Interning at the Monteverde Butterfly Gardens

One year ago, I found an advertisement for an internship on WorkCabin and two months later arrived in Monteverde as a new intern at the Monteverde Butterfly Gardens. I was greeted by the owners Bryna and David as well as their son Eli and another intern Mike. I had no idea what I was in for. I spent 2 1/2 months as an intern guiding tours and working in the gardens. What started as a joking “hey, you should come back for a few more weeks before you go” turned into me extending my flight and returning to the gardens after traveling Costa Rica for a couple months. I then went back to Canada to work as a naturalist running public education programs in Ontario. One day Bryna sent me a message, she asked me to come back as an intern coordinator! I was thrilled, but had already accepted a job in Canada. The downside to this job is there is an off season, so I offered to come back for a few months and help develop an intern coordinator position for the gardens. David often jokes that they can’t get rid of me. So at the moment I am the acting intern coordinator. A few of the interns have mentioned that they were looking for more information on working at the gardens and came across my blog. So here it is from someone who has spent a collective 5 1/2 months at the Monteverde Butterfly Gardens.

Teaching local kids about metamorphosis

Tours start in our nature center with 1-15 people!

I started off my training and quickly found out that I was going to learn a lot. Like, think an entire entomology course a lot. I arrived not knowing the difference between an insect and an arachnid (I focused mainly on marine biology in university) and now can ID most insects and arachnids then give you a 5 minute interpretive talk about how cool and important they are. As an intern you first learn to give hour and fifteen minute tours through 4 butterfly gardens and a nature center with beetles, tarantulas, and giant stick insects. You develop basic familiarity with all of the animals, enough to give a funny and informative tour, and then learn at your own pace. I can not stress enough how much I learned while here. There are textbooks available, you are immersed in the insect and arachnid world and the more you learn the more you want to know.

I could talk about tarantulas and beetles for hours if you let me

Some owl butterflies in one of the gardens

We often see other wildlife around the gardens as well!

Between tours and learning we also have garden work to do. We keep our gardens to quite high standards putting out flowers and nectar in the mornings, raking trails and doing other chores. Between learning and garden work we keep very busy! In the nights we often go out for night hikes, looking for praying mantis, katydids, and other night creatures. We all live together, work together, have family dinner and pizza night every week, and go out together. It really just feels like a big family.

Interns showing off our cool entomology

You have to be motivated, enthusiastic and flexible. You work 6 days a week and sometimes you do 4 tours in a day. This can add up to 5+ hours of talking enthusiastically to people! Some days, you do no tours, which means you have to find things to keep busy. Sometimes you are going to work until 4, other days you’ll still have tourists in the gardens at 6. These traits apply as both an employee and as a roommate. You’re going to be eating rice and beans the majority of the time, not showering as often as usual, and going without many North American luxuries. You have to be open to adjusting to the Costa Rican lifestyle! I’ve seen many interns come and go. Self-motivated, flexible individuals are the ones who enjoy their time at the gardens the most.

One of our interns, Matt, is particularly excited about catching animals on trail cam. He sets up a trail camera every night and checks out his cool photos in the mornings

Bryna and David are amazing naturalists. Not only are they into entomology, but they are also avid birders, herpers, and really all around amazingly informed and knowledgeable people. I credit Bryna for my interest in snakes and public education, David fostered my interest in the scientific details of entomology and evolution, and Bryna and another intern Mike introduced me to one of my favourite hobbies: birding. Depending on the blend of interns here at the time, you have the opportunity to learn about many different aspects of nature.

You may find yourself leaving with a new hobby or two

Monteverde is an amazing place if you are interested in nature. You have opportunities on your days off to explore so many amazing reserves and hiking areas. I usually grab a pair of our Eagle Optics binoculars and walk around one of the reserves, grab a coffee at a local cafe and hike to one of the cool fig trees nearby. You’ll also hear a lot from tourists about different areas around Costa Rica. It is definitely worth keeping some time open to travel after your stay at the gardens, as you will be tempted to extend your fight after hearing about all of the amazing places to explore.

Days off spent exploring

You can’t make it all the way to the beach on a day off, so it’s worth spending an extra week or more after your internship!

