Archive | February 2014

The second Honduran outing

Catherine and I are holed up at my mother’s place in Victoria BC; We are both nursing terrible colds (I am on my 2nd!) and Catherine is trying to recover from a serious knee injury that she got in the field. We have been out of Honduras for over a week now and are taking the opportunity to finish up writing tasks that we were finding difficult to accomplish in conjunction with fieldwork. To tell you the truth, everything feels like a bit of a wreck right now, and I am struggling to summon up any real optimism or energy. I feel like I have been neglecting the blog and have not been able to even get out shooting in Victoria due to being ill. So in an effort to keep the blog rolling along, here is a selection of photos and commentary about some of the sights of the second field outing in Olancho.

Walking out into the forest in the early morning, the light is quite magical shining through the mist. All of the area we have been working in was exploited for timber, and as such has roads throughout. None of these roads was designed or engineered to last more than a couple years, so these are now mostly impassable to all 4-wheeled vehicles. They are still used by the locals as footpaths or perhaps for use on horseback or motorcycle.

A Roadside Hawk juvenile (ID by Pablo Camacho).

Isidro on the lookout for other warbler species, The Yellow-cheeked Warbler is also reported from these forests.

A rancher moving some cattle to a new pasture. Almost all of these forested areas are extensively used for cattle ranching, and as such experience high levels of grazing and other disturbances, such as seasonal fires and erosion. There is also cultivation of coffee, bananas, sugarcane, corn, beans and other staples.

This orchid is the national flower of Honduras (according to Isidro)

Some puppies at a farmhouse

A large pig

From the skies above the Rockies

Feb7

As mentioned in the previous post, and here at SpiderBytes, Catherine and I are temporarily leaving the field for rest, recuperation, and riting (?) back in Canada. We had to make an emergency medical landing in Denver, so I purchased some internets to warn Antonia (who is picking us up) that we would be a few hours late, so here is a post from the skies north of Colorado.

When it became evident that we were leaving Honduras for the colder regions of the world, with surely far fewer active insects and spiders, I took the opportunity to do some last-minute shooting for both this blog and for Catherine’s. I had not been doing very much until then, as we were still getting used to the country and our work schedule. So the following is a small selection of insects and spiders found in our last few days in Gualaco, all found within 20 m of our apartment. I found the shooting a bit difficult, not being in good practice, and worried about our project, but I did manage some adequate documentary shots. Coming up, I will discuss the second field trip and more about the caracaras and the problems facing them in Central America. Until then, enjoy these shots!

Looks like some kind of Wood Nymph.

This egg mass has an unwelcome visitor.

This is a Lyssomanes jumping spider, doing their freaky eye thing, where the eyes go from green to black. I am not sure what it is all about, but probably some kind of focusing.

I tried to get this “creamier”, but did not get the f-stop low enough. Illuminating the background sometimes makes the composition harder to control.

To me, this jumper definitely looks “tropical”

1st instar stinkers clustered around their eggs.

A strategic withdrawal from the field

Feb3

The last fieldtrip north of Gualaco to map out caracara habitats had a couple of interesting effects on our planning. The first was that Catherine injured her knee from all the walking over rough terrain, and found that last weekend she could barely walk around the apartment. This is not an ideal condition for fieldwork, and will require at least several weeks to heal.

The second thing we realized is just how difficult the terrain will be for doing VHF tracking of caracaras for home range estimation. From our interviews with the local people, it would seem that the caracaras’ range is upward of 6 square kilometres at minimum, and hence our daily tracking success will depend heavily on luck rather than getting good early bearings on our tagged birds. In addition, the initial capture is expected to be much more difficult, because of how long we will need to wait at a capture site before having any hope of seeing caracaras nearby.

All of these factors have led us to re-plan the fieldwork, such that we will return to Canada for several weeks, and return in mid-to late March for the onset of the breeding season. This will also allow us to finish writing tasks that we have had much difficulty with here (there is no power for computing out where we work). In our absence, Isidro Zuniga will continue a biweekly field program of searching out other caracara groups, and marking their locations for later attention.

The caracaras here in Honduras are at severely reduced levels. Whereas once they were very common, they are now so scarce that most people have not ever seen one. By way of example, last week we walked 54 kilometres, this week 56 km, and encountered caracaras but once. Over a similar distance in French Guiana, I would have expected to encounter caracaras 15-20 times. The birds here seem to have much much greater home range sizes than those in French Guiana, perhaps because they are unconstrained by the territoriality of neighbouring groups, or maybe because the density of food (social wasps) is much lower here. Either way, it makes for some difficult realities for fieldwork. Getting sufficient sample size for home range estimation using VHF radio tracking will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. It will certainly not take place over the optimistic schedule I had budgeted for this work.

So when we return, we would like to have in place some further funding to secure an alternative tracking technology, such as GPS or satellite tags; with these at least we could be reasonably sure to get some usable data. We will also focus on the nest monitoring phase of the study, assuming we can find some active nests. This is also expected to be physically demanding work, but at least with nest cameras other fieldwork can be pursued simultaneously.

I will write another post about what we did see on the second field trip, but for now we must concentrate on getting ready to go. Don’t worry, this is not the end, it is only the beginning.