8 & 9 Enero 2021
Day one for Matt and I had been a nice, slow start. I certainly can't say the same for day 2. We were shifting into the cloud forest trees and I was nervous that morning because it had been pouring buckets all night. Climbing uphill with heavy bags is already a challenge, but a muddy trail that your boots start sinking into with each step increases the difficulty (especially when you are clumsy, like me).
On our way out to our first tree of the day, not more than 5 minutes away from the bamboo house, we encountered an agouti on the trail. Agoutis are large rodents and they tend to eat hide fruits and seeds away, several of which are forgotten helping new plants grow in the process! I took this as a positive sign for the day.
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| Why did the Agouti cross the trail? Probably to avoid the excitable biologists! Photo credit: Matt Parker |
And on that vein, the first climb went very smoothly. Matt got in another practice climb after I dealt with the gear.
We even figured out a decent way to measure the tree diameter with the measuring tape! One of the issues we had last time is so many of our climbing trees have large buttress roots and for an accurate measure, you need to get ABOVE the roots. We'd tried using long sticks to support the tape, but, as you can imagine, that was not an effective system.
Instead, while I was still on the climbing line, Matt helped pull me around to collect the measure. I felt like a balloon, but it worked!
Afterward, it was time to return to CF03 - to embark into 'stereotypical' cloud forest. Almost constant fog heavy in the air, and ferns covering so much of the understory. The two of us were making excellent time, so I continuously tried pointing out a glasswing butterfly that kept fluttering away, stopping and trying to sneak up on them so Matt could get a proper view. They are such stunning butterflies and they fully live up to the name.
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| You can see right through their wings! Photo credit: Matt Parker |
Matt was a good sport about it. There was still more than plenty of daylight left too, so we got all of the batteries and SD cards switched out of CF03 and hiked off feeling accomplished. We even ended the day with another mammal sighting. An adorable armadillo was toddling along the trail as we hiked back home.
We linked up with Moises and Becca - they'd finished two trees. Collectively, we were on day 2 and we'd already finished 7 trees! It felt like we were on such a roll.
Moises was unable to join us in the field, so it was just the three amigos for the rest of the trip. The day before, Moises and Becca had 'cached' their rope bag by WF03 so away we went, down the Del Rio trail. The trek down that trail is always so lovely because you wind back and forth across a river, walking by waterfalls ever so often. We even found a well-hidden nest along the way - and we had to stop and speculate as to whose eggs they could be along the way before leaving them be.
Matt and I enjoyed watching dart frogs hop around as Becca finagled her way to the awkward location of the canopy station. It was pleasant to just listen to the sounds of rushing water (although it made communicating with Becca challenging). But before long, we were back on the trail. Since we would pass by the bamboo house on the way to the next canopy station, we ate lunch back at 'home', and then we hiked back up into the cloud forest.
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| Lunch & birding break! |
Our next tree on the docket was Friday the Thirteenth. Despite the bad luck, we had the very first time, its been my favorite tree to visit ever since. There are almost always howler monkeys hanging out in that tree or the one right next to it. None when we first arrived - oh well. It would at least make the job quieter.
Since this tree had a lot of large limbs, I told Matt that once I gave him the go-ahead, he could climb up after me and I'd talk him through the 'maintenance' progress. As I was making myself comfortable, a troop of howlers climbed into the tree right next to ours. They looked curious at the new canopy dweller but weren't bothered. Which became even more obvious as Matt joined me.
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| Hanging in a tree together |
Just as I was pointing out the howlers to him, a pair started copulating right before our eyes. We both felt like we were intruding on the moment, but it did make us laugh. Makes you wonder how nature documentary filmers feel when they catch those moments on camera.
8 Enero 2021 - Becca
We started later Friday morning because Moises’s had a virtual class. I used the time to bird around the bamboo house and garden (one of my favorite places to bird given the proximity to tea and bird guides). Once we were ready, Dany and Sixto gave us rides down the road on their motos. It was funny having my heavy pack on my back and riding on a motorcycle, but anytime we get a ride most of the way instead of hiking feels like a luxury.
The tree with the CAIP station, AG02 or “Verizon”, is on a steep bluff down to a creek, so it was difficult getting from the anchor to the climbing line. However, after working with Jackie last year, I had come to expect this. Moises climbed up easily and sent down the equipment. That’s when I realized we were missing some labels for the cameras. We carried on without them and soon Moises was back on the ground. Dany was waiting for us and took us back up the hill.
Moises and I decided to take the bags to WF03 (Hot Tuna), stash them overnight, then simply hike out in the morning and do the climb. By then, we’d have gotten the labels from Jackie and could properly complete the job. After stashing the bags, we found a dead monkey in one of the pools nearby. We couldn’t say how it got there for sure, but it was a cool (and creepy) find!
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| The craziest find of the trip! Photo credit: Matt Parker |
Without our heavy backpacks weighing us down, we happily birded the whole way back, spying Canada warblers, a Gray-headed kite, and White-bearded manakins. We also found an eyelash viper, Bothriechis schlegelii, making it a lucky day for finding critters.