You can check out our tumblr, regularly updated by the interns to get a better idea of what intern life at the gardens is like: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/monteverdebutterflygardens

Apply for an internship! http://www.workcabin.ca/jobs/education/education-and-outreach-internship

Adventures with Bats: Conservation of Canada’s Flying Mammals

I’ve been a little bit bat crazy ever since reading the Silverwing series as a kid. But more recently my bat love has turned from reading about them to working with real live bats! Last week I had the opportunity to help with mist netting project for bats in Ontario. I’ve assisted with mist netting in Costa Rica and really fell in love with bats while I was there. What I took away from my experience in Costa Rica was that the bats of North America, particularly Eastern North America, are in trouble! I learned a little bit about white nose fungus, which can be a fatal problem for bats and is currently spreading into and across Canada.

A little brown bat, very common in Southern Ontario – Photo by Christy Humphrey

Most people don’t realize how large of a role bats play in our ecosystem. They are responsible for seed dispersal, pollination, and some serious insect control. Like, 1,000 mosquitoes per hour insect control! Even as someone who loves animals I can appreciate a hatred of mosquitoes. Bats also pollinate agave plants, which are used to make tequila. So when you think about bats, think about drinking tequila outside while not being bitten by mosquitoes. Just picture that for a moment…Now hopefully you’re on board with saving the bats! Which we’ll come back to in a moment.

Save the bats, save the tequila.

Outside of a known roosting site, a church in Southern Ontario, we set up some large mist nets (mist nets look like volleyball nets, but are made with very fine mesh the bats have a difficult time detecting). This was luxury mist netting, in Costa Rica we set up our nets across paths in the jungle! We counted over 200 bats flying out of the roost and caught 38 of them. The studies I assisted with in Costa Rica were purely population dynamics: identify, record gender and species and let them go. This was a little more invasive. We held the bats until they were processed and then released them.

A bat caught in a mist net. As long as you are diligent about checking the nets frequently they don’t get too tangled. Photo by Stuart

Processing involved weighing, measuring the wing, banding with an individual ID tag, checking for scarring on the wing (evidence of white nose fungus), taking a small sample of tissue from the wing for DNA analysis (surprisingly this did not seem to disturb the bats based on their lack of reaction), and taking a small hair sample for molecular analysis of metals.

Placing a lightweight band on a little brown bat – Photo by Christy Humphrey

The primary purpose here was to monitor for white nose fungus. This fungus was first recorded outside of New York in 2007 and has since spread up to 2,000 km away, infecting bats in many Eastern states and provinces. As of 2013 the fungus has been confirmed in bat populations as far West as central Ontario in Canada and Western Missouri in the US.

A distribution map of white nose fungus from whitenosefungus.org

White nose syndrome is named for the appearance of a white fungus on the face – Photo by US fish and wildlife services

This fungus causes bats to behave strangely, coming out of hibernation in the winter which results in excess energy being used and an inability to survive the winter. Approximately 50% of little brown bats in an affected colony will die over the winter in an affected colony. 90-100% of bats in some regions have died. In Southern New Brunswick, an area boasting a population of 7,000 bats in 2011, the estimated population is 22 bats in 2014. That is not a typo. Twenty two bats!

The fungus causes damage to the wings, and even those who survive the winter often have extensive scarring on the wings. – Photo by US Fish and Wildlife Services

Stopping, or at least slowing, the spread of this fungus is extremely important. Bats are important everywhere, but our Westernmost province has the most to lose. With 16 species of bats (including 8 endemic species) found in British Columbia, half of which are either red or blue listed, BC would be hit hard by this fungus.

Cavers are very important in helping to stop the spread of this fungus! If you enter a cave, after ensuring it is safe and not closed due to conservation reasons, always wash everything you were wearing/using before entering another cave. Humans moving between roosting sites, mostly while caving, have been the main factor in spreading this fungus. You can report any strange behaviour in bats (ie. flying around in the middle of the winter) to the local natural resource agency, build a bat box to provide a roosting site for bats (plans can be found online), and not disturb hibernating bats. See other suggestions on how you can help bats here: https://www.whitenosesyndrome.org/what-can-you-do-help

There are many myths out there about bats, but once you get past all of the bad media they are amazing creatures and very necessary for our ecosystem to thrive and survive! We need these little creatures to stick around, so try your best to love the bats. When in doubt, think of the tequila.

Nature’s Engineers: Bird Nests

Animals have been building nests for millions of years, there are even fossil records of dinosaur nests! Over time nests have become very complex and from birds to turtles to termites and wasps there is beauty, diversity and much to be learned from these structures!

When we hear the word “nest” we tend to think of a standard woven cup structure built by a song bird of some sort, but there is an amazing amount of diversity in nests; materials, shape, strength, size that we don’t necessarily think about.

