Isla Barro Colorado

I had the opportunity to take the trip to Isla Barro Colorado, which is by far my favorite part of Panama so far. The island was created in Gatun Lake when they built a dam for the Panama Canal. It is owned and maintained by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Center, so researchers can live on the island for a while or commute via ferry and do some fancy studies with tropical species. I'm not sure how I would feel about living or working there, since there are quite a few little critters that bite. I managed to get away with only some ant bites and one chigger bite, but there are some pretty venomous things out there as well.

We almost missed our ferry due to some intense rain and floods on the way. We made it and enjoyed a rather noisy but otherwise tranquil ride across the canal and Gatun Lake to the island. We got an introduction to the island and some of the research conducted there by our guide, Mauricio, and then started on a hike through the forest. The minuses first: it was so, so humid and the ants found me so, so delicious. We stopped a lot to talk about various plants and animals or research projects, and I suppose that we were close to an ant nest or something. They would go inside of my shirt a lot and bite there, but I even got a bite through my pants. Although they had wings and were really annoying, I'd rather be bitten by those ants than the bullet ants. The latter apparently have a nasty bite and the nastiest sting ever. I will take their word for it, the ant is gigantic (~1 in long) and fast. Check out the video on my picasa site, the pictures were all too blurry! The same is true for the leaf cutter ants, which are very cool to see in person but the video will have to do.

I also got some video of monkeys! We saw 3 different species throughout the hike, the only one missing was the tamarin. They are apparently very small and quiet though, so they are not easy to see. The spider monkeys and the whiteface capuchin were very active and super cute. They were definitely working the charismatic megafauna bit. We heard howler monkeys quite a bit throughout the hike and finally saw some towards the end of the hike. We also heard all sorts of birds that we couldn't see, including two species of toucan. I FINALLY SAW ONE!! They like to hang out in the canopy beyond the eyes of a land-bound human, but this one was hanging out in an opening. I included the photo here, but you will probably have to zoom way in to see it. Try picasa if it doesn't show up here. This one is a chestnut mandibled toucan. Among the creepy crawlies, we saw some HUGE golden-orb spiders, lots of ants, one large and one small crocodile, a boa constrictor, and a poison dart frog. Most of them were hanging out near the boat dock, ha.

One of the cool things that we learned about was their radio tracking research that they do. They showed us one of their very interesting maps, which showed the paths of a collared ocelot chasing a collared agouti (rodent mammal snack). Amazingly, the kill happened right near a motion-sensing camera, so they also got video of mama teaching the baby ocelot how to eat agouti.

If anyone is interested in conducting research in a tropical rainforest, you should consider applying. You're pretty much guaranteed permission unless you say you want to chop down the forest, introduce invasives, or something like that. Photos below are: the toucan (right fork in the branch, near the center of the image), a monkey (whiteface capuchin, I believe), all of us in front of the aptly-named Big Tree, the docks, and our ride to and from the island.