Jungle Diaries – 13th May

The 0445 start for the Colpa made last nights decision to do the night walk seem very foolish – still, it was worth it to see the tarantulas…

The colpa was good – not as sunny as last week, but pleanty of good views, and as the kids weren’t that interested I got to use the telescope a lot and saw loads of different birds including; mealy parrots, dusky headed parrots, orange cheeked parrots (which are absolutely beautiful) and a couple of woodpeckers and a flock of orupendula.

After breakfast I went out with the mammals group looking for mammals or signs thereof (and socretea trees – the group’s project was to see if there was any relationship between the perimeter of the roots and the height of the tree. You see – it is a science trip and not just a great holiday…) We didn’t see any mammals (although some peccaries saw us and scarpered before we got to them ) but we did find some trumpeter birds, some dung beetles and LOTS of socratea trees.

Trumpeter birds

After lunch I fell asleep in the hammock. I woke up to find all of the kids had gone on their second activity so I went to bed and woke up about half an hour before dinner, just in time to download some of my pictures onto Harry’s laptop before eating.

Weird caterpillar

After dinner I went out to look at the insects and saw a couple of species I hadn’t seen before including a beautiful white moth, only about 2 cm across, that looked like it had been edged with gold leaf! Nature throws up the most amazing things really when you think about it!