopy level vs the ground level. They check their 6 traps every 24 hours. Each butterfly is put in a freezer for 30 seconds, then photographed and measured. Once it warms back up, it is released to flutter again…Read more