The very last leg of my undergraduate experience

This is likely my last blog post as an undergraduate. With just 13 days until graduation, I’m beginning to feel both extremely proud and slightly panicked at the thought that for the first time in my memory, I will no longer be in school. The process of growing and becoming an adult is a slow one; I thought I was an adult when I turned 18, I thought I was an adult when I moved away to college, I thought I was an adult when I went abroad on my own, but in truth I realize how in many ways I am often still a child and how sheltered I have been my whole life. Transitioning to “the real world” after college seems so daunting and also so exciting. I have accepted a job as a research assistant for Kay Holekamp’s hyena research in Maasai Mara, Kenya, and in a little more than I month I will go off to start my first “real world” job. One thing I hadn’t realized about how appropriate the term “dream job” is, is how surreal it feels when you get it. I don’t think it will really hit me until I get off the plane in Kenya.

Even though I know I’m headed off to amazing possibilities, I’m still incredibly nervous. Big changes are stressful and always make me a little fearful of what is to come. Goodness knows there are a lot of big changes coming my way: not only am I about to graduate college, but I am moving to the other side of the world, and I have a beautiful baby nephew that I am still aching to hold for the very first time. I know this is perhaps digging too deep into the human psyche, but I think that transitions are so hard because they remind us of how so many things in life are transitory or ephemeral—nothing lasts, not even our bodies or our minds. But transitions are also a time to recognize that not all change is bad—we can reevaluate our lives, look to the future, and hope, dream, and strive like we never have before. I’m soaking up my last moments at Colorado College each day, and dreaming of East African savannahs each night.

Here are some notes from my last two blocks at CC. Enjoy.

My final block of college! I’m on the far right.

***

(Written on the first day of my second-to-last class, which happened to fall on the Jewish holiday of Passover)

It’s hard not to draw parallels between Passover and the written works I am diving into with Intro to Feminist and Gender studies—from the messages of fighting against oppression and how we can never be truly free while others are enslaved, to simply the importance of telling and retelling an important story and empathizing with its message. In comparing the CC Seder with my one from back home, and the readings from my class, I’m also starting to notice how many different voices and retellings there are in the Passover story, and where certain similarities lie.

I couldn’t help but think during the Seder that, “of course, this is why I’m starting this class today. This is why it’s now and this is why it’s important.” I’ve grown up with a consciousness that slavery, injustice, and oppression have been and still are a part of this world. I have grown up being told at each Passover, “you are part of a group of people descendant not from kings but from slaves, and it is that experience of oppression that should inform your worldview.” No matter how sweet life seems, we must remind ourselves of the bitterness and that many in the world still suffer. At my Seder back home we also remind ourselves of how we are slaves in our own lives. It is not enough to look at global conflicts like Israel and Palestine—we must also look at how injustices are perpetrated closer to home. At how we are slaves and how we are enslavers. How we have an obligation to fight the complex, intertwined forces of oppression around us.

It’s by far the most feminist holiday I celebrate on a yearly basis. Of course religion hasn’t always championed women’s rights, but the message behind Passover I think is actually quite radical and I can see many connections to the feminist theory in my class.

I do consider myself a feminist, but I’ve spent far more time analyzing the messages of Passover than I have reading about the origins of the feminist movement. I think I’ve been having similar conversations to those I’m reading about in class for a long time in so many different contexts that it feels like suddenly they relate so easily and all fit together so well. Yet while we shared quotes by Audre Lorde and Holocaust stories and placed an orange on the Seder plate, I never really “did the knowledge.” I never delved into the history or the narratives. I never really learned about what was ultimately so fundamental to my upbringing and independence and my current belief system. This is why now is the perfect time for me to take this course.

***

I had a wonderful time in my Introduction to Feminist Thought class, which was a break from the sciences I’d been getting into before. I enjoyed my Population Genetics course block 6 so much that it was hard to transition out of the sciences, but I’m glad I did. You can read our group final project online at:

http://femgeniuses.com/2013/04/18/checkyourself/

***

For my final block at CC, I’m taking Ornithology. I struggled over whether or not to take the class because it centers on an eight-day field trip to the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona, which meant that I would miss a lot of important school events, including an awards ceremony where I was supposed to receive stoles for graduation. I finally decided to take it anyways, because I’ve wanted to take the class since freshman year, I like birds, and the field trip sounded incredible. Now, after returning from the trip, I think it was a wise decision after all.

The beautiful chirichaua mountains

An elegant trogon, the U.S.’s only trogon

Agave stalk in the desert scrub

The Chiricahua Mountains are a birding hotspot in the sky islands of southeast Arizona near the Mexican border. I was a bit dubious about our prospects when we were driving through miles and miles of desert to get to them, but that’s exactly why they’re so amazing—the mountains are an oasis amid an arid landscape. There are underground streams running intermittently through the area which draw in both local and migrating species, and the higher elevation and vegetation provides some relief from the heat. You can find a rich diversity of species portioned between the desert scrub, canyon riparian, oak woodland, and pine forest habitats.

One of the many small creeks in the area and our shower for the trip

A red-faced warbler

An Acorn Woodpecker’s granary: a dead sycamore that they’ve filled full of acorns

We spent our time learning birdcalls and the main bird families, presenting on different families (I chose nuthatches, the Sittidae family), reading scientific articles, working on field projects, mist-netting and banding birds, and mainly walking around with binoculars looking and listening for the amazing variety of feathered creatures everywhere around us. We went owling multiple different nights. First we tried unsuccessfully to catch elf owls, although we found one nest and could hear them calling to each other in the trees. Elf owls are the world’s lightest owl (although flams do come close) and their call is one of my favorites. They sound as though they’re laughing uncontrollably, as if someone was tickling them.

A wilson’s warbler that we banded

Black-headed grosbeaks have powerful beaks made for cracking open hard seeds, but they can use it to pretty good effect on fingers as well

They also know where the painful places are to bite too

The Black-headed grosbeak’s wing

The Black-headed grosbeak

Another black-headed grosbeak trying to get away

A virginia’s warbler that we banded

A warbling vireo we banded

Reba just after releasing a banded warbler

We also went owling for whiskered screech owls multiple times and did finally catch one. Even though we spent several nights without a bird in hand, we visited a lot of beautiful places on our nigh hikes. We found one tall pine stand next to a creek that was stunningly beautiful even at night. Another night we tried to find owls in an empty creek bed next to a turkey vulture roost where maybe 50 birds were packed into one tree. Accidentally spooked them and they all took off at once, circling in the dark blue-black sky.

Whiskered screech owl

One of the day trips we took was to San Pedro, which was a creek on the floor of the desert a few hours away from the Chiricahuas. It deserves the title “oasis” even more than the Chiricahua Mountains. To walk to the creek we crossed through mesquite and tall dead grasses. The world turned from gray, yellow, and brown, to bright green as soon as we got to the river, and the temperature change was more than a little noticeable. We saw some colorful new birds and even tracked down a great horned owl nest that was almost impossible to see.

A Curve-billed thrasher at San Pedro

A Pyrrhuloxia (pronounced peer-O-lox-ia) at San Pedro

A Canyon towhee at San Pedro

Hepatic tanager at San Pedro along the stream

Vermilion flycatcher at San Pedro in the riparian area

Vermilion flycatcher

Can you spot the great horned owl?

One of our last mornings we were very lucky that we got to assist Susan Wethington with hummingbird banding at the nearby Southwest Research Station. We worked with a group of researchers that Susan is training to go out to different stations, from Idaho to L.A., to Ecuador. Susan has set up an amazing system of hummingbird banding stations across North America to collect valuable information on the migration patterns and abundances of hummingbird species. Her engineer husband helped design a much better system for catching the birds in traps when they come to drink at feeders, and we got to help run the traps, as well as data record and feed the birds. When researchers catch hummingbirds at feeders, it’s important to feed them while the birds are in hand because they’re unlikely to come back and get the nectar that they needed in the first place, and it’s important that research not affect the survival of the birds. So my favorite job of the morning was holding the birds after the banders were done taking measurements and flying them into feeders by hand before releasing them.

The hummingbird trap

A blue-throated hummingbird

An Acorn woodpecker that tried to eat out of the hummingbird feeders

However, one of the biggest foci of the trip was our group research proposal projects. We split up into groups and collected preliminary data that each group will use to write up a research proposal. The project I worked on with two other students, Patrick and Joe, was a high stakes-rewards kind of a project that was nerve-wracking but ultimately fruitful. In 2011, a wildfire spread through the mountains, a result of drought and fire suppression regimes that accumulated leaf litter on the forest floor, sparked by a few illegal immigrants who got caught in the cold after crossing the border from Mexico. The fire created a patchwork of burn severities across different ecosystems. We wanted to look at how bird territory size and density changed in different areas of different burn intensities. To do this, we would have to select a species to focus on, conduct transects using territorial song playbacks to locate them on the landscape and determine their density, and then spot map each individual (follow a singing bird around as it makes territorial calls) to determine the boundaries and size of each territory. Once we got to our campsite, we decided to focus on the dusky-capped flycatcher since we saw a few on our very first day and figured they must be at least somewhat abundant. We couldn’t find existing information on territory size so we decided transects with points spaced at 100 meters would be sufficient for a relatively small bird so that points wouldn’t be within the same territory; this meant that we would walk in a set direction into the Oak woodland, stop every 100 m to play a territorial call and record the burn severity, listen for a response, and keep going. One day we thought we could hear two birds singing simultaneously between the area where the trailers were parked and where our tents were pitched, and since there is usually only one vocal bird per territory, we assumed the 100 m was probably a good guess. We only realized later how faulty that assumption can be.

