day 6

Kestrel
adjusting settings
Fer-de-lance


Last night Pedro found a Fer-de-lance snake near the cafeteria along the side of the wall. The Fer-de-lance is perhaps the most lethal snake in Costa Rica! It’s a good thing everyone was already back in their dorms/cabins. Its name is French for spearhead literally “iron of the lance.” This morning Corbin, Mike, Monet and I followed Rebecca (the director of OTS) to see her release it in the forest. Our group went to check out the Kestrels we set up Wednesday. The first time we set them up was a trial and error because we didn’t know that it was on auto shutoff so none of the three we set up collected any data. We changed the settings to make it stay on and we also changed it to collect data every 5 minutes instead of every 15 minutes. We saw some vines hanging on the trail and I wanted to swing on them like Tarzan but I don’t have the upper body strength to stay on long :D We finished up early in the forest, made our way back to the research station and I got to have ice cream! During lunch they had this ketchup tasting sauce that I poured on the chips they served it was good, tasted like the ketchup chips they have in Canada. Pedro told Mike the scientific name of the plant we were sampling wasn’t a Chamaedorea it was a Geonoma oxycarpa. When we returned we started working on our abstract and edited our materials and methods, it was a pretty chill day I’m glad because I don’t have much energy. 


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