Newly documented behaviour in the bedroom and buckets of poo!

Several months ago I was delighted to catch a Monodelphis kunsi in one of my pitfall trap lines. This species of opossum was a significant find as it was only the 4th record in Paraguay and the 11th in the world. A week ago not one but two more appeared in the traps. As there is so little known about this species we are currently studying some of their behaviours. So after going to great lengths to make them both large and comfortable enclosures (next to my bed no less), the first thing I was able to establish was just how good the male was at escaping! Despite my best efforts he has escaped twice and is currently AWOL. However as he didn’t get far last time I am hopeful he will reappear in a couple of days, keep your fingers crossed for me guys. My female, Delilah, however is a wonderful study animal and is giving me lots of great data on the diet of this species. I’ll keep you posted as to how I get on with this one. The M. kunsi aren’t the only arrivals we have had at the reserve, last week we were delighted to welcome Scott Felgner and Sabrina White (apologies for that extremely tenuous link there!). Scott is planning a 4 month stay with us and will be going out with Jonny and the primate team to help with the habituation of our group of capuchins. Sabrina is studying entomology (insects) and has some rather interesting means of capturing beetles. So it seems that beetles aren’t called dung beetles for nothing. And horse manure really isn’t getting the results she needed. So with 12 volunteers in the house and there being a global water shortage… well yes you guessed it, human poo really is the best bait to use! Thank you very much to all the boys in the house who have donated so far, the girls have been a little less forthcoming! And finally from human waste to compost and the garden as a whole actually. I am delighted to report that things are really going on in there. The tomatoes have gone crazy and are fruiting wonderfully, we have picked our first crop of green peppers and the chillis have turned into a delightful red (but aren’t very hot by anyone’s standards!). We also have a squash dominating a whole vegetable patch and the passion fruit are finally beginning to flower. Thank you also to Maria and Sabrina for helping me dig some soil from the forest for my new raised bed and to Dec and Rich for getting it out of the car and into the garden. I am really looking forward to seeing what will grow in there! Right that’s me for another fortnight; I’m off to pick some tomatoes. Chauuuuuuuuuu Helen

A State of Equilibrium and Covering up Our Dirty Little Secret

A couple of weeks ago I dropped Mick and his family off at the bus terminal in Santa Rosa and collected two new arrivals. Inge, from Denmark, has joined the primate team and Kelsey from the USA, is a general volunteer and is helping out with the many projects we have running at the moment. Their arrival marked the beginning of a period of calm; you could say equilibrium, here at Laguna Blanca. Much as I enjoy the high turn over of volunteers we have passing though here, there are also rare occasions when we have a few weeks with no arrivals and departures. It’s at these times when I get the chance to pause for a moment and reflect on what a wonderful life I lead and how lucky I am to be here. And so with that in mind I thought this would be a good opportunity to give you the reader a taste of what a typical day at Laguna Blanca is like. There are currently 10, soon to be eleven, of us in the house. Our mornings begin at first light which is when traps need to be checked. So everyone who is undertaking fieldwork us usually up and fed by 6am. The primate team head out into the forest on our motocart and spend a few hours looking for the monkeys in an effort to increase their contact time and work towards habituating the group. This will then be followed by machetting new trails in order to open up the forest to allow further access to the monkeys. Nick and Noah are studying the opossums we have here and so check the traps each morning. Rich has just had his proposal approved and will beginning trapping and recording the behaviour of Microteiid lizards this week. Dec is running the camera trap project so is moving his traps on a regular basis and Augusta is out in the cerrado getting filthy measuring Clyomys burrows. By mid-morning/lunch time everyone is back at the house. Nick and Noah might have a small mammal for me to process for the museum and Dec doesn’t get any peace and quiet until he has seen if there was anything on the cameras! After a hearty lunch the volunteers all work on a number of tasks needed to help keep this place running; varnishing butterfly boxes, painting signs, improving our maps, laminating photographs etc all of these small but significant jobs are so important to us here at PLT. It’s not just the little jobs that the volunteers do to help keep this place amazing. Last week we took on a massive job. Here in rural Paraguay there is NO environmental awareness and waste management or recycling are simply not concepts people understand. So for us as an environmental organisation it is a real challenge disposing of waste. We reuse what we can, glass jars or bottles for example are used in the museum or as vegetable patch borders and cans can be sold for a small amount of cash. Beyond that however the only options we have are to burn or bury our waste and with limited space the latter has now become a problem. We had a couple of large pits behind the house where non-burnable waste was being “disposed” of. However over the months these have overflowed and needed a good sort out. So that is exactly what we did! All of us took it on one morning last week and in the space of two hours had collected, sorted and organised all of the rubbish from the two pits and the surrounding area. Plastic bottles, cans and glass jars that had made their way in there have been removed and sorted for various projects we have coming up, tins are ready for collection and best of all the two pits are now buried and a massive new pit has been dug. Not only that but we now have a fully functional fire pit once again and on our next trip to Santa Rosa we will buy some new big bins so we can continue separating our waste and keep this good thing going. All of our volunteers past, present, and I am sure future, are so precious to us at Laguna Blanca, we simply could not do what we do without them. And it is nice on occasion to have the chance to sit back and reflect on what a great project I work for. “Volunteers aren’t paid, not because they are worthless, but because they are priceless” (Anon)