Dusky-capped flycatcher

Dusky-capped flycatcher

We only had three days to collect data after our initial scouting for potential field sites, but on the very first day of data collection, we were unable to locate a single territorial bird besides the one we already knew of in the campsite area. We found one bird that flew in low over the playback but didn’t call, which implied that it wasn’t an actual territory-holder and would be unusable for spot mapping. We were starting to worry whether after all of our work, we might end up without any data whatsoever, so on the second day we split up to increase our odds. I walked a transect from the east towards camp, and Patrick and Joe took a path in the other direction. Three points in, I finally thought I heard a bird. I paused the playback and listened, then started it again. A few moments later, a small gray and yellow bird zoomed in from the small valley below and perched on a tree above the playback, jerking its head from side to side and calling out its mournful-sounding peeer and its angrier chatter. When we all met back at camp, the guys had found two, potentially three other birds along the path. Suddenly, everything was reversed and we were back in action.

A beautiful flowering cactus we found during our fieldwork

Up close and personal with a horned lizard I almost stepped on during fieldwork

What I believe is a Yarrow’s spiny lizard

Our last day of fieldwork when we did spot mapping was illuminating. We quickly discovered that our previous assumptions about how big the dusky-capped flycatchers’ territories would be were completely off, and that 100 m didn’t even come close to being far enough; some of them appeared to be more than 200 m wide. Not only that, but we also found two vocalizing bird at every single site. Since they did not act aggressively towards each other, and it would be extremely unusual to encounter territorial fights that many times in one morning, we were forced to conclude that both the male and the female in a breeding pair will sing to defend their territory. This helped explain our confusion about the two birds we heard singing near each other at camp, and it also shed light on why the territories are so large—if both males and females defend the territory, then it can be larger than normal (or vice versa, if the territory is too large to hear confrontations at either end, then the birds need to have both members of the mating pair defending it). This also may explain why we didn’t find any other birds our first day; it’s entirely possible that we spent most of the morning in just one bird’s territory, or that the territories are large enough that the bird was too far away to hear the callback.

Dusky-capped flycatcher

Dusky-capped flycatcher

It was exhilarating to chase after the birds through the oak woodland, up and down rocky hills and talus slopes, over barbed wire fences, and across creeks. It was so satisfying to finally catch sight of the bird after narrowing down the tree by its call. We also quickly agreed that dusky-capped flycatchers are adorable birds. I wish we could actually do the study we’re proposing.

By the end of the trip I was pretty sad to leave the Chiricahuas. On the way back, we stopped at Bosque del Apache for a night to break up the drive and look at waterfowl, which was a great way to round off the trip.

American Avocets at Bosque del Apache

A nighthawk we saw flying overhead

One of my favorites, the Black-crowned night heron

Black crowned night heron

A great-tailed grackle making its funny calls

This has been a really good class for me to take now. At first I was sad about being gone so long during my final class, but this really is what I love. When it comes down to it, there’s not much of anything I’d rather be doing than getting outside, learning about cool animals, and then helping to add to that knowledge. It is so clear to me that field research is what I need to do with my life.

Me (with green hair), writing down info on flycatcher song posts

Belize Part 4: Re-entry

(Note: I completely forgot to upload this post, sorry it’s a bit late. Videos for the previous posts should be up very soon)

Re-entries are always the hardest part of travel. It’s awful to be on a gorgeous tropical beach in the morning, and in cold, dry, Colorado that night. It’s hard to reconnect with email (400 while I was gone—not the greatest welcome back) and facebook (50 notifications I’ll never get around to reading), and step back into the stress of my school life. Suddenly there are student clubs, friends, job applications, grocery shopping, house cleaning, and packing to attend to. The trip to Belize focused on one thing: ecology, and tuned (almost) everything else out, which I loved. Now I have to start juggling again. And on top of everything else I’m jetlagged.

 

The last day in Belize was really fun. The night before we left, all the students hung out together and played a game in which we did animal charades, and it was so much fun. In no other group would Thayer’s magnificent manakin charade have worked, or Carson’s Donkey Dung Sea Cucumber, or Hannah’s sea horse (complete with tail anchor), or Matt’s trogon, or my hogfish, or Ally’s Acropora cervicornis. This has been an amazing group. The next morning we all finished packing and loaded into the boats. We got to see our bus drivers one last time as they drove us first to Marie Sharpe’s hot sauce factory, then to lunch, then to the airport. The hot sauce factory itself was a little underwhelming (though I got a kick out of all the hairnets and Marc’s beardnet), but the taste-testing was fun.

Marc’s beardnet at Marie Sharpe’s

***

This year I’ve really started noticing that my analytical skills have developed exponentially. I question and think so much better than I used to, and this course really helped with that. Most of what made it so fun was observing, contextualizing, in theory, and questioning within a beautiful intricate location. I think that’s part of what makes it hard to come back as well—it wasn’t just some vacation or break; I felt like I was doing something genuinely interesting and useful with my time.

View of Belize out of our airplane as we took off back for home.

Belize Part 3: South Water Caye—Under the Waves

(Note: When I figure out how to add videos to WordPress, I will add some short clips as well)

We arrived at South Water Caye today after a slightly stressful journey from Blue Creek. It started raining as we left, and aside from a break conveniently wile we visited the Maya Lubaantun ruins, it poured heavier and heavier as the day progressed. Lubaantun was a neat spot to visit, and the curator had worked on digs and was very knowledgeable. He told us about the famed crystal skull that was purportedly discovered there but might be a hoax and in any case is still owned by the daughter of a British archeologist, and remains out of the country. He also mentioned that two of the goal posts from the ball game court are also in England. It seems so wrong that many of the original artifacts are no longer in Belize, no only because they belong to their native country and are a signal of the lasting effects of imperialism, but because it sounds like any of the archeologists who are currently working on these sites are Belizean or working out of Belize and don’t have access to these pieces of information (the curator has never even seen the artifacts in person, for example). He explained a lot of interesting artifacts and aspects of ancient Maya culture. The site itself was beautiful, much more open (and maintained/manicured) than the jungles we’ve been in for so long. We got nice some nice views of parrots, a squirrel, and a tree completely buzzing with bees. The walls themselves were pretty worn down (and the actual buildings were made of wood so have long since rotted), but it was interesting to try to picture what it might’ve once been like, and to appreciate the years and raw human labor that went into its layers of construction.

Lubaantun ruins

It took us a while to get to Dangriga through all the rain. We were worried too because we knew it would be a half hour, open boat ride to South Water Caye, which wasn’t appealing during a downpour. It eased up a little by the time we finally got in the boats but a lot of my stuff got pretty damp.

The island is the luxurious compared to what we’ve been used to. Even as we pulled up, there were cormorants, frigatebirds, and pelicans flying around. The sand is the intense white of idyllic Caribbean beaches. We were greeted by Richard who gave up a tour highlighting such amenities as kayaks, hammocks, sun bathing chairs, volleyball court, and a bar. Basically as soon as we arrived and (sort of) settled in, we went for our first snorkel.

Me, snorkeling

Snorkeling is not my strong suit. I put my snorkel on wrong, my mask ended up not fitting correctly, I struggled to get my fins on, and Richard had to swim me out to the others while I got accustomed to breathing and swimming without thrashing. Not long after that, my mask leaked, I inhaled a ton of water, started sputtering and kind of panicking, and had to be taken over to a kayak. They gave me a life vest to tuck under my armpits, I attempted to never use my nose, and the rest of the time went swimmingly, to say the least. This was good because I did not want anything else distracting me from what was under the surface. It is magnificent here! I’ve never seen so many beautiful fish in one place so close. I think we saw nearly every fish we learned before the trip. The parrotfish were gorgeous and imposing, the angelfish were gigantic compared to what I had pictured and swam in such a lovely way, I found a goatfish rummaging in the sediments, and a funny looking trunkfish puttering along the coral. The sea fans “blew” in the currents and the brain corals were brightly colored lumps. I was so excited at all the life my mind couldn’t keep up trying to ID them all. And there were several I had no idea what they were called. On the way back in, Conner discovered a small yellow ray. It was my favorite find of the day, it was so beautiful and spotted, with iridescent yellow eyes. There is a whole new world to learn about here.

An Acrapora palmata coral

A Yellowtail Damselfish, one of my favorites. They look like they’re covered in stars.