There is quite a bit of evidence for evolution in bird nests. Some ground nesting birds don’t build nests at all, others make small depressions by rubbing their breast into the ground. Some birds make stick nests either on the ground or in trees and others weave together materials into some of the more complex animal built structures. Birds are always competing for resources, and nest materials are no exception. To deal with competition for nest materials some birds use specific materials or habitats not utilized by other species for nesting. Using different materials can sometimes require some creative engineering, and we end up seeing some amazing structures as a result, such as the hanging nest of the Montezuma Oropendola:

The Montezuma Oropendola weaves a hanging basket using sturdy vines attached to overhanging branches. It continues to add smaller wines and other fibrous material until the basket is complete. These birds utilize the environment by nesting in trees containing hornets! The honets deter cowbirds, who often lay eggs in the Oropendola nests. Photo by Amy Evenstad

The Great Crested Flycatcher will often weave a snake skin into it’s nest (2)

A particularly interesting example of creative uses of materials to build a unique structure suited perfectly to utilize an environment uncommon for nesting is the cliff swallow.

A cliff swallow leaving it’s nest: a mud based structure on the side of overhanging cliff faces, man made structures such as houses and the occasional tree. Photo by Jerry Kirkhart.

There are not many birds who a. nest on cliff faces and b. utilize mud as a primary building material. The cliff swallow is really taking advantage of a niche market. Even between Cliff and Barn Swallows (another mud utilizing nest builder) the mud composition is different, so the two species are not competing over the same mud. This likely contributes to the differences in nest shapes between the species. Barn swallows build a more cup shaped nest while the cliff swallows build a dome. Cliff swallows (both male and female) will collect mud pellets from alongside bodies of water and place them on a vertical wall, under overhanging structures to create a nest composed of 900-1,200 individual pellets of mud! They will often also add plant fibers and hair to the structure, then line the inside with feathers and other softer fibers.

Cliff Swallows are very social when it comes to nesting, and will nest in groups of up to 3,700 nests! A great way to deal with predators of other species, but sometimes this results in nest parasitism, where one bird will lay it’s eggs in another bird’s nest.

It takes 1-2 weeks for the Cliff Swallow to build it’s nest, which all things considered is actually rather fast! This structure has no load bearing capabilities from below, yet will support 4-6 eggs for 12-14 days and once hatched, nestlings will remain in the nest for 23 days. The design of the cliff swallow nest has been studied by engineers and shown (in engineering terminology I don’t completely understand, but appreciate due to the parts I can understand as well as trust in the peer review process) to have a nearly perfect design for it’s use!

Basically what I’m trying to say is that bird nests are amazing. From the ground nests of penguins, to goldfinch cups, mourning dove, chipping sparrows and cliff swallows. Nature’s engineers are hard at work creating amazing structures in which to raise their young.

Mourning doves create a rather flimsy platform of twigs, sometimes using an old nest from another bird as a base. photo by mnchilemom

The American goldfinch creates a cup shaped structure built of woven plant fibers including bark strips, all bound together using spider webs, caterpillar silk, and other woven fibers. The goldfinch will always build it’s nest above a fork in a tree branch.

You can find a bird nest yourself by going out and following a bird carrying food or nesting materials, just remember not to get too close. Bring a pair of binoculars and look from a distance or wait until the nest has been abandoned to get a closer look. If you disturb the nest the baby birds might try to fly away before they are ready!

Costa Rica in 3 weeks: Part 3: The Yoga Farm

This is by far the farthest into my inner hippy that I have gone. I took a school bus to the end of a dirt road and then used my broken Spanish to talk someone into letting me and two other travelers hop in the back of his pick up to drive us the last half hour. I then hiked up the hill from hell with my pack (which had all of my climbing gear as well as traveling things and was very very heavy) and arrived at this beautiful series of small buildings tucked away in the forest.

The main building had a yoga studio on the top floor and dorms on the bottom. The yoga studio, open and surrounded by jungle, was the perfect place to get back into my practice. One day while doing yoga we saw a chestnut billed tucan, just sitting watching us from a nearby branch.

The kitchen had freshly prepared vegetarian food prepared by the volunteers each day, as well as a lovely kombucha station. I’m actually in love with this place. There were so many birds, most of which I did not identify! We had one 90 minute yoga class each day, and access to the studio all day long. I walked down the the beach at least twice each day to go for a surf or a swim or use the internet at Roberto’s where his wife Free (spelling?) would make the worlds most amazing smoothies. We would usually walk down to watch the sunset, it never gets old. The only way to really appreciate this place is to go there. It was my favourite part of my 3 week travels. But some pictures will give you a general idea!