Here we are, this is Paraguay. Amazing.

First I will introduce myself a little bit. My name is Noah Slot, 21 years old and born in the Netherlands. I am studying wildlife management in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. I am in Paraguay for my final thesis, so almost done with school! Today it’s the 28th of April, 2 p.m. and the weather is s**t. No worries. We’ve got loads of cozy places, loads of space, loads of nice volunteers, interns and researchers, a projector and enough DVDs here in the field station of Para la Tierra. I think today it’s going to be ‘2 fast, 2 furious’. Good choice, right?! These afternoons are really relaxing and cozy. Especially after a long, interesting and demanding morning of work. Other, let’s say sunny afternoons, are filled with swimming in one of the most clear lakes I’ve ever seen, playing volleyball with everybody and/or reading on the porch, with jungle sounds in the background. Or listening to reggae, Spanish music and R&B. But at the moment I am the only one who likes that… A little bit more about the research I am working on. I am here together with a fellow student, Nick Pruijn, from my university, to do our final thesis. We’re both from Holland and will be here for 3 months in total. Unfortunately only 3 months. Our final thesis is on the Vertical Stratification of Gracilinanus agilis, Cryptonanus chacoensis and Marmosa constantiae in relation to morphometry and habitat structure in the Cerrado, Transitional Forest and Atlantic Forest habitat types. Clear enough? Basically we’re trying to catch as many opossums as possible to find out whether there is or isn’t a relationship in morphology, occurrence at different heights and preferred vegetation characteristics for each species. This is important to know because, maybe you didn’t know this, opossums have been shown to play an important key role in neotropical forest ecology through being seed predators and dispersers, pollinators, regulators of insect populations and a food source for predators. Therefore, changes in their abundances affect forest regeneration and succession. Thus a very important and interesting animal if you ask me. Besides this, all species are also very cute looking and wicked to see. Especially while they are trying to run away from you as fast as possible, on the thinnest branches you can imagine. We’ve been here for about a month now. Time flies. After loads of preparation work, such as reading books on the porch, swimming and volleyball. …Oh I mean; cutting trails in to the dense forest, placing and hoisting traps in to the trees, hoisting them again because the string snapped, preparing bait, baiting traps, carrying out vegetation measurements, you name it. Finally we’ve started catching animals last week! And that is amazing! We’ve caught about 10 opossums, 2 Marmosa and 8 Cracilinanus so far and loads of other ground, arboreal and canopy rat species. Important and really nice to catch as well, but less important for our study. I can go on for ages, but guys, ‘2 fast, 2 furious’ is waiting for me! I can write whatever I want, but you really have to experience it yourself to know how awesome it is! Words can’t describe it. Para la Tierra, keep up the good work! … And enough beer, that’s always good. Pura Vida, Noah Slot

A new order of amphibian, a very smelly entrance and our youngest ever volunteer!