A stoplight parrotfish initial phase

***

A pelican coming in for a landing

Female frigatebirds crossing paths in flight

Yesterday was a great day; we packed so much in. We had a bunch of presentations and I got a lot of snorkeling in. I went with Richard after lunch to practice with a new snorkel, an even just in the turtle grass we saw a trumpetfish, lots of slippery dicks, small folded corals (Martiana areolata), and more. Then we went to Whale Shoal as a class. We started working on coral names, which was hard to pick up the latin, and saw some very special animals: a nurse shark tucked under a coral ledge, a brightly colored queen angelfish, and a stingray that flew effortlessly through the water. The number of fish on the reefs here is incredible.

Spotted Eagle Ray

Today we went to the other side of the island to the Fore Reef. Hannah, Ben, and I worked well as a team, pointing out stuff to each other. We got our first look at the funny swimming patterns of Black Durgons, saw some huge barracudas as they barreled past us, and watched a few spotted eagle rays fly by. It’s a very different landscape down there. We saw a school of Blue Tang, which was the biggest group of fish we’d seen yet. They were colorful, and it was amazing to see them swarm coral patches. I wonder if fish ever form the equivalent of multispecies flocks in birds.

Lots of Blue Tangs from above (we called them Blue Tang Clans, not a scientific classification sadly)

Blue Tangs all mobbing a coral head to eat the algae

Hannah, my snorkeling buddy

***

We’ve been talking a lot about the differences between terrestrial versus aquatic ecosystems, and I’m still not sure how similar or different I think they are. I’m usually inclined to think that most guiding principles should be the same in both, but some of the critiques we’ve read make me wonder if there could be some fundamental differences. Just from snorkeling it seems like there is a huge amount of biomass in fish and much less in all other organisms, whereas invertebrates make up a lot of biomass in terrestrial ecosystems.

A Barracuda, one of the large reef predators

***

Hannah jumping in front of the sunset

Matt successfully climbing a palm tree for a coconut

It is 3:30 in the morning and I feel very sick so I gave up trying to sleep and decided to journal. Stardust the cat is keeping me company and eating crackers with me after she just caught a mouse in the kitchen. Yesterday we went to a part of the reef called the aquarium. It was raining, and it was fun to feel the drops on my back and look at the surface from below. Last night (a few hours ago really) Hannah, Ally, and I took a walk along the beach and waded into the water. It seems like a lot of the invertebrates and arthropods come out at night. There were also some cool little fishes in the shallow water. There were slender metallic blue ones in small schools that rammed into my fingers, and chubby white ones closer to shore that seemed to be trying to beach themselves.

A queen triggerfish that was breaking open conch shells on the sea floor

We’ve been having really good discussions and presentations lately. I’m having a lot of fun getting into the theory and questions, although having less experience with the reef, I’m having a harder time deriving my questions directly from my personal observations, which is different for me.

An Osprey that landed by the volleyball court to eat a fish

Today we went to the mangroves this morning, which was completely different and very fascinating. The water was very murky, and as we moved along the mangroves, only small patches were fully in view at a time, and algae and sponge encrusted roots would loom quickly out of the water ahead. Hannah and I went as slowly as possible—there are so many hiding places and the fish are so small you have to be careful not to stir up the water (which is why we didn’t wear fins) and take your time so you can actually see them. I saw tons of juvenile porkfish, snappers, seargent majors, and itty bitty damselfish. I really enjoyed the pace, and the whole environment of the mangroves: the 3D structure is very interesting, with so many hiding places and new growth forms to look at. There are beautiful sponges with frilly red inside-out-umbrella-looking plumes that could be sucked in if approached. We saw several large star fish, and the bottom of the channel was covered in upside-down jellyfish (which seemed more potentially dangerous than normal after Caley got stung and had a bad reaction this morning). It’s easy to see why the mangroves are used as a nursery for reef fish—the water is so calm, there are so many hiding places, and the visibility is poor. Though that being said, the fish let me get way closer in the mangroves than the ones on the reef. I wonder if that’s a different defense strategy.

What appear to be mussels or clams growing directly on mangrove roots

A feather duster worm from the mangroves (they quickly suck in if you touch them)

Fish hiding in the mangroves

After lunch we went to Tobacco Cut. It was a very helpful site for learning coral species. The most fun interaction of the day was when Hannah and I spotted our first hogfish. It was bright white, and swimming around and around a large section of reef. As we approached, it swam down into a clump of brown sponges to hide. A minute later Hannah pointed down, “There’s another one!” In the same clump of sponges, there was a hogfish, but this one had a dark brown patterning on white. At first I was confused, wondering what happened to the first one, and then it clicked: Hogfish can change color. We asked around and confirmed it, and it felt really neat to have figured it out on our own.

A spanish hogfish (not quite as cool as the regular hogfish, but more colorful)

On our way to snorkel, we stopped by Bird Caye, where 400-500 frigatebirds and a hundred boobies roost each night. Brian pointed out how the shape of the frigatebirds’ wings is well suited for long distance flights, but don’t have much lift, so they have to drop down first and use their forked tail. They aren’t as good at fishing as the boobies are because they can’t get wet, so they grab them and force them to regurgitate food at night. It was amazing to see so many birds all around. The air was completely full of them, and it smelled awful. The sun was mercilessly harsh, and the birds were panting to keep cool. They’re so packed in, we saw a few dead ones hanging in the trees right next to the others. But it was also intense to feel them swooping around all around us.

Birds at Bird Caye

a Magnificent frigatebird male inflating throat pouch as part of mating display

A Brown Boobie and Magnificent frigatebird

A male frigatebird “panting” to cool off

A female frigatebird and a boobie.

A Male frigatebird flying with a partially inflated pouch

***

A seahorse we found right off the dock

Today we went to Angel Reef in the morning. The lighting was beautiful, and we saw a new kind of stingray, rough backed ray. It was very large and swam closer to the bottom than the other big ones we’d seen. I also saw some harlequin bass, which were really crazy looking but much smaller than I expected.

A damselfish in lovely lighting at Angel Reef

An underwater view of Angel Reef

We just got back from our night snorkel. We got to see a whole different set of creatures, but I was surprised how much less active the reef was compared to the day, and how much more we saw in the grass and sand closer to shore. We saw a bunch of needlefish right at the beginning. I touched one and it freaked out and swam away really quickly—directly into my leg. I was surprised how much force it generated and I was really glad I had my wetsuit to protect me. We saw squids, rays, octopuses and sleeping parrotfish (though none in the mucus cocoons they sometimes build), as well as some sort of large weird sea worm. Sadly, I don’t think my camera did so well at night, I would’ve liked to capture the surreal effect of light rays cutting through the disorienting dark, spotlighting corals in the murky water. I’m definitely not ready to go back home now.

A yellow ray at night

***

I’m waiting to go take my fish and coral test and I still have an hour to go. I am not feeling very patient right now. I just want to take it and be done.

The test went pretty well. I missed one coral because I was feeling a little overconfident and didn’t look very long at it, but it was definitely the most fun test I’ve ever taken. I went to the beach early and swam around in the shallows with Conner as we waited. We saw a lot of juvenile slippery dicks and it was calming to get into the water beforehand. During the test, Marc and I saw a spotted trunkfish, a cool hogfish, and a gigantic group of blue tangs.

A redband parrotfish

Later in the day, Hannah, Caley, Matt, and I went kayaking and saw flying fish, a ray, and some cormorants up close. Then, Hannah and I went for one final snorkel. We saw a bunch of bluestripped grunts all over the reef clustering together behind sea fans and corals. We weren’t sure, but we thought they might have been trying to get ready for sleep. We also saw a barracuda that was bigger than Hannah, and two small yellow rays.

Bluestriped Grunts grouping together

A yellow ray in the turtle grass

It’s been a great last day, and we’re starting to pack up. I’m not a huge fan of packing, and everything is still wet, which makes an extra challenge. Of course, none of us really want to go back which makes it even harder. I’ve gotten so much out of this course, and especially here it’s been fun to really fall in love with snorkeling and get comfortable in the water.

Relaxing on the boat after our last big snorkel

Sunset at South Water Caye

Caley reading on the beach

The strange driftwood statue on the beach

A pelican resting in the evening

A frigatebird and boat framed by the sunset

A grackle making its bizzarre call at the sunset

Our last morning at South Water Caye, the sun rising over the dock.

Part 2: Blue Creek—the Maya, water, and mysteries of the night

One of our guides, Heraldo, took us on a medicinal plant walk today. He is extremely knowledgeable; with the variety of species found in the jungle, it must be hard to remember so many different plants. Heraldo showed us the wari palm that has starchy, edible flower pods, and spiky seedpods that taste like bland coconut inside; we tried termites that tasted like carrot; he demonstrated how to make a thatch roof out of giant cohune palm fronds; we ate the heart of a heliconia that tasted like sweet cucumber; and he showed us numerous different medicinal plants for everything from headaches to kidney problems.

An edible flower pod from the Wari Palm.