 

The walk up the hill

The beach

Sunsets

Learning my insects

This was our studio/bedroom. Yoga will never be the same

Facepainting with one of the owners of The Yoga Farm and her wonderful children

We even got some Acro in!

The children in this community were your best friends as soon as they met you and were so high energy!

Acro on the beach

 

Costa Rica in 3 weeks, part 2: Cachi Crags and Uvita

My second week of adventures following my internship at the Monteverde Butterfly Gardens and my surfing trip in Tamarindo included a trip to Cachi Crags for some much needed rock climbing and a stopover in Uvita, a small town next to a beautiful marine reserve.

Cachi crags

I met up with Jenny and Chase, who I’d come into contact with through a friend of a friend, in the small town of Cachi, south of San Jose. I was a little tipsy as I’d gone into a bar for the wifi and come out 4 beer and 3 Facebook friends richer, but we went to the local market set up on the side of the road and picked up some delicious veggies and homemade yogurt. After a ridiculously steep drive down a single lane dirt road, we met Don-Vidal, owner of the climbing property, who set us up in a nice little cabin approximately 10m away from the crag. We were literally able to watch each other climb from the kitchen. We had 4 days of climbing with 1 rest day.

Our little cabin in the woods

The natural pool was awesome after a day of climbing

Some crazy rock. It looks like it would have amazing holds everywhere, but its really rather slopey, and although you almost always have good feet the hand holds can be thin.

Chase hops on what I believe is a 5.12b if I remember correctly. Which I may not…

Jenny is a pretty amazing camp cook

Our kitchen

The deck turned yoga studio upstairs

So on ‘ojo del tigre’, there was a wasp nest critically close to a handhold. One makeshift torch later we learned that the wasps were of the stingless variety. Anyways, he sent it.

Jenny got it just as bad as the wasps. The torch swung and scraped her up pretty well. I’m just glad she wasn’t impaled.

My 10c project, I toproped it first just to be sure. 5 months off climbing will do that.

View from the top, not half bad

On our rest day we visited Gyuapa National Monument, an archaeological site. This is a top view of the foundations of multiple buildings and an aquaduct system.

Pretty impressive stone architecture

Aquaduct system remnants

The lizard petroglyph

A parasitized wasp we found, super neat!

We also drove up to volcano turrialba

The view on the drive up, gorgeous farm houses

Pretty successful rest day!

Cachi was pretty different from most of the climbing I’ve done, really interesting, I tend to rely more on being good at finding small balancey feet rather than searching for awkward hand holds, but that’s what you’ve got to do here as you generally have good feet! There is definitely room for development if anyone wants to commit to cleaning a lot of forest off of rock. As of now I believe there are less than 20 routes, plus a few projects, and nice wide range of difficulty! I was able to work on a 10c while Jenny worked a 12c and Chase projected a 13b.

With my forearms sufficiently sore and missing a significant amount of finger skin I made my way to Uvita, mid pacific coast area, to enjoy the national marine reserve for a couple days. I had a small room to myself near the beach, with a Spanish only speaking staff which made things like losing my key interesting… On my first day I visited the south end of the reserve, then arranged for a snorkelling/whale watching tour the next day. I went down to the beach as I heard there was music on my first night. I was met by a woman who introduced herself as brighthawk and invited me to join in the fire circle. They played drums and danced for a while, apparently there was an event called forest dance that I had just missed where they performed fire circles every night and that’s about all I got before I went to bed.

Welcome to the park!

Golden orb weaver

The beach. Most people: “white sandy beaches!” Me: ” can you please direct me to the rockiest area on the beach?”

And I found it. Tide pooling and surge channels. Unfortunately it was kind of mid-high tide though. You’d think I didn’t check the tide tables or something…

But I found this cute little limpet

Lots of crabs!

And, unrelated to tide pools, a cicada.

Landcrabs on my way to the beach.

Day 2, snorkelling near the north entrance of the park at the whale tail

We saw a humpback whale and her calf

Island ballena where we snorkelled again. Parrotfish, coral, sea urchins, other neat fishes I don’t know the name of and gigantic sea.stars! I may have been pulled into a surge channel at one point while exploring sea urchins and algae…

We then went to some beautiful caves, where I swear you could do some awesome climbing if the water were deep enough

Going through a cave

Brown footed boobies!

