We decided to relocate to the Wild Sumaco lodge for the last two days of fieldwork because we knew the woodstars visited there regularly. Getting to the lodge turned out to be a little tricky. A few days earlier, a Coca Cola delivery truck had overturned on a bridge on its way to deliver its goods to – get this – the city of Coca. We needed to cross this bridge to get to the lodge and we were considered abandoning the car, fording the river, and getting picked up on the other side. We were getting desperate to see any woodstars, even if they weren’t going to display for us.
We talked our
way past the police blockage to go survey the situation for ourselves. It
turns out the damage was only moderate and we would be able to pass through
after waiting a few hours. In the meantime, the construction scene was
fascinating to watch. It seemed like a familiar setting at first: a
few guys working while everyone else just stood around and watched. Upon
closer inspection, the dynamic turned out to be more interesting. It
turns out there were only 3 construction people at the bridge and the rest of
the workers were volunteers from the crowd of stranded travelers.
There was a guy
wearing nice business clothes helping to measure replacement parts.
Another guy would bring tools to the engineer and there were a couple others
that were just around for brute force when a hunk of the bridge had to get
moved. The volunteers would rotate so there were never the same people
helping out. The great part was, unlike the US, you could just wander up
and look over the shoulder of the guy welding stuff back onto the bridge.
We eventually
got to the lodge but didn’t get much done before dark. Since we were
going to have a relatively late start the next day (6am vs. 5am) I decided to
poke around the forest to see what I could find. I was exhausted and left
my camera in the room thinking I would only wander around for a few minutes.
I immediately realized this was a stupid idea. I ran back to the room,
assembled my macro photography setup, and headed out for a proper romp through
the forest.
I love montane
rainforest. The misty, cool climate, the lack of mosquitoes, the
moss-covered logs, and the jaw-dropping bugs covering every surface. I
would make it about 10 steps before finding some new bizarre creature to
photograph. Mating stick insects, leaf-mimicking katydids, parasitic
wasps crawling out of caterpillars, iridescent earthworms…I’ve seen some cool
stuff working in the tropics over the years but the density and diversity of
this place blew me away. At times like this, sleep, food, and weather no
longer matter. I just keep shooting until the battery runs out or the
memory card fills up. In this case, I started with a fresh battery and an
empty 32 gb card so I ended up with 1450 photos before turning in for the
night. Easily the most productive night of photography I have ever had.
Just a few of
the highlights (I will add names as I get more info on the creatures):
Lizard
Harvestman (daddy
longlegs)
Lepidopteran chrysalis
(butterfly or moth as it is transforming from a caterpillar into an adult)
Moth
Parasitized caterpillar.
The white tubes you see here are where the parasitoid wasps have emerged from
their host. As larvae, these wasps have munched their way through the
caterpillar’s body, keeping their host alive by carefully eating around its
vital organs.
Epiphytic plant growing
on the trunk of a small tree (anybody know what this is?)
Plethodontid salamander
(Bolitoglossa sp). While frogs
are usually very abundant in the rainforest, salamanders are much harder to
come by. This was only the second salamander I have found in the tropics,
the first being just a few feet away on the same trail.
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