Heraldo showing us an edible flower pod

With all of the chemical defenses and variety of compounds produced in these plants, I suppose many of them really do have an effect on the human body, but it’s amazing that so many aren’t poisonous. Heraldo mentioned that their medicine man recently passed away and I can see that for them it’s a serious problem, especially when they don’t have good access to other forms of medical care. However, one of the students, Ben, was looking through a book we brought on medicinal plants that lists their traditional versus researched effects, and showed us that what the Maya usually think a plant does and what tests demonstrate that it does (to the best you can actually test something like a medicinal plant) are usually very different. I’m not surprised but a bit disappointed. It feels like a waste if the Maya gathered so much information and it turns out to be wrong.

***

As the culmination of the course, we’re all going to write research proposals based on questions we form here. We just had a long discussion on proposal ideas; it was really fun and helpful—we’ve come up with some amazing ideas already. We’ve talked a lot about the Janzen-Connell hypothesis that centers around the idea that predators will over-select the most abundant prey source, which is actually usually applied to trees: seeds that are distributed closest to the parent tree are more likely to be predated than those farther away, and the risk decreases as a function of distance. There are a lot of factors that make a Janzen-Connell predator or disperser, and we’ve talked a lot about how that could apply to animals like leaf-cutter ants or small rodents.

The scarlet macaws also brought up interesting questions about landscape scale disturbances and animal distributions, because their range in Belize is changing after the construction of a dam. We also brought up a lot of different ideas around keystone predators in the tropics where there is a wider variety of predators. We keep talking about mineral licks as well, even though we haven’t seen any, and their possible use as plant detoxification, especially for herbivores like peccaries, or animals like bats. I’m still thinking about the Molly Apple tree from Cockscomb and how its crown connectivity affected the animal communities we saw in it. I thought of the possibility of applying Island Biogeography Theory to fruiting trees in gaps. It was so fun to start really thinking about all we’ve seen so far.

***

A wedge-billed wood creeper

We set up mist nets last night to catch birds and bats and were very successful. It was the first time I’d set nets up since the owl internship, and I was proud that my hands still remembered how to do it even if I wasn’t sure my brain did. As soon as the nets were up we started catching animals. First we caught a wedge-billed woodcreeper. It’s impressive how beautiful shades of brown can be up close, and everyone was so excited to see it that it made the whole experience more fun. Then, as it got darker, we started catching bats.

Looking through my notes now I’m not sure which bat this is, but it’s some type of Leaf-Nosed bat. It’s caught in the mist net.

Possibly a Micronycteris sylvestris in hand.

The unidentified bat in hand.

The bats take a lot longer to get out of the nets, and Brian, Marc, Meagan (who actually worked with bats while abroad in Ecuador), and I struggled for a long time to get the first one out and were late for dinner. We aren’t very good at bat identification, but we made our best guesses as to what we caught. We caught some kind of Carolliinae and what we think is a Micronictarus silvesterus, but the second one bit itself in the net and started bleeding all over, which really made me nervous. It seemed ok by the time we released it but I wish we had another person with a lot more bat experience helping us out. The final bat of the night was an extra treat for me: what we think is an Artibeus toltecus, a tent-roosting bat! It was of course the smallest and most adorable we caught that night, but I am a little biased. I don’t think I want to get stuck as a “bat girl” the rest of my life, but they are amazing animals. They have such interesting adaptations and are fun to work with. We all had a great time; Marc kept laughing and making jokes, Brian proved particularly handy with a crochet hook (it’s a handy way to help get them untangled without risking a bite), Meagan was nearly jumping with excitement at getting to handle bats again, and everyone was in high spirits. We probably could’ve spent more time going over their biology, but it was so exciting that we had a wonderful night anyways.

The probable Artibeus toltecus in hand.

One of our professors, Marc, holding the bat.

***

Blue Creek is actually the Río Blanco farther upstream. When it goes underground through a cave system, it picks up a lot of minerals including calcium, and when it comes out the other side it has its distinctive color and is called Blue Creek. Today we went caving at the mouth of the creek. It was my first test of my wetsuit (which I now love), goggles (though I barely used them), and contacts. The trek involved a combination of swimming against the current and scrambling over wet rocks up waterfalls. We had to wear life vests and helmets, and I was grateful for them even though they made swimming more difficult. I am not a strong swimmer, so it was quite a challenge, and I wouldn’t have made it very far without a lot of help. I started getting tired almost immediately, and by the end I couldn’t make it up the last waterfall; but I was still proud of myself (though I should probably get more swim lessons), and it was a really different environment. I would’ve like to see more cave-dwelling creatures, since it was such a surreal different world; it was so dark and loud it’s amazing to think about what sort of adaptations it would take to live there.

***

We went on a night hike with Florencio tonight. It was a moonlit night, which supposedly scares away animals, so we didn’t see that much. It was still very interesting though, and we saw Rosie the tarantula (who may actually be a new usurping female, which would explain her supposed behavior changes between different years), whip scorpions, cool insects, and the coolest sighting of the night, a giant white fungus that was slowly releasing its spores into the air like plumes of smoke.

A whip scorpion we saw on the night hike.

Florencio also told us stories about “duendes,” which are forest guardians that look like small men with a big hat, backwards feet, and four fingers. He told us that if you overhunt, or go to an area of the forest where you shouldn’t, the duende will whistle at you, and you’d better leave. If you meet one, you have to be careful to hide your thumb, or else the duende will get jealous and bite it off. Alan Rabinowitz mentioned the same story in the Jaguar, and Meagan said they also tell it in Ecuador. It’s really interesting that the same story could be so widespread. The jungle at night can conjure up all sorts of strange images.

More bats we caught on another night. I don’t remember the species, I’ll update after I look over my notes.

A vampire bat we caught one night.

***

Today we went to Heraldo’s farm to learn about how he grows crops and get to know a little more about the Maya lifestyle. It’s a lot hotter and sunnier in town, and I was quickly drenched in sweat. Heraldo’s house is larger than I expected, with a tall cohune palm thatched roof. “Blue eyes” the dog followed us around, and despite his malnourished, buggy appearance, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such a satisfied look on a dog’s face as when he was getting scratched behind the ears. He showed us cassava and banana plants around the house and then we hiked up the mountain to look at his experimental field. He showed us how he plants beans and corn by pushing a sharpened wood pole or stick into the ground to make a hole, and then simply dropping a few corn kernels or beans in. Unlike how we plant seeds back home, he doesn’t even cover the hole; I wonder if they would mold if he did. Often more than one will sprout from a single hole, yet it doesn’t stop them all from producing. Even more amazing is how he plants cassava: he simply cuts a branch off and sticks it in the ground. The tropics are incredible.

Herlado’s house, with Cohune Palm thatch (and Blue Eyes the dog in front).

***

We woke up this morning to an impressive rainstorm dumping down more water in a few hours than Colorado has probably gotten in years, and were really worried we wouldn’t be able to go down the Aguacate (avacado) and Moho (mold) rivers as planned. Luckily, it started clearing up as we loaded into the cars, and by the time we were putting the canoes, kayaks, and inner tubes into the water, it was almost clear. It ended up being a lovely day. I started in a canoe with Ben, which was very relaxing despite a leak that Heraldo helped us patch with mud. I wish we could’ve brought binoculars with us, because we saw so many birds but they were hard to identify. There were giant kingfishers, and smaller ones that would sometimes dive down and weave between us. I saw an oropendola fly over head, and got a brief glimpse of howler monkeys. As we went, some of the men speared fish for lunch and collected river snails. After lunch I switched to an inner tube, which was a little more exciting. It was also fun to drift along and chat with the other students. We have a really great group.

The highlight of the whole day was when we found a giant iguana in a tree and Heraldo climbed up to scare it. Iguanas’ defense mechanism is to jump out of trees into water to escape predators, and they can do so from incredible heights. Heraldo’s sons and Ramón were waiting in the water below, and when the iguana finally jumped, they swam after it. We got to pass it around and look more closely at it; it was perfect timing because Conner just presented on iguanas yesterday. He was a very heavy male and I could see his “third eye” that detects light and dark and is used to avoid avian predators. It was a very peaceful and fun trip.

A close up of the Iguana after it was caught

Me holding the iguana

***

A few of us just got back from our brief homestays this morning. The experience was generally awkward but fun. We went to our family’s home last night after dinner and talked with the mother Ofelia, and her children Alvaro, Laticia, Natalia, Erin, Jessica, Naomi, Ofelia, and a ten month old baby. The father, Eusabio, came home later after a long trip to Punta Gordo to try to renew his guiding license. He said they speak both forms of Maya (which are not actually related linguistically) at home, and the kids learn English at school. The house had a dirt floor, thin walls, and all the building materials were from the nearby jungle. It made me think about how many similarities there are between the way people live in the rest of the world, no matter where I travel; and also how different most of the world lives compared to my everyday life.