Once I had my fill of salt water for the day I joined a few people for a few hours at a waterfall nearby. You can slide down the watersfall, and climb up the rock around it. To the left, a long-ish V0. To the right, anything from V0-2 depending on where you were and how wet your feet were.

Sliding down the waterfall

We had a little fun stacking plastic bugs back at the hostel

Sunset swim on my last night in Uvita

With burned on tanned skin, salty hair, sand everywhere and a surprising number of ants in my backpack from my room I told the ocean I’d never leave it again, packed up and left on the 5am bus for The Yoga Farm in Pavones.

Costa Rica in 3 weeks, Part 1: Border Hopping and Tamarindo

I’m finished most of my internship at the butterfly gardens and just had 3 weeks to travel before a two week volunteer stint at Cano p
Palma research station. I started by going to San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua, then spent a week in Tamarindo surfing, climbed in Cachi, snorkelled in Uvita and spent a week at The Yoga Farm in Punta Banco. I’ve been a terrible blogger and haven’t been keeping up at all, so I’m going to write this in three parts, breaking it into:
1. Nicaragua and Tamarindo
2. Cachi
3.Punta Banco

Nicaragua and Tamarindo

San Juan del Sur is a very touristy town in Nicaragua so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to learn I was sharing a room with 11 frat guys, or that one of them had shat on the floor the night before. The area surrounding the town is quite gorgeous though! I spent a bit of time on the beach my first day, then hiked around more on my second day, got a little bit lost, but figured it out and had a pretty great time overall.

So this is what was taped to the bunk next to me when I arrived

A nice beach, with a very large Jesus statue looking out over the town

About a 45 minute walk from town, or a 2 hour walk if you’re me and accept a ride from someone who has no idea what you’re talking about when you say petroglyph and takes you to a suburb..but either way you can find a beautiful river with a large petroglyph.

I don’t know very much about it, but it is amazing to look at!

Hiked back to town then up to the Jesus statue where the view is amazing!

Me and Jesus watching over the bay

A few of the guys in my dorm went on a booze cruise, came back and promptly passed out after drawing on each other drew, then puked and peed their beds. Nice work gentlemen. My bunkmate let his friend who peed in his bed join him in his bed as long as he promised to “respect my bunkie, you’ve gotta be nice to my bunkie because she’s a marine biologist and I love her”. So that was funny.

After an early morning border crossing, which was mad hectic and involved a 2 hour line up in the dusty heat, I was en route to Tamarindo.

Tamarindo

I spent a week in Tamarindo at Witches Rock Surf Camp. When i arrived I barely had time to put my things in my room and throw my swimsuit on before my first lesson. The waves were pretty big on my first day, and i may have overstated my surfing experience en espanol, so my instructor kept chucking me on big waves. It was pretty sweet, I dropped in on a few pretty good ones and intimidated most of the guys in the camp. We had a 90 minute surf session everyday plus some type of tutorial like surf safety, surf etiquette, history of surf, science of waves, and a couple video analysis where we essentially watched the best bails and rides of the day from where we were secretly filmed in the bushes.

So ready to surf

An afternoon tide pool exploration turned into putting sea stars on our heads

Check out the cute nudibranch!

Surfing in the river mouth, the waves were kind of small after the first couple days but we still had a great time

Coconut on the beach

My roommate was into crossfit so we did WODs (workout of the days) in between surf sessions

Barnacles!!! Yes I am 3 exclamation marks excited about barnacles. I got to show people tide pools and explain the joys of barnacles to them. Most people don’t realize that there is an animal in that little cone structure. Well, usually, unless a sea star or something has eaten them.

A visitor at breakfast

We had an infinity pool which was actually pretty nice to relax in. I’m normally against pools next to beaches, but I came to accept it as something pretty wonderful

We were able to watch Robert August shape a custom surf board, he has done over 35,000 of them!

Shaping that board

Last day with my two favourite instructors, Axel and Maria

Our surfer stances. My favourite lesson from Maria was how girls need to pop up slightly differently because we have “the boobies” and the booties.

Some of the crew on our last night

And i now have a surf diploma, pretty much going to frame it next to my BSc.

So surf camp was a pretty killer time. Worth it for sure, if anyone wants to go if I recommend you you get $50 off or something. I tried out my new surfing skills in Punta Banco and got smashed by the huge waves, but to be totally honest, I deserved that. The waves were really big.

Next up, Cachi Crags and Uvita!