9 Enero 2021 - Becca
Soon after we started hiking, I spotted something brown and feathered flit across the trail. Happily, it perched in the open and I got a view of a White-whiskered puffbird, the first one for this trip. Once we reached WF03 (Hot Tuna) I started getting ready to climb.
When climbing there are a few general rules that will make the experience easier and avoid exhausting you unnecessarily. First, clear communication with your ground team is very important. Second, it’s a good idea to limit the number of times you need to ferry things up and down, especially in the taller trees, because pulling up about 20 m of serious rope multiple times can be tiring and time-consuming. And finally, you got to be flexible; if a certain climbing approach is not working, it’s time to switch up the plan. I broke all these guidelines while I climbed Hot Tuna, or at least took the long way ‘round.
Once I used my lanyards to get to the station, I found that the audiomoth and kestrel were within my reach, but the camera was barely beyond my fingertips. I also decided that I needed a multi-tool from the ground to cut the kestrel free of its zip tie. I yelled that down to Jackie and Matt and sent the audiomoth down for starters. Meanwhile, I strained and reached for the camera and somehow got it unscrewed. Jackie called up the bag was ready and I pulled it up to discover the new audiomoth, but no multi-tool. The river sounds had sabotaged my puny communication attempts. I sent the camera down, requesting the multi-tool again, and wishing I had some paper and a pencil. As I lowered the little backpack to the ground, I somehow succeeded in getting a knot tied in the climbing line below me. Great. That will need to be fixed soon.
The next time I hoisted the bag from the ground I hit the jackpot with the multi-tool and got the kestrel unattached, ferried down for a battery change and data download. I also took the time to sort out my rope problems trying to carefully keep the different parts separate and avoid more knots.
It was time I got the refreshed camera back onto its holder. The trunk was so large that I couldn’t touch my hands on the other side when I hugged it and I could just barely hold the camera in place above my head, straining every muscle in my body. I tried to screw the camera back on – again – and again for about 15 minutes. I was pushing up with every muscle I had, but I could not get the angle right. This climbing approach wasn’t working.
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| The position Becca was in for a while |
I finally gave up on trying to get the camera on from where I was and pulled up the rope one last time to retrieve the kestrel. With the audiomoth and kestrel taken care of, I did what I should’ve done much earlier and moved my lanyards so that I was coming towards the station from the other side of the trunk. Leaning around the trunk – miracles of miracles – I could easily reach the camera’s spot and quickly got it set up (finally!). In most trees, you’re able to reach the entire station from one spot, but this tree was different, and I should have moved around the trunk in the beginning to reach the different equipment.
To get to our second tree we hiked through a stretch of trail with some bamboo overgrowth, so I went first with the machete. It felt good to be going downhill and swinging a machete again, and Jackie laughed that this felt so familiar.
Once Jackie was in the top of CF04, “Friday the 13th”, she called down that she was simply going to push her rope runner (what holds you on the mainline and helps you descend) a little higher for Matt to climb up. This made a lot of sense since it avoided hoisting the entirety of the rope below the climber several times. Despite the logic, leaving a rope runner on the line made me nervous. What if it got out of Jackie’s reach? And I remember another key lesson when you’re climbing trees – it always looks and feels completely different in the tree versus on the ground and the ground crew must trust the climber. I trust Jackie with my life (and have done so literally several times) and I knew she knew what she was doing.
Before sending Matt up, we measured CF04’s DBH. After a couple attempts to do it from the ground we were thwarted by the dubious amount of vegetation and vines. We decided to do what Moises and I had done before, and when Matt had climbed to about even with the buttresses, I pulled him closer to the trunk and he clung to the vines. I handed off the DBH tape reel and quickly stumbled over buttresses and through vines to where Matt reached around the other side. Finally, we had a measurement.
They had no issues in the tree and soon Matt was descending again. Of course, I needn’t have worried about Jackie’s rope runner and she was on the ground soon too. We cheerfully packed up and hiked to where we would leave the bags overnight, then continued home.
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| Group photo after a successful day! |
9 Enero 2021 - Matt
Tired...I am tired. The good kind of tiredness that is earned after a hard day's work. The first tree we hiked to was located next to a small, meandering river that has chiseled-out pools along the trail. At the Del Rio tree, a deceased monkey was decomposing in the river. The skeleton sitting in the tea-colored water looked like it was preserved in amber. When we get back from the tree, we walked up to the bamboo house just as the sun made an appearance, it was a nice welcome! After a quick tuna sandwich (and a switch to drier clothes), we climbed the long, meandering trail to the last tree of the day.
This tree will be etched in my memory for a while. Not only did I get to put the audiomoth back on the station, I did so with an audience of howler monkeys in an adjacent tree. They seemed unimpressed with our ropes in harnesses. They seemed further unimpressed with my first attempt at lanyarding, oh well. We hiked out in the twilight unburdened with the heavy packs of rope we hid off the trail. Upon return, we had a hot meal waiting for us and it put the final touches on a fantastic day.
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| Ecuadorian dinner courtesy of Moises! Photo credit: Matt Parker |
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