The stove was on the floor, and the kids snacked on rice, tortillas, and salt while we chatted. After a while the parents went to bed and we played with the kids (while the oldest daughter helped supervise). Ben’s pad of paper and a pen were a big hit, and I showed them how to fold paper cranes. They are really fast learners and some of the children picked it up very, very quickly. They also remembered our birthdays, and how to spell our names after only asking us once. I think they’re used to learning things by memory rather than writing them down; I’m a little jealous, since I often feel like my brain only exists on paper. That night we slept on the some of the most uncomfortable hammocks I’ve ever laid in and woke up feeling not as rested as I would’ve liked.

When we got back this morning, I went to take a shower (or the trickle of river water piped into the bathroom) and discovered the backs of my legs are covered in the biggest bug bites I’ve ever had; I really wish I knew what bit me. Then, when I was in the shower, I felt something brush my foot and I kicked it. I looked down and saw something large on the floor and ran to get my glasses. It was a small Cayo tarantula. I guess it was after the water in the shower, but I’m very glad it didn’t bite me or use its irritating hairs.

Another bathroom spider eating a dragonfly.

***

Yesterday morning we went back to Heraldo’s house for a cultural craft’s day. On the way he showed us a small cave up on the hillside that was an ancient Maya burial chamber. Heraldo said he discovered it in 2006 when his dog chased an animal down into it. There were old ceramic vases, bowls, bones, and teeth that he said an archeologist dated to 3,000 years. He said that some people just want to destroy old Maya artifacts when they find them, and he even mentioned that someone stole two of the vases that were originally in the cave, despite his attempts to keep its presence a secret.

The cave from our hike along the Río Blanco.

Today we went on a longer hike up the Blue Creek and Río Blanco. I was dripping sweat on the way up, trying to keep up with our guide Eusabio as we scrambled up muddy rocks and chopped through vines (or small trees). We got to go in a giant cave where the Río Blanco goes underground to eventually become Blue Creek. It was huge inside, and the rocks were smooth, covered with light brown mud and guano. At the entrance, bats soared in and out, and farther inside, above another opening over a subterranean lake, swallows flew quickly overhead. We climbed out once we got too hungry and followed the path a little farther. We had lunch on a little flat patch essentially in the middle of the river. It was our first and only time to get farther into the jungle here. It was extremely dense and felt really different from Cockscomb.

Inside the cave at the mouth of the Río Blanco

Our lunch spot along the Río Blanco

***

We are about to leave Blue Creek this morning. I woke up early so I could absorb a little of my last morning here. The creek has been so clear after the rain, but the little fish seem to have lost interest in our fingers by now. Just from where I sit here, I can hear lots of bird songs and kingfishers, see some of the proboscis bats that huddle against the white bark of the tree across the river, make out the outline of the black hawk sitting on its years-old perch, and stare at a lingering half moon hanging over the treetops. I wish I could go for one last swim, but then I’d have more wet clothes to lug around and it’s pretty cold. Yesterday we went to the crafts fair to buy from the local families. It was fun to see Ofelia and Naomi ad the other kids from my host stay, and it was also fun to do some friendly bargaining again since it’s been so long. The kids still remembered my birthday and how to spell my name. I think the market was a little overwhelming or uncomfortable for other students, but I actually liked it as a way to say goodbye.

A partially submerged Iguana

A Common Black Hawk on its perch above the creek

Proboscis Bats on the tree across the creek.

Blue Creek, from the dining area

Belize Part 1: Preparation and Cockscomb, Following the Jaguar

I’m sitting next to an electric fireplace in a cabin in snowy Vail, Colorado. Things could not be more different from where I was barely more than a week ago. At this time in the morning I’d have finished breakfast already, and be waiting through that frustrating gap between waking and finally suiting up to snorkeling. Maybe I’d be hanging out with my fellow students in lawn chairs by the warm ocean, or outside the kitchen petting Stardust the cat. I certainly wouldn’t be wearing socks. I would be excited to see a squirrel on a tree not because it’s the only animal I’ve seen all day but because they’re rarer in Belize.

 

Re-entry is always the hardest part of an amazing trip. The only thing that really helps is just doing it again. I’m getting a little better at engaging with my “normal” life again once I’m back, but there’s always a space of time when I feel like I’m floating and it’s hard to believe I ever went and it’s hard to believe I ever came back.

 

We all kept journals for the course, which I am so grateful for now. It reminds me of all the things I might otherwise have forgotten. Though sharing entries with other students makes me realize that unless you spend your whole day writing, you will never capture everything. So here are some highlights…

 

***

(Note: Entries are in order but some combine different days, much is omitted, and everything is largely unedited because it’s just too darn long)

 

Today’s intro to Belize made me so excited for the trip. This half-block of prep seems like a good idea. I’d been feeling a little nervous remembering all the things that were so uncomfortable or frightening about Costa Rica—the heat rash, the constant bug bites, the cultural barriers, the aggressive terciopelo (fer-de-lance snake) we found an hour and a half into the forest at night, the close calls with bullet ants, the stories of poachers or bandits with guns, and the strange force of the jungle itself that always felt so distinctly hostile. But after the class I remembered all the things I loved and all that I still want to learn and see. There is no other ecosystem on earth like the tropical rainforest, and there is no better place to form questions about the complex interactions between living (and nonliving) things. I also can’t wait to explore the world of coral reef ecology. It’s going to be a bit of a challenge because I still have to figure out how I’m going to see with my mask on, and I’m not a strong swimmer.

 

I’m also excited to see what I’ve retained from Costa Rica. When I’m in the field, will I still have a good spot image for lizards? Will I remember what a toucan sounds like? Will I recognize a peccary if I smell one? Maybe I was wrong when at the end of two months in the field I felt like tropical ecology wasn’t going to work for me after all. We read an incredible book for class called Jaguar (see my previous post) by the researcher Alan Rabinowitz who established Cockscomb Wildlife Basin and Jaguar Preserve where we’re going for the first part of the course. I don’t think Alan ever really found the jungle a welcoming place either—the excitement of the life it supports and the importance of the projects he worked on were enough.

 

***

 

Despite my excitement about the trip, it’s harder than I thought it would be to get back into school. I feel like it gets harder after every single break now; half my time is spent daydreaming about what comes next. I just want to get out there and do all the amazing things I’ve read about. Maybe this is a good time in my life to go somewhere wild and really think about nature and the questions I want to work with in my life.

 

The main focus of the course is the creation and maintenance of biodiversity in the tropics. We’re presenting on different theories in class and I’m having fun analyzing them and thinking about which ones seem most applicable and which are contradictory. We also have species lists of birds and fish to learn, and I’m excited to try to find them all when we get there.

 

I tried out contacts in class today. I need to get used to them so I can wear them when we go snorkeling, but I haven’t worn contacts in probably six years. I already blink too much and they just make it worse. I hope I don’t blink them out. I really want them to work for snorkeling; I’ll need to see the fish.

 

This is the final day before we leave for Belize. I’m almost all ready to go and I’m ready to just be there. This is the third year in a row that this time of year has marked my departure for a new country. I wonder what Belize will give me, I feel like I’ve received so much from every other place I’ve visited. I’m also interested to see how apparent the biodiversity theories we’ve been learning about will be in reality. In some ways Diversity is an abstract concept, and I’m excited to meet the challenge of thinking more abstractly when looking at physical interactions.

 

***

 

I am completely exhausted. We had to wake up way too early to get to the bus for our flight. Thayer grabbed the wrong passport and had to run home to get the right one, which made me really paranoid that I’d forgotten something important. I don’t like the Colorado Springs airport, I’m not used to going through it. They made me go through security twice because I’d forgotten to drink the tiny, maybe half inch of water in my water bottle. I hate airport security, it’s so dumb. I mostly just slept on the flights, I barely remember anything.

 

As we flew into Belize City, it was clear we were going somewhere completely different. It was just trees, rivers, and swamps for miles. The sun was above us and it reflected off of the water on the ground, revealing hidden bogs and pools of water glittering beneath the trees. It’s clearly a wet country. Belize City and the airport abruptly popped out of the greenery, and I realized that this country was much more rural than I had been thinking it would be.

 

When we got off the plane, we immediately felt the heat and humidity and started shedding layers. There was a live band playing music as we went through customs, which was such a wonderful greeting. As we waited for our bus, we heard the first of the birds on our list: the great-tailed grackle. Another surreal moment was listening to a group of American tourists playing a funky traveling guitar outside the airport and singing, “take a load off Fanny” to the completely wrong tune. We met our bus driver Ron, loaded into the big white school bus, and headed off to Cockscomb. My first realization was that this country is very different from Costa Rica. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly the differences, but a lot of the places we drove through were very different landscapes than I’d seen before. We watched a beautiful sunset over a scraggly pine savannah and distinctive limestone karst mountains. The people all look very different too, it seems like there’s more Caribbean influences and more native Maya left.

 

We had dinner with the Saquís in Maya Center. It was really neat to meet them because their family was mentioned in the Jaguar. The food was amazing, I think we were all hungry and in need of a bathroom by then. Brian and Marc were concerned because the driver had been telling them about a new highway that was being built from that region to Guatemala, which could really impact poaching and environmental destruction. Ignacio also seemed worried about it, and he said the Belizeans weren’t in favor of it, but there wasn’t anything they could do. It was upsetting to see the threats to the area looming as soon as we arrived.