The Biochemistry of Defense: Vinegaroons

Here at the Monteverde Butterfly Gardens we have the decepetively named “tailless whip scorpion”, which is not a scorpion at all but an amplypygid. Slightly more difficult to pronounce but a much more accurate name. The amplipygid has no stinger, no venom, no defense mechanism at all really. For capturing prey it has are some modified front legs. She essentially hugs her prey to death via impalement, which is pretty neat, but not nearly as cool as the chemical defense the similarly named whip scorpion possesses.

The tailless whip scorpion, aka amplypygid, we have at the Monteverde Butterfly Gardens

So, kind of related: The whip scorpion, similar to the tailless whip scorpion only by name and being an arachnid, does has a chemical defense. As the name implies, this creature has a tail from which she can quite accurately, aim and spray a chemical defense: acetic acid, aka vinegar, which is where it gets it’s more appropriate name, the vinegaroon. So normally, vinegar is a very low percentage of acetic acid. The vinegaroon actually has the highest concentration of acetic acid found in nature: 84%.

Vinegaroon ready to spray 1

This chemical is used defensively, primarily other things with exoskeletons. The vinegaroon has a slight problem though. Although acetic acid is quite a wonderful defense on soft fleshy parts, it is water soluble and will roll off of an exoskeleton of it’s attacker without harming it. So it needs to employ another tactic. Mixed with the acetic acid is another acid, caprylic acid, which is able to move through the waxy cuticle of the exoskeleton. This mixture with spread to cover more area as well as actually getting under that exoskeleton so it can do some damage. In the end, when the mixture is actually shot out of two storage compartments in the vinegaroon it is composed of 84% acetic acid, 5% caprylic acid, and 11% water.

A Bombardier Beetle spraying a chemical mixture which is 100 degrees celsius! 2

Chemical defense is quite amazing and is found in many species of insects and arachnids. One famous chemical defense is the bombadier beetle which uses a mixture hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide from two separate chambers and shoots out a 100 degree celsius mixture at it’s predators. As there are many more insects waiting to be discovered and/or studied I’m sure we’ll be learning about many more amazing chemical defenses in the future.

In the meantime, poke insects you don’t recognize with care or you may find yourself smelling kind of funny.

Info from:

For Love of Insects by Thomas Eisner
Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions and Other Many Legged Creatures 2005 (Eisner, T., Eisner, M., Siegler, M.)

Monteverde: Exploring, Ziplining and Wilderness Survival

In the last 2 years I have seen snow probably less than 10 times. Most of those times were during the week before I left Canada for Costa Rica, I think I’m doing it right. Monteverde is gorgeous, I had another day off and explored a little more. I’ve been ziplining, night hiking, dancing, learning, teaching and just generally exploring and enjoying life!

The one photo I got of me ziplining. This is during the 1.59 km ‘superman’ line.

I went ziplining at a place here in Monteverde called Adventura. It included a 1.59km “superman” line, which is when you are attached to the zipline by your back and soar through the air like some kind of weird bird, and a tarzan swing. The tarzan swing is a 45m rope swing. You step off of a platform (by step off I mean some patient employees push you off while you repeatedly say “ohmygod no, no no no”) and then you freefall until the rope catches you. Then you take this awesome swing 45m below the platform. It was amazing, I feel bad for any eardrums within a 100m radius though. As it turns out I can scream like a terrified howler monkey.

A gigantic strangler fig tree you can climb inside of.

I’ve done some fun hiking and exploring, a friend showed me this amazing strangler fig tree that is completely hollow and large enough that you can actually climb up inside of it! The other volunteers here at the garden and I went and checked out another fig tree that has fallen across the river and it’s roots have grown down into the river. Both were absolutely amazing, I am completely smitten by trees right now!

A cute little frog we found on our night hike

I’ve been on a couple awesome night hikes. The first was just 4 of us nerdy biology types out for a casual stroll in the woods, which made for a great time with lots of interesting discoveries. We found a male praying mantis and threw him in with our female when we got back then got to watch them mate. It was the most violently interesting thing I have ever witnessed. She literally picks him apart like a crab and eats him while they mate. A few of us also did an official tour with an amazing local guide. We saw all kinds of things, but the highlight for me was probably the bioluminescent mycorrhizal fungus. That’s right, glowing fungus on a tree root. It was amazing. The guide rubbed the tree root and it glowed blue-white in the dark.

Mischa, Mike & I modeling our awesome new staff t-shirts: “Have you been bitten by the machaca?”
The Machaca bug is extremely venomous and there is only one cure for it: you must go to bed with a Costa Rican man within 12 hours. Just kidding, but it makes for a good pick up line/t-shirt.

Work here at the gardens is so much fun, I’ve been giving guided tours to people from all over the world. This weekend I was able to run the Young Naturalist Club, a group of kids who get together once a month to learn about science and nature. I put together a wilderness survival type thing. I learned a lot, mostly that I need to be better at organizing children, but hopefully they learned a bit too. We made splints and slings for broken arms with a first aid kit and materials you’d find in the woods, attempted to start a fire with a flint and semi-dry coconut husk, and built a shelter.

The the Young Naturalist Club, I pre-built the structure & put half the leaves on to make sure it would work before turning it over to the young naturalists to finish.

The kids finished the shelter and made a little sleeping pad inside of it!

We had two kids with broken arms who had to make splints & slings. As you can see they are in a lot of pain.

I’m going to try to do some more science themed blog posts but it’s been rather hectic and I thought I should let everyone know what I was up to! So in summary it’s still amazing down here in Costa Rica, everyone should come visit, and here a bunch of my photos!

Eli had a lot of fun putting scorpions on the stick for Mike & I while we played ‘scorpion stick’

Whoever drops the stick first loses, it was a tie. But I had a lot of scorpions on my face.

An eyelash viper. Snakes will actually move around quite a bit after they die and may actually bite themselves. Herpetologists say that snakes “don’t know when they’re dead”

A beautiful orange kneed tarantula we found outside

Things not to be afraid of: tarantulas. They have never killed anyone. They just get a bad rep for being big and hairy!

A little white faced capuchin monkey came for a visit

This little caterpillar has a really cool predator deterrent. He looks like a snake!

Enjoying some coconuts with rum

Praying mantis sex. A violent affair.

A butterfly that has just emerged from it’s chrysalis

A super cool looking leaf mimicking katydid They hear with ears on their legs and have evolved ears that are structurally very similar to ours! But theirs can hear higher frequency bat noises.

 

We’ll end with a photo of a beautiful sphinx moth. Moths can be beautiful too. Sometimes even more beautiful than butterflies!

Someone make a snow angel in my honor, and I’ll drink a coconut or something for you.

Much love from Costa Rica!

Monteverde: the first 2 weeks

Costa Rica has been such an adventure so far and I’ve only been here for 11 days. I’ve been giving tours of the butterfly gardens during the day, reading a lot, hiking and have even gone out dancing a couple times. On a scale of one to terrible, I’m pretty much the worst at dancing but I’ve managed to get by, mostly by finding guys who are half decent at leading and then just smiling and laughing a lot when I screw up.

Climbing on a big fig tree I found on a hike near the butterfly gardens

The tours at the butterfly garden are so much fun, I basically take groups through an arthropod room tell them all about tarantulas, scorpions, beetles, cockroaches and a few other neat things then we go through 4 butterfly gardens. People come in from all different backgrounds so sometimes it’s a little difficult to communicate and I end up doing a lot of weird interpretive dances mimicking scorpion mating…but I think I get the message across! We try to kind of make it funny, but the language barrier kind of annihilates some of my jokes. That and there are definitely some major cultural differences when it comes to humor. So far, I’ve found that German people either think I’m the funniest thing ever, or they just stare at me like an idiot whenever I try to be funny. There is no middle ground.

Some Owl butterflies at the bar. They eat fermented fruit all day, they are the alcoholics of the butterfly world. And they suffer the consequences, only living for a few weeks!

I had my first day off on Friday, hiked for a solid 8 hours, got kind of lost on a trail, which ended up being really nice because I found a big fig tree! Then I hiked Cerro Amigos, which is this pretty big elevation gain, but it’s worth it because the view is supposed to be aaamazing, except for when it’s cloudy, which it was. So I got a wonderful photo of the inside of a cloud…

Check out that view! Top of Cerro Amigo. I wasn’t willing to wait around long enough for the weather to clear up. It was a great hike though, 1842m!

I then went to the bat jungle. It was amazing, I learned so much and am pretty much going to be the hugest entomology/bat nerd after this trip! It was great because one of the guys who works there let me and the other volunteer join him mist netting the night before, so I’d seen a few bats in the wild and learned a bit before actually going for a tour. The mist netting was so much fun! We went out two nights in a row, set up very fine nylon nets along trails and then checked them for bats every 15 minutes or so for a couple hours. We saw a striped palm viper, which I walked right past in shorts so thankfully it didn’t bite me! An orange kneed tarantula, an orange mouthed arboreal tarantula, and 3 silky short-tailed bats. The animals in this country are amazing!

Check out how cute this bat is!

So in summary, everything is amazing and here are a bunch of photos:

The beautiful Julia butterfly.

Some owl butterflies getting it on.

The Asthma beetle. Thought to cure asthma when eaten it turns out they actually cause asthma by chewing detritus up and making fine dust!

When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it makes a chrysalis out of it’s exoskeleton and turns into goo inside, then completely reforms into a butterfly and emerges!

You can read all about how inside the chrysalis it is just a pile of goo, but we had one that wasn’t emerging, so we cut it open to see for ourselves! Yup. Pile of goopy wet brown stuff.

Coffee and a sunset before bat research assistanting time!

The striped palm viper that we walked right past!

“Fishing” for an orange mouthed arboreal tarantula with a katydid on a leash

Hello beautiful day! Cerro Amigos.

No hike would be complete without some impromptu trail yoga!

Totally biffed it on the way down Cerro Amigos (super steep), then I had to walk through town with a questionable looking brown mud stain on my shorts/legs. Good times!

Congratulations on making it all the way through my hiking/arthropod photos, here is a cute little mammal as a reward. It’s a Coati!

So, Costa Rica is great. Public education is a blast. Seriously considering doing a masters in science education (apparently Laurentian University has a good program). I’m hoping to organize an event for the young naturalist club here in the next couple months. They are a group aged 6-13 and I’m thinking I’ll probably go for an ethnobotany lesson or something, but I’m not entirely sure yet. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

With love from Costa Rica, see you all back in Canada (or wherever) soon!
Christina

To Monteverde!

I arrived safely at The Monteverde Butterfly Gardens and have started to settle in and learn my way around a little. It was a bit of an adventure getting here though! To preface this post, I was not very prepared for this trip. I forgot to get a typhoid fever vaccination, I didn’t learn nearly enough Spanish, and I bought the guide book at the airport.

I flew out of Vancouver and had a brief stop over in Los Angeles before my overnight flight to San Jose. Once out of the airport in San Jose I completely disregarded my friend’s advice about only taking the orange cabs from the airport and hopped in a Honda Accord with a taxi driver who spoke English quite well. We went through probably the sketchiest area I have ever been through (that being said, I am not that well travelled) and I was dropped off at a Spanish speaking bus station, near the Coca Cola bus area.

Waiting at the bus station forever

Once I’d successfully purchased a ticket, in Spanish (I was pretty proud of myself), I had 5 hours until the bus arrived. I figured I’d have lunch and use the internet at the little cafe near the bus terminal. The good news is, it was $3 USD for a latte and a lunch thing, the bad news is I’m a vegetarian and I think I ate chicken. I just pointed at something behind the counter as I was failing epically at reading the menu. Turns out it had chicken in it, or pork, I’m not entirely sure to be honest. But on the bright side, I now know how to ask if there is meat in things. I then proceeded to hang out at the bus station for 5 hours while diligently guarding my bags. I had to pee, a couple times. You have to pay 200 colones to use the washroom, someone had peed all over the floor, there was no seat on the toilet, and there was a man fixing the sink. So I essentially did weighted squats with my 65L backpack, while trying not to laugh. And I thought I wouldn’t get in any exercise while traveling!

A kitty friend I made at the bus station.

The bus ride up was all Spanish speaking people, lucky for me there was one German girl with broken English and she translated a few things for me. Including “there might be thieves, watch your bag” which the bus driver had tried to get across by pointing at my bag and making a sad face with a pretend tear drop after I confidently told him “No hablo Espanol moy bien”, which is probably spelled worse than I pronounced it. Once on the bus with my bags safely stowed I fell asleep for about an hour, then I woke up and we were driving through these gorgeous forests with huge green trees. We went through a few small towns and then drove up a winding dirt road for about an hour to get to Monteverde. I took a taxi up to the “Jardin de Mariposas” and met everyone. It’s me, another volunteer, the owners, and their 11 year old son all living at the gardens. I have my own room for now, but will be sharing with another female volunteer who is arriving in a couple weeks.

The volunteer quarters, well kind of. This is the kitchen/other volunteers room.

I had my first day, followed a tour, walked through the gardens, memorized some butterfly names and facts, learned how to do a few maintenance type things and attempted to make empanadas.

Just to be clear, I’m not a totally ignorant tourist…I didn’t really think I’d need much Spanish to get to the butterfly gardens and thought I’d just kind of wing it, but