29 July

Both Louise and Alex have been trying to get some hummingbird pictures but it is incredibly hard as they never ever stay at a flower for more than a few seconds. Even though they look so pretty and cute, hummingbirds are actually very aggressive birds. Like most animals they all have their own territory, but for hummingbirds this includes their own personal flowers that no other bird is allowed to take nectar from. Several times already we have witnessed a hummingbird chasing away others. This includes insects! One time we saw a proper fight between two. When after a long chase one bird fell on the ground the other kept hoovering above and pecking it.
Kristina had her first welcome centre duty this morning. She had an easy morning as only two groups of people came by. Louise, Valerie and Alex went back to the Sentinel trail to see if the hummingbird was sitting on its nest again. When we got there he was not there, but we did see two tiny, perfectly light pink coloured eggs. Amazing to see. We will go back in a few days to hopefully film and take photos of the parent sitting on the nest, so keep watching this page. After this, Valerie and Louise continued their walk to visit one of the bigger waterfalls, Catarata Caldera, on the reserve. Unfortunately it started raining half way down. After sitting in the shelter of some trees for a while we still tried to go down to the waterfall but we decided it was too slippery, so we will be going back some other time. In the afternoon and evening we watched some movies and played games with the whole group which was great fun as always.

28 July

The spot on Sendero El Jilguero where we set up our camera trap seems to be quite a busy wildlife route. Twice now we have had the Tamandua pass and there is also a bird that keeps visiting the camera at night. New on the camera trap is an opossum. It took a while before we could ID it because it stayed quite a distance from the camera. But the most regular visitors are a family of peccary. Apparently there is a small cave close to this side of the trail where they stay. So whenever they go foraging, which is both during the day and at night they pass our camera.
Our night transect today was on Montaña and Sentinal. Sentinel does not take long at all because it only has two transects, both of 100m instead of 150m. Unfortunately only one frog for us tonight, but then also another blue-eyed anole. On Sentinel we made a very exciting discovery: a hummingbird on a nest! We will be going back tomorrow to hopefully get some good photos and maybe do some filming as well.

27 July

Our first night up at the Gavilan cabin was very warm. The temperatures have changed quite a bit since the first week we were here. But this was quite nice because when you wake up you can just sit outside or lie in the hammock and look at the beautiful view over the valley. The rest of the day we spent with the rest at Casita Blanca as that is where most our equipment is and of course where we have wifi, which is a very nice luxury to have. We IDed the frogs caught yesterday and enjoyed the always pretty views from the house as the clouds roll past. In the evening we had surveys up on the steep Watersystem transect and on Rio. Different to normally we actually caught something on Watersystem this time! Two anoles, a blue-eyed anole and a slender anole.

26 July

Tuesday, moving day! Tomorrow a group with 20 British students is coming to the reserve for 5 nights. This means everyone has to move out of the dorms and into Casita Blanca, Frank’s house or Casita Gavilan. Our team has been moved up the mountain into Casita Gavilan. It’s a very basic cabin with a kitchen and beds for 4 people in the same area. There is also a very nice outside decking area with benches, a hammock and a fantastic view of mountain Uran. Luckily we are allowed to leave our food where it is and bring all stuff that we don’t need at the cabin to Casita Blanca, which is just around the corner from the dorms. So after a morning of packing and cleaning we walked up to Gavilan with our big backpacks. It really feels like an expedition now! Up at the cabin we played some cards and baseball with some fruit that we found before returning back to camp for dinner. After dinner we went out on a transect again, which also happened to be on Gavilan tonight. On the way up Louise managed to spot an Olingo! Our first one so far.

25 July

Today Alex, Louise and Matt were going to San Isidro. Louise had to go to the dentist because her retainer broke a few days ago and Alex had to pick up his new computer screen as his laptop screen had broken during our travels between the UK and Costa Rica. We wanted to get the bus from San Gerardo at 10, but apparently it was a national day so the bus times weren’t as regular. After asking several people we finally got a number for the taxi, who first wouldn’t accept our English phone number as a contact number, but eventually they came. We met two Canadian girls who also could not wait for the bus so all cramped up with 5 people in a 4 seater taxi we drove up to San Isidro. Our next problem was finding the dentist. I put the map from the website of the dentist on my phone, but the taxi driver still could not find it and just dropped us off somewhere close. It turns out that in this part of the city there are about 20 dentists! We went into several shops to ask where it was but also they could just point us in a general direction. Eventually, after calling them, we found the place. The lady was very kind and soon fixed Louise’s braces. The first thing we did then was go to MacDonalds for lunch. It is so funny how you can feel like a foreigner when you walk through the city, but suddenly everything neutralised when you walk into the MacDonalds as all of their shops look the same.
We then walked through San Isidro to find a supermarket and do some shopping. From here we tried to get a 4x4 taxi who would be able to bring us all the way back up to Cloudbridge. We didn’t find any but the taxi driver we spoke to said he was happy to drive us all the way up. We thought, that’s not going to be possible, but let’s see what happens. Before going back we first had to pick up Alex’s computer screen. At least he can now start editing all his photos and videos. Somehow the driver did really manage to drive us all the way up to Cloudbridge!
During our time away Valerie and Kristina had identified all caught frogs from yesterday and then hiked up El Jilguero and down Gavilan to release the frogs again. As it is Monday again, it was our weekly potluck night. We made some honey glazed carrots with onion and pancakes for desert. Last week all food was yellow or brown because no-one had made a vegetable dish, this week it was completely the other way around. Everything was delicious again!

24 July

We started with identifying the frog we found on last nights walk. When we caught it the frogs had a light green/yellow colour, but when we looked at it this morning is was almost black, so dark. This is why we are not allowed to ID frogs by looking at their colour. After IDing we went for another swim by the waterfall. Yesterday the guys had found a new, much higher waterfall of about 15 meters. Eventhough it does look a lot cooler, there was quite a strong current and it was difficult to get in and out of the water. So after one dip Kristina, Valerie and Louise went back the already known swimming spot.
In the evening we had a survey on El Jilguero again. At one spot where there are quite a lot of grassy bushes we found a lot of crassidigitus. They definitely like this vegetation. In between two transects we came to an open patch with little trees and saw that the sky was completely clear. It was such a beautiful starry sky and we even saw some shooting starts. After we finished our transects and half walked and slid back down the trail, Alex went back up to an open space to take some nice starry night pictures.

23 July

This morning Louise was working at the welcome centre from 8 until 1. It was quite busy with both locals and tourists coming to visit the reserve. Some just come for a little stroll but some people were planning on seeing the Don Victor waterfalls on the far side of the reserve! In the afternoon we went down to San Gerardo. Our shopping day was moved a day forward as tomorrow both Frank and Jen will be away. We also went down to pick up Kristina, our 4^th team member, who finally arrived in Costa Rica after a very long travel. Luckily it had all gone well, except that all electronic chargers and batteries had fallen out of the bag somewhere between London and the U.S.
As even after her long travel Kristina had some energy left we went for a short practice walk along the river to look for some frogs. It was not long until we found the first Emerald Glassfrog, but unfortunately it was too high on the leaf and before we could reach it, it jumped off into safety. A few minutes later Kristina spotted her first frog! She already seems to be on it in finding these small creatures. Tomorrow evening we will be going on an official survey again.