 

We’re staying in wooden bunk beds in screened-in dorm rooms. The bathroom is down the hall and actually a pretty nice facility compared to what I’d been expecting. The boys found a scorpion in their room almost as soon as we got here. One of the caretakers caught it, pinched the stinger off, and handed it to us. We shone a black light on it and watched it glow bright blue as it crawled over our hands. It was neat to hold one after I’ve always been so scared of them, but I felt bad about its stinger.

 

The scorpion glowing blue under the blacklight

Little hummingbird drinking from a flowering tree in front of the dorms

Little hummingbird preening

***

 

After our very first jungle hike our bird species list is already in the 40’s. It’s amazing how many creatures we can identify as a group. We saw jaguar and tapir prints in the mud; It’s amazing to think that I was standing in the same spot where that illusive, powerful predator was out prowling just hours before.

 

Tapir track

Jaguar track

I was a little disappointed at our first night hike. Usually in Costa Rica we saw a lot of reptiles and amphibians after dark, but we saw very few here. What we did see was very special, however. As we walked, we all used our flashlights to look for eye shine. Most of them were large spiders on the side of the paths, but when we got to the clearing with the Molly Apple tree (they called them water apples in Costa Rica, and apparently their proper name is Malay Apple, Syzgium malaccense), we immediately saw large eye shine from the top of the crown. As soon as we approached we realized the tree was full of bats eating the fruit. As we peered into the branches, we caught sight of an opposum, and then a kinkajou. I was especially excited at the latter, since they’re one of my favorite animals. After that we didn’t see anything besides a tiny coffee snake until the very end when we came across an owl. Brian works with owls (see previous flam posts), and was ecstatic. I think we decided it was a vermiculated screech owl. It had gorgeous large yellow eyes, and was so small and funny, I couldn’t believe how long it sat there and how close it let us get.

 

The owl we saw on our night hike

There’s a decent soccer field in front of the dorms, with wooden poles for goals. We decided to play yesterday (“the blue tang clan” versus “the fer-de-lances”), and of course it started raining. We all got soaked and (shocker) nothing is dry, and probably never will be for that matter. Just my luck that I was playing in all my clothes that weren’t quick dry. I hope they do dry though; I only packed two t-shirts.

(It took a week for most of it to “dry off,” or rather, become about as damp as everything else was).

A turtle we found at a pond off of the wari loop trail

***

 

On our morning birding we stopped by the Molly Apple tree again (our constant winner) and saw an aracari. They’re such beautiful birds, the pattern on their beaks is a striking zigzag of color, like a zipper. We also saw two gray foxes calmly trotting out of the clearing. They’re surprisingly beautiful; their faces are so light and they have dark markings that look almost design-like. They range all the way to Colorado, and it’s interesting to think how they’ve adapted to such different places. A lot of the birds do the same, and we’ve seen a lot of neotropical migrants here.

 

A woodpecker eating fruit from the Molly Apple tree

I think this was a black-headed trogon

As part of the course, we each have to present on different animals as well as lead a paper critique. So far I really like the presentations. Erica did hers on leaf-cutter ants and we got to sit by a nest while she explained about them. They have such intricate and efficient construction practices and social rules, they’re fascinating creatures. It’s easy to overlook insects, but they play a hugely important role as herbivores here.

 

Tonight we all split up for night hikes. I decided to go on my own and sit under the Molly Apple tree since it was pretty much the only place we saw anything the first time we went out at night. I had a really nice time. It was so intense to stand under the tree with all lights off and feel the bats flying by, rustling my shirt and brushing by my hands. I got much closer to the kinkajous this time, and it was so fun to watch them eat apples—they eat them just like people do. I also saw opossums, but they were much more cautious, and I had to be really patient to get close. When I took a walk around the clearing, I saw a distinctive purple eye shine and crept close enough to get a good look at a paraque. At the end of the night, some of the others joined me and we got a very brief glimpse of a paca.

Kinkajou in Molly Apple (Malay Apple) tree.

Kinkajou eating fruit

***

Plain Chachalacas eating flower blossoms

 

This was our last full day in Cockscomb and it was a fun one. We went to the Molly Apple tree in the morning as usual and saw some toucans, woodpeckers, beautiful songbirds, and a lovely cotinga (a very aptly named bird that’s blue with colorful legs and shines iridescently in direct light). It’s amazing how much activity is concentrated around that tree. It gives me a new appreciation of fruiting events in the tropics. Since fruit trees are a patchy resource and can fruit at any time of the year (though they usually do so more frequently during the wet season), they really draw animals in when they’ve got a crop. Last night I realized that there’s a second Molly Apple tree in the same clearing, but that one isn’t nearly as busy; I never saw any mammals in it and only occasional tanagers. I think it could be because it’s smaller, or because it’s farther away from other trees. The bigger one has another tree with a partially interlocking crown that connects it to the rest of the forest.

 

After lunch we took a climb up above the jungle to Ben’s Bluff. I was soaked in sweat by the time we got to the top, but we had a nice view of Victoria’s peak. It was interesting to get to a very different environment with a relatively small elevation gain. Then we went down and swam in the waterfall, but the water was so frigid and I was already chilly from sweating so much and then sitting around that I was too cold to actually swim.

 

A group photo at Ben’s Bluff. (L-R, back row: Matt, Thayer, Ben, Conner, Carson, David, Burr. Front row: Meagan, Danny, Erica, Ally, Caley, Hannah, me).

Our last night, Aurora Saquí came to talk with us. Her uncle was probably the most famous Maya healer when he was alive, and she learned from him. Aurora is an impressively charismatic, kind, powerful woman. She came from a family with lots of sisters, which was usually seen as bad luck in Maya society, but her father raised her to be tough and demand respect. She told us how he taught her to use a gun and shoot cigars off of a clothesline. At first she said she just wanted to record her Uncle’s knowledge so that it wouldn’t be lost when he died; women aren’t usually healers in her society and she wasn’t interested. However, he wanted her to take over, and when he died, she finally did. She’s writing books about the various uses of plants in the jungle and takes students. She’s going to start teaching children at the Maya Center so that the knowledge isn’t lost. She also works for women’s rights in the village. She runs a crafts center and makes sandstone carvings with the women at Maya Center, which helps them gain respect in the village. She said that the end of the Maya Calendar was a very special time because it signals a new era of equality between men and women. I’m usually pretty skeptical about alternative medicine practices, especially when someone talks about imbuing objects with positive energy, but at least with the herbal remedies that have been passed down for generations, I would imagine that at least some of them are more effective than a placebo. And Aurora herself is an inspirational figure—she walks a careful balance between cultural values and progressive ideas that challenge traditional beliefs. Regardless of whether I believe that crystal balls can make the metal inside my wristwatch bring me good luck, I still consider it an honor to have someone like Aurora take a moment to wish me well regardless of my spiritual beliefs.

 

***

 

A hummingbird feeding on a flower by the Molly Apple tree.

Today was a very packed day. We woke up before 6 a.m. so we could take one last walk to the Molly Apple tree and try to see some peccaries. We didn’t find any, but it was nice to get one last look at Cockscomb’s guans, hummingbirds, toucans, woodpeckers, orioles, tanagers, and chachalacas. Thayer, David, and I took a little walk down the path and saw what we think now was a crane hawk. It had striking red eyes. Then we loaded back into the big white bus, said hello to our driver Ron again, and headed out for Blue Creek.

A Crane Hawk sitting in a cecropia tree.

 

On the way we made a detour to Red Bank to look for Scarlet Macaws. It’s a Maya village, and while we stopped for Marc and Brian to pay an entrance fee to the chief, children and women trying to sell crafts immediately surrounded the bus. As we drove in past tall living fence posts surrounding citrus trees, we saw toucans flying across the road. We took a long hike up a road that was too muddy for the bus, past a field with a scarecrow, then up a steep jungle trail to a lookout on the top of the mountain. Shortly after we got there, we heard the scarlet macaw’s raucous calls from the other side of the slope. We rushed around and saw one sitting far out on a tree, a large patch of red and yellow, brightly contrasted against the green. Over the next few minutes we saw more and more, soaring over the treetops. Then, just as we were going up to see if they had flown around the other side, a few of the students in back hurriedly called us back. Instead of flying over, they had circled back and landed almost directly next to us. They were chattering loudly and after a few minutes they flew away. They’re iconic birds for a reason—their long tails are flowing and bright, and the colors are stunning. I do wonder how they get way with standing out so much, they have predators that likely take advantage of that (besides humans I suppose). It is interesting that they re so rare here in Belize while there are places in Costa Rica where you’re guaranteed to see one.

A scarlet macaw flying over Red Bank.

Two scarlet macaws flying between branches.

