camera traps

A few years ago I bought a couple of camera traps for one of my grad student's projects. I didn't think much of them but have since decided they are a blast. I brought them down to Mindo and set them up on a trail about 1.25 miles from our cabin, just for fun. The kids think it's a lot of fun to see what we can get. They work by attaching them to a tree and then they detect motion. Whenever they 'see' something move, they started taking pics. Here is some of what we have gotten so far. 

Might as well lead off with the best pic, a PUMA!!!

He must have been walking the trail as we got him in both cameras that night.

This is a tyra, sort of a very large weasel.

This is a red-brocket dear. This camera was set up about 18" above the ground, so you can get an idea of the size of these deer. They are much smaller than north american deer, more like a medium sized dog.

This was the other camera and the puma is sniffing the ground.

Opossum. Not too exciting but at least it's not dead on some road like most of them we see in Virginia.

Paca. Kind of a giant rat. I bet the puma loves these!

trip to the cascadas

A week or so ago the kids had Thurs and Fri off from school. As such, we took Friday and decided to go to the cascadas (waterfalls). These trails are super busy on the weekend so we took the opportunity to go then. To get to the trails one has to take a cable car across a valley. The ride is ~500m and you must be at least a few hundred feet up. The car is powered by a Nissan can engine and transmission. To go one way the 'driver' selects 1st gear and come back he selects reverse. The cable works on pulleys and winds around what would be the drive shaft. Pretty cool system and I'm glad he is using a reliable engine!

Riding in the cable car means holding onto your hat!

and it's lots of fun!

Amalia made friends with a damselfly.

Camilo ran downhill on the trails to get to the waterfalls. Back up was another matter.

Sitting on a rock to eat a snack.

Playing in the pool beneath the waterfall. You can see the bigger one in the background.

The water was quite cold but refreshing on a hot and sunny day.

Crossing on bridges like this is fun. Problem is that lots of wood is rotten being in the rainforest. These were well cared for and very secure.

Amalia caught a lizard which was very cool!

And we took the cable car back to our car and then drove back to town, probably 5 miles.

Here is a quick pic I took of the 'driver' and the whole mechanism. Pretty neat.

School uniforms

Finally got the uniforms all sorted out, with the exception of the shoes. Amalia only has to wear hers on Mondays. Other days she can wear sweats like Camilo. Camilo's class is the only one that gets to wear sweats everyday. I guess they figure it is hopeless trying to keep a bunch of 4 year olds clean! 

Frogs!

One the highlights of this area is the amphibian diversity. We actually have a little pond right in front of our cabin where we can go 'frogging'. This is one of the kids favorite past times! We are currently in the dry season so there aren't too many frogs around, be we still have found quite a few. Here are some pics.

This is probably the most common frog around right now, a cane or marine toad. They are currently breeding so we hear them calling every night. This male was calling in our hands!

The kids love to catch the toads. They are easy to catch and are quite cool!

Amalia and her toad.

Camilo wasn't quite as confident to hold one but did so anyway. Very concentrated!

This is a glass frog we caught right in front of the house. This area is a center of diversity for glass frogs so we should be able to find more species of them. Cool little guys!

This is a leaf-litter frog. There are quite a few around. They are small so can be hard to catch.

Here is some kind of tree frog, very cool.

A toad in a pond.

Another leaf-litter frog.

Since the toads are breeding we collected a bunch of eggs. Amalia counted out 39 exactly! They have hatched into tadpoles and we are following their development. Here they are about a week old. We will have to let some go as they develop but hope to have some all the way through metamorphosis.