“I’m not sure what this is but it’s, long, slimy and looks like it’s got two heads”. Well that got my attention! “Don’t move and don’t let it escape, we’re on our way” I replied racing to the car. We arrived to find that Maria’s description wasn’t so far from the creature we were looking at. About half a meter long and looking like a huge black earthworm we were delighted to find our first caecilian in the reserve. If this means nothing to you don’t worry, caecilians are a little known fossorial amphibian that spend most of their time underground so are fairly understudied. If you can’t quite visualise it, check out the photos on www.faunaparaguay.com/siphonopspaulensis.html This was a great find and a really interesting addition to the collection. Well done to Kjell who spotted it. Kjell was a volunteer from Belgium who joined us for 3 days with his mother Lieve, and sister Keri. It’s the first time we have had a family volunteer with us and it was great to be able to offer this opportunity for them to all do some fieldwork together. While they were here we had the traps running so they joined me in checking them and on their second morning they went to look for the capuchins – and stayed with the troupe for about an hour! Although they were the first family we’ve hosted, already they’re not the last! The day we dropped them off we collected a family of five. Mick and Kath joined us with Tilly (15), Ned (13) and Tristen (2). Hosting a family with under 18s was a real experiment for us because we’re not an ecotourism project and so we were a little concerned there wouldn’t be enough appropriate activities for them all to get involved in. However as soon as they arrived it was clear this wasn’t going to be a problem. These guys are amazing; by the end of day 2 we had already dug in a new pitfall trap line (in record time I might add!) and even little Tristen was put to work handing out pieces of string! And they enjoyed their stay with us so much they extended their visit and are now undertaking a mini project on bat roosting sites in the reserve. It has been great hosting both families here and we have been so impressed by how everyone has got really stuck in. In addition to our families, we are pleased to welcome 2 new interns to Laguna Blanca. Nick and Noah are from The Netherlands and will be with us for 3 months to undertake a research project on opossums (which as you may know is of particular interest to me). It has to be said they get the prize for the smelliest entrance. They arrived with a dead crab eating fox that they found on the road to Santa Rosa! Unfortunately the skin was too damaged to prepare as a specimen for the museum, however now that we have the beetles we can collect the bones and have a full skeleton for the collection. It is currently buried in the garden and in a few months time we’ll exhume it and feed the bones to our dermestid beetles who will clean them without causing any damage. Welcome Nick and Noah and thanks for that unusual present! For those of you who have been following this blog you will have heard about the burrowing owls. Well these guys are still about but we now also have a new neighbour. There is a beautiful American Kestrel that has taken up residency somewhere in the garden and doesn’t seem in the slightest perturbed by a house full of noisy volunteers! Another exciting bird that we are hoping will stick around is the Chestnut-eared Araçari. On two consecutive days last week we saw a group of three around the museum and volunteer house. These relatives of the toucan are a really spectacular sight and the fact that they are becoming more at ease with people could be a sign that the reserve is doing its job and that hunting pressure is being relieved. And finally some lovely news from the capuchin project, Maria was out with them in the morning and managed to get a really clear sighting of a female with a newborn. This is fantastic news as not only are they breeding in the reserve but they are also allowing our researchers to get close enough to see them - a great step forward in our habituation of the group. Thanks for reading folks, see you next time Helen

Hellos, Goodbyes, Felines, Lizard Tails and Hope for the Anaconda!

Hello everyone,

Firstly we’ve had to say goodbye to Jess and Dave, our Australian volunteers who joined us for a week, but not before they worked wonders around the reserve. What with those two, the Irish girls and not to mention all of the other volunteers and interns we have here, we got a remarkable amount done in the space of just one week. Last week we; built a second compost bin for the garden, created a horse proof fence for one of my pitfall trap lines, repaired all of the damaged pitfall traps, gathered, cut and placed tins out for snake traps, wired up a booster so we now get the internet at the volunteer house, dug in traps for Augusta’s Clyomys project and all took a trip down memory lane with David Bowie’s Labyrinth! And this was on top of having two trapping arrays open and running and everyone else’s projects too. Ten points for effort to all of our wonderful volunteers!

Dropping off Jess and Dave in Santa Rosa didn’t mean we were two volunteers down though, on the contrary as soon as we said goodbye to them we immediately picked up three more! Davina and Scratch are from the UK and decided to join us for a week as part of their tour of South America (the third group of volunteers to do this in as many weeks - word is clearly getting out!). Declan, our third arrival, is also from the UK and is here for 3 months to do an internship. He probably has the sexiest project to date as he will be responsible for systematically camera trapping the reserve. (And yes it is ok to be green with envy – I am!). If that wasn’t enough not only does he have this fantastic project but in his pilot run he caught a small feline on one of his traps!!! This is a very significant find, as it proves there are still felines in the reserve and opens up numerous opportunities for further study.

Shortly after these volunteer’s arrival we collected Rich; another intern who will be with us for four months. Rich’s project is of particular interest to me as he undertaking a behavioural study on the Microteiid lizards I have been catching in my pitfall traps on a regular basis. I have been trying to get his project off the ground myself for about six months and intend it to be a long-term large-scale investigation, but I simply haven’t had the time to get it started. Rich is also pleased that his project is of such importance to PLT as his results should pave the way for further investigation into these lizards. A classic example of how important volunteers and interns are to PLT, we simply couldn’t do what we do without them!

Although we have been saying hello to all our new volunteers we have also had some farewells to say too. JP our amazing lepidoptera and herpetofauna volunteer has finished his stay here and is heading back to the UK this weekend. JP was an absolute star and a pleasure to have around the camp and we will certainly miss him coming running into the house with “something interesting” in his hand - an amphisbaena for example! JP did wonders with our herp and lepidoptera collection; he collected 16 specimens of reptiles and literally hundreds of butterflies and moths. I know that he won’t want to accept all the credit for this though as he had our three Irish volunteers, Emma, Laura and Yvonne helping him to set, catalogue and display all of the butterflies he collected. We would have had a real backlog of specimens in the freezer if it wasn’t for these three and their sheer determination to get this job done. Thank you so much to all four of them for the excellent work they did with this collection. And after a three week stay the girls left Laguna Blanca alongside JP – if you remember from last time they arrived only planning to stay for three 3 days!

Now, we had a very interesting report last weekend and we are tentatively optimistic that we may have anaconda in the reserve. An Australian tourist was out walking one of our trails Mboijagua (which actually means anaconda in Guaraní) when he saw an extremely large, yellow snake; in actual fact he saw two! If they were anaconda they would have been juveniles but based on his description there is no other snake it could have been. We can’t base too much on this at this stage but if they are there we feel it will only be a matter of time before someone sees them again. Cameras at the ready people!

And finally autumn is creeping in here at Laguna Blanca, the nights are getting cooler and the nocturnal noises are abating. The small mammals seem to be getting more active too which is making our surveys more interesting and I have been catching opossums on a daily basis in my traps. It will be interesting to see what else appears now the seasons are changing.

And I think that is all I have to tell you about this time, such an amazing fortnight with a great bunch of people. I wonder what the next 2 weeks will bring…

Chauuuuuuuu

Helen

A house full of wonderful people, St Paddy’s day and here’s to another great year!

It’s all go again here at PLT. We have had an influx of new volunteers. First to arrive were Emma, Yvonne and Laura from Ireland who are stopping off with us during their trip around South America. They had planned to come for 3 days but having been here for a week they have now booked on for another 2! (Be warned readers, Laguna Blanca has this effect on people!). Shortly after the girls arrival, Maria joined us, coincidently also from Ireland. Maria is here on one of the volunteerships and will be assisting Jonny in studying the capuchins in the Atlantic Forest. And our 3rd arrivals were Dave and Jess from Australia who are also touring South America. They have been here a couple of days and already have done wonders with my garden (and know what they are doing too which is more than I can say for myself!)

Everyone’s arrival could not have been better timed as they were all here for St Patrick’s Day. Needless to say with Paddy’s day being so big in Ireland it wasn’t long before a table of events had been drawn up for the day which included a “donkey” derby, the inaugural Laguna Blanca St Paddies Day Parade and a enactment of the banishing of snakes from Ireland! The president of Ireland was invited to participate in a Skype link up but due to other commitments on this very important day was unable to accept our offer. But, according to his secretary, he thanked us for the invitation and wished us well for the day.

We had a real turn up for the books a few days ago too. While I was off site Karina and JP were handed a rattlesnake in a bag by one of the local people. This may not sound like much (and probably isn’t everyone’s idea of a gift!) but the point is it was alive and unscathed. Normally these docile snakes are killed at first sight due to the fear they instil in the local people here (which, let’s face it is not unreasonable as they do have an extremely potent venom). However this one had been brought to us so we could release it back into the reserve. This is such a great achievement and if we can turn this into the norm we could save a lot of snakes here in this area.

And finally today is the 1year anniversary of me leaving the UK to come to Laguna Blanca. It has been such an amazing experience I don’t know if it is possible to even begin to list the highlights. I have met so many wonderful volunteers, learned so many new skills and watched this project develop so much over the last 12 months. Thank you to all the amazing volunteers who have made it what it was. I am really so proud to be part of this fantastic project and can’t wait to see what the next 12 months have in store!

Until next time

Helen

Amphisbaenas bite! (Luckily the coral snake didn’t!)

Yes you guessed it guys, we caught another amphisbaena and yes it was me that got bitten! They look so docile with their little dog-like faces and tiny eyes, who would have thought that actually they have a very strong beak and aren’t afraid to use it? I now have two holes in one of my fingers where it drew blood. Actually it wasn’t very painful but was pretty amusing as it bit in and I couldn’t get it off. Being doubled over with laughter with a 40cm amphisbaena attached to your finger is not conducive to getting it photographed and back in the bag! Fortunately we know that they are not venomous but it was worth cleaning the wound with antiseptic once I finally managed to unhook it! (And yes typically I had an audience for the whole event!)

One thing I am really glad didn’t bite me was the coral snake JP found in the Atlantic forest. JP is a volunteer who joined us a week or so ago and shares my passion for herps. He is unstoppable and is always off hunting for snakes (or running around after butterflies – his other passion). Normally we don’t allow volunteers to go snake hunting on their own as it can be pretty difficult to identify a lot of them in the field. However JP has a vast amount of experience in snake surveying back home in South Africa and knows what to bag and what to leave well alone. So you are probably wondering why, if he is this experienced, he brought back one of the deadliest snakes we have in the reserve. The reason was that it wasn’t actually a coral snake. It was a mimic. The coral snakes we have here are a very brightly red with black and yellow stripes. The mimics are also these colours, but there are some subtle yet significant differences. The corals have virtually no neck and their head is not unlike a sausage, whereas the mimics have a clearly defined head and neck which makes them a touch prettier, (in my opinion at least). The markings are also much more fuzzy on the mimics where as the banding is clearly defined on the true corals. And, should you be confident enough to check their bellies (!) the bands stop on the underside of mimics whereas the true corals have complete banding across their ventral side. JP’s ability to correctly identify the snake he found meant that not only did he avoid handling an extremely venomous animal but he was also able to bring us another specimen for the museum. Good work JP.

This last fortnight has also been a sad one for us as we have had to say goodbye to two wonderful long term volunteers. Becky has now completed her research here and has left to spend a month exploring South America (very bravely on her own) and according to her last email she is currently freezing in Peru! Gemma our botany volunteer from Australia has also finished her work and is heading back to Australia in a few days time after taking in some of the museums and culture Asunción has to offer. It was great fun having them here and now they are gone the male to female ratio has switched and it’s just me and Augusta in the house with 3 boys!!! More girls please!

The burrowing owls are all doing well but are spending less and less time with us these days. We thought they had flown the nest (or burrow I should say) a few days ago but then they reappeared again. We are all bracing ourselves for the day they don’t return. However this is a happy/sad event. Happy, that all 5 have made it to adulthood and such a privilege for us to have them living so close to us, but obviously sad for us as we have become so attached to them. Good luck to the burrowing owls hopefully one will return with a mate next season to occupy the burrow again.

And finally if you want to see for yourself what Laguna Blanca looks like and who we are why not check out our new youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/ParaLaTierra. Admittedly most of the posts are of me getting very excited about the animals we catch here but I am trying to persuade more of the volunteers to get involved and talk about their projects on camera. They are still a little shy though! So apologies that it is a bit “Helen heavy” at the moment but I hope it will give you a taste of what we are up to and who knows might even persuade you to come out here and volunteer with us ;O)

Thanks for reading folks, until next time

Helen (aka the next David Attenborough!!!)