The macaws staring at us from a cecropia tree

 

After the hike we drove to Blue Creek. It was obvious how well Marc especially has a connection to this community since he’s been coming here for 17 years. Despite the forewarnings, it was a little overwhelming when we first got off the bus and were immediately swarmed by children asking to carry our bags. It was a mile into where we were staying, so I paid one man to take mine, but I did feel bad for him since it’s so heavy and awkwardly shaped. He wasn’t very talkative, but he said his brother Ramón works here and told me a little about what it was like when a hurricane hit the area ten years ago. When we got here, he asked me, “Have you ever dreamed of some place so beautiful?”

 

Getting back from a hike, standing on the platform over the creek

Blue Creek is gorgeous. The river that’s also the town’s namesake runs right in front of where we’re staying, and it is an intense, almost milky blue, with tons of tiny fish. It’s wide and calm, perfect for swimming. As soon as we were settled in, we all headed for the water. I was a little cold already because it’d been raining, but I managed to slowly walk my way in. The fish nibbled at my fingers and I really wanted to see what it would feel like to catch and hold one, but they were too fast. The shower water comes from the creek anyways, so we just do all our washing in the water (everyone brought Doctor Braunners with them). I think we’re going to have a very good time here, and it’ll be a good transition to being in the water more.

One more undergrad international adventure: Belize prep

One year since I was in Costa Rica. One year since I was in Kenya. One day before I go to Belize. How stupid I was to think I was ready to be back in this country for more than half a year.

I just posted the following on facebook:

Hace un año, yo estuve en Costa Rica.

Mbili miaka iliyopita, nilisafiri Kenya na Tanzania yetu.

And now, I am about to embark on a new journey, this time to Belize. I am so grateful to the places I have been, the people I have met, and the many beautiful heartbreaks that still hurt and fill my life with joy. And I am grateful for the adventures yet to come.

As I prepare to go to Belize I keep thinking about Costa Rica and all the other places I’ve been. I am phenomenally lucky to have had these opportunities, and they make up such a huge part of who I am that I realize I have no idea what I would be like if a little piece of my heart hadn’t been left behind in Kimana, in Moyo Hill, in Yang Shu’s village, in Tirimbina, in San José. The world is a frighteningly vast place with more wonders than I will ever grasp, and more problems than we will ever solve.

***

white-breasted nuthatches are one of my favorite birds. I saw this one at North Mountain Park.

A Northern Flicker at North Mountain Park.

I don’t remember what these are called, but they’re beautiful berry bushes (and if childhood memory serves, a lot of fun to squish).

Winter break was so heartwarming to be with family again, and also a little stressful, but I think that’s the dynamic for most college students. I truly love my family and it fills me up to be together, but it’s also a reminder that after four years, a huge monetary investment, incredible adventures, and an impressive accumulation of knowledge and experience, I still don’t know what I’m doing after I graduate, and that’s kind of scary. I finally have a few applications in and a few possibilities, but I don’t think I’ve seen my dream job yet or even know what that would be. Every day I repeat to myself that I should spend a few years the states and then find a way back to East Africa or down to South America, but I’m starting to worry that after three years of in and out of the country, I won’t be satisfied staying here. Then the other side of me says that maybe being in one place for more than four months and having a meaningful field job might actually feel amazing. We’ll see what happens.

A Great Egret at Ashland Pond. That pond is always a pleasant surprise.

The great egret trying to snatch a fish.

Great egret in flight

“No, Silvia, come back. I love you!”–We got to see great egrets courting, which mostly consisted of one running away from the other (but very cool to watch!)

***

We read an incredible book for our preparations for Belize. It’s called Jaguar: One Man’s Struggle to Establish the World’s First Jaguar Preserve by Alan Rabinowitz. It’s an intimate look at an ambitious (and honestly fairly dangerous) research project and the life of a field researcher. It also deals with the frustration and philosophy of conservation—Is there a way to conduct research that does not negatively impact the animals you are trying to protect? How do you keep going when so many people do not understand the value of science or conservation? How do you balance the needs of people and the needs of animals, and does one always have to lose? By in large, we no longer live in Rabinowitz’ age when young researchers naively blundered into the wilderness and conjured out science with raw willpower, but it’s an addictively exciting narrative. I can’t help but read it and think, “I want to do cool things like that some day!” With any luck, I know I will.

Sorry about the short post, but I have to finish packing. I’m anticipating an incredible post upon my return.

Start of senior year!

Better late than never, right? Here is my holiday gift to my blog: a very overdue post of the last three and a half months.

Happy Thanksgiving! I’m evidently pretty terrible at writing while I’m in school, but so much has happened that it’s hard to summarize it down: I’ve taken a very valuable course that showed me I’d been writing scientific essays wrong my whole life, I took on my thesis and am almost done with it, I presented at a bat conference in Puerto Rico (!), and took a break from science with one of the best classes ever.

Way back after first block I started to write something, so I’ll start with that then speed a little faster through time:

***

Wow. School has started. In fact, my senior year of college is already one-eighth of the way finished.

Somehow, I thought this year wouldn’t be as stressful. I hoped I would find time to do all the things I like to do and not cry once over a homework assignment. It’s a good reminder that my personality does not change quickly and certainly not because I am simply one year older. Old habits die hard; this year will have to be a slow lesson on how to live calmly and peacefully.

That doesn’t mean I can’t also have a blast. It always takes time for me to adjust to a place, but I do finally feel very at home here at Colorado College. I know the people I want to spend time with (even if I don’t always get a chance to), and how to accomplish what I need. I have favorite professors, favorite study corners, and exciting classes to take. While I am delving deeper into what I love and am familiar with, I am also exploring new activities: I’m learning Hebrew, hip hop, and blues dancing. I’m also living in an apartment with three amazing women I barely knew before this year and it was such a good decision.

Speaking of less good decisions, I’ve already accidentally missed important deadlines for my future (goodbye Watson and a score of other fellowships), have failed to look up even a single graduate program, and neglected to schedule my courses in a way that I have any hopes of getting a decent score on GRE or ETS Biology exams (“I have a great idea: why don’t I take genetics AFTER I have to pass important exams that will be 25% genetics material”). I am petrified because I don’t know what I will do next year—I feel so successful with my previous research and I am confident in my abilities to design and carry out research, but for once, I don’t think I have the background to present myself well on paper. At this point in the game, everyone has really cool research experience.

***

My class in Rocky Mountain NP.

This first block was extremely valuable. I learned more about how to think critically in my literature searches, carefully construct a research idea, and write scientifically so that every single word matters. It was a very hard class and forced me to look at what I want to do from a very technical viewpoint. Since I love writing, it is difficult to come to terms with the fact that I’m not actually good at writing scientific papers (and still have a lot of problems with sentence structure, flow, and conciseness in general).

The alpine research station on Niwot Ridge. It’s at around 12,000 ft elevation and has been of critical importance for monitoring the progress of global warming. It was so cool to visit it after having read so much about the research that’s come out of it.

The class was called Advanced Ecology and we got to design a theoretical research project on anything we wanted. I chose a study on wild dog feeding behavior inside and outside of protected areas, which reminded me how interesting East African predators are.

One of the highlights of the course were the field trips. There weren’t as many as perhaps I would have liked, but the rest of the class was so important we didn’t have time for as many trips. It was also a reminder of why I love being in upper level Biology classes: beyond the teacher, the students are all so amazing that they each have something really interesting they can teach you. For instance, we had one student who was a good birder on the trip, and another who knew an incredible amount about plants and trees.

Pretty flower on the hike up to the Niwot Ridge Research Station.

A smaller research station on the way up to the Niwot Ridge Research Station looking at atmosphere gas composition.

The Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory banding birds at a sustainable cattle ranch. This is the beautiful Brown Thrasher.

Another view of the Brown Thrasher.

I don’t fully remember at this point, but I think this one was a Wilson’s Warbler.

This is an ovenbird (such an unfortunate name) that they banded.

I don’t actually remember what this bird was! I thought it was a thrush but it doesn’t look like any of the ones in my bird guide. If you have any ideas, let me know in the comments.

This is a cage for catching shrikes. It has a mouse in a little cage in the middle. When the shrike gets in and tries to eat it, the door closes and it gets caught, but the mouse stays safe inside the mini cage (as long as it doesn’t stick its nose or paws out of the wires).

We visited the Waldo Canyon burn scar (at least the area we were allowed on) to look at the patchy effects of fire and re-colonization efforts, Rocky Mountain National Park to watch the elk rut, and a few other locations for general ecosystem ecology.

This is an area that was burned in the Waldo Canyon Fire last summer.

A half-melted golfball at the Waldo Canyon Fire burn scar. And this was a low-intensity burn area!

A study going on near the Niwot Ridge research station on warming and seedling growth. This class was really great at showing us current research projects in the area.

I woke up early and took this from our camp at Rocky Mountain NP.

I had fun taking water photos at the creek in the morning.

An elk at evening in Rocky Mountain National Park. They aren’t really afraid to get near to people.

Two male elk bucks fighting for mates during the rut.

Overall, it was the perfect mix of intense, valuable work and fun.

***

I just got back from my block break trip camping near Rocky Mountain National Park. We didn’t see as many elk as I was hoping, but it was calming to just be in nature. I was sick with a cold for much of the trip, so it wasn’t as comfortable as it could have been (we fit way, way more people in our tent than it was intended to hold), but it was a really nice reminder that I have made some incredible friends here at CC.

Evan stoically relaxing at camp (Note: I’m gonna go ahead and give the disclaimer that smoking is harmful for your health).

A very cute bunny that was in our campsite outside of Rocky Mountain NP.

We were watching animals…

…and the animals were watching us!

(so was this elk).

***

And now back to the retrospective. After Advanced Ecology, I had my thesis block. I really loved getting to dictate my own schedule, work at my own pace, and having the library to myself while everyone else was in class. I probably didn’t work quite as hard as I could have, but I still got a lot done. I was so proud of myself when I could identify a statistical test I needed to do (and after checking in with my advisor), look up how to do it online or in a book, and run it on a computer program. I felt very accomplished. I was also a little dismayed at how much I needed to change on the version I’d been working on for publication. After what I learned in my first class, I had to almost completely re-write everything. But it wouldn’t have been fun if I didn’t need to change anything.

I also realized what a social person I am. When I spent three hours working alone in the library each morning, by the time lunch rolled around, I really wanted to talk with and be around other people. It’s funny because I’ve always thought of myself as somewhat introverted but I don’t think that’s true at all anymore. Shy, maybe, but I definitely need and desire less alone time than I used to.

One of the many advantages of setting my own schedule meant that when Michelle Obama came to visit in the next town over, I didn’t have to cut class to go see her. It was amazing to hear her speak—she is incredibly strong, intelligent, and well-spoken. Watching her talk and being so close reminded me of how passionate I was about her husband when he was first running for office. It’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement of those moments, and I came out of the event reminded of why Obama actually hadn’t disappointed me that much, really, and why it really mattered to me that he get a second term.

Colorado rooting for Obama at the Michelle speech.

The crowd waiting to see Michelle Obama

Michelle Speaking at the event. We had pretty good seats.

She was such a passionate speaker!

The wait to see the speech, however, was an entirely different matter. For a 45 minute speech, it’s hard to justify waiting over six hours to hear it. Luckily, CC drove a huge group of student over in busses, so there were a lot of friends around to pass the time with; but even as inspiring as it was, I probably wouldn’t have gone if someone had told me how long it would take.

“Four more years!”

I almost got to shake her hand. Oh well.

We had a great time, it was very powerful.

***

The process of writing my thesis culminated in a presentation at an international conference for bat research, NASBR. Last summer, my advisor from Costa Rica emailed me and invited me to attend the conference in Puerto Rico. Three months and one CC Venture Grant later, I stepped off the plane in San Juan prepared to present at the first research conference I had ever attended.

The conference room where I spoke at NASBR. It was packed when I spoke. I still can’t quite believe I did it.

It was an incredible experience. I had done so much work on my project, that it was intimidating to put it all on the line and preset my research in front of hundreds of people who were actually experts in a field I had only gotten a brief taste of. It was really comforting to have Bernal, my advisor from Costa Rica, there at the conference too. I was extremely flattered when I got to meet one of the authors of the main supporting paper I used in my project, who really liked my presentation; I thought it was a good sign that we both had the same ideas about the implications of the research and where one could go next with further studies.

Downtown San Juan.

I’m not sure that bat research specifically is what I want to do in the future, but it was an incredible confidence boost to present at the conference, and it was fun to meet other young researchers doing interesting projects.

The ocean and a bridge from the hotel’s private beach. A little ridiculous, right?

The beautiful view from my hotel room

One downside was that the conference was very busy, so I didn’t get a chance to explore Puerto Rico. It seemed like a very interesting country, but the conference was in a resort hotel on a little peninsula separated from the rest of the city, so everything around the hotel was phenomenally expensive, geared towards rich tourists, and very uninteresting. The one trip I got to take downtown was much, much more interesting, but I would’ve liked a chance to explore some more.

A restaurant we went to in San Juan. It was really nice.

The local favorite alcoholic drink (I don’t remember the name but it was slang and had something to do with tits). They had two different flavors: passionfruit and coconut. The waiter was so impressed that I could finish my whole plate (it was a ton of food. I was hungry) that he gave me an extra shot. Yum.

***

After I got back from Puerto Rico, I started my first “just for fun” class I’d taken in a long time. It was called Hip Hop Aesthetics, and I had signed up for it at the beginning of the year after I saw the professor, Idris Goodwin, speak and present an excerpt of a play he wrote about Midwest high school kids learning how to rap. It was so impressive that I signed up for his class (which happened to fall on my free block) as soon as I walked out of the theater.

I was not disappointed. It was one of the best classes I have ever taken, because of the professor, the students, and the subject material. I was never really exposed to rap or hip hop while I was growing up, so I walked into the class without much appreciation for the subject matter or any understanding of its history. The course focused on the music of hip hop (DJing and MCing, the backbone and lyrics of hip hop), but we also learned about b-boying (dancing), graffiti, and spoken word performance. We also wrote and performed rap and spoken word poetry in class. It was creative, informative, soul-searching, and fun. I can’t really do it justice here, but I really discovered a new expressive outlet for my love of wordplay and poetry, and a new art form that I enjoy listening and watching.

For many readers whom I suspect don’t know much about rap or hip hop, I have a few quick suggestions that might give a sense of why I really enjoyed learning about the genre:

One song is called The Message, by Grandmaster Flash (sometimes considered the father of hip hop): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4o8TeqKhgY>. It’s a good example of conscious lyrics, fun wordplay, a neat sense of rhythm. We also looked at a few different common themes of rap songs, one of which was songs about where you’re from. One good example is Digable Planet’s Where I’m From: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl-pjb7y3y0> (lyrics at http://rapgenius.com/Digable-planets-where-im-from-lyrics). I really like the style and how well it mixed multiple artists. Finally, a more recent example, that highlights the political function of hip hop, is Lupe Fiasco’s Bitch Bad: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3m3t_PxiUI>. Lupe explores issues of race and gender in mainstream media and rap, which is an insightful topic people don’t think of when they think of rap.

I’m still trying to write rap songs now that the class is over, and it gives a really good appreciation of how talented these artists are. Someday I might be able to really do it, so it’s a fun new hobby to try.

***

I also had a chance to do some fun things during that block. I’ve gotten closer with my roommates, who are all such cool people. Navin and Achini were both in the Diwali (a Hindi festival of lights) celebration on campus, and I had a lot of fun taking photos.

Lighting candles for Diwali

Dancing for Diwali

One of my roommates, Achini, dancing a piece she choreographed for Diwali.

One of my roommates, Navin, did a bangladeshi dance for Diwali.

***

That brings us roughly back to the present. I just finished a wonderful Thanksgiving with Max in Chicago. I got to see his friends again and be a part of his world for a little while. It was a very packed weekend: I got to see Idris’ play that was showing in Chicago that was (roughly) about discrimination and difficulties among black academics in less racially integrated areas; Max took me to a play called Too Much Light Makes the Baby go Blind: 30 plays in 60 minutes, by the Neofuturists, which was an incredibly fun experience; then I got to meet up with family friends Bill and Bernardine, who are always so enlightening and comforting to talk to; I also got to see a friend who was on my Costa Rica abroad program, which was so wonderful because I always sort of assume I’ll never see those people again. We packed so many activities (and food) in, but I was so glad we did. It’s hard to be so far away from family all the time—I miss my twin.

I still don’t know what class I’m taking next block. I just found out that I have an open block, so I can take whatever I want. I’ve mostly narrowed it down to an interactive “fun” physics class on flight that will take us to wind tunnels and interact with the Air Force Academy, or an intermediate acting class on Shakespeare (with only three students in it last time I checked) with a professor who is supposed to be incredible.

***

I chose the drama class, which is challenging because I haven’t done acting in so long, but also easy enough that I for once have time for other things as well. I do really miss science though, and I’m glad I’ll be getting back too it next semester. Nothing else works me quite as hard or fascinates me quite as much, even though the humanities are extremely fulfilling in other ways.

I just finished Dance Workshop, which is a student-run dance show. I performed on a slightly sprained ankle (I had an embarrassing accident that involved texting, walking, and stairs), and did not manage to make it any worse. It was also very, very fun. I got to meet a lot of new people, move my body, perform, and be incredibly silly.

[Update: you can watch a video of that dance, and all the others, on youtube. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qes2gIk_qjc&feature=plcp ]

So far this has been an amazing semester. I’m having so much fun as a senior that I’m terrified of next year. I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know exactly what I want to be doing, how to get the jobs I think I want, or whether the job market is such that I can even get a job. I’m terrified of sitting at home not doing anything worthwhile, which is extra scary now that I feel so accomplished at what I do and so ready to do good work. Also, I decided I really want a dog, which requires a bit of money and stability. For now, I’ll just keep having a great time and working hard, and hope that I can get everything together before the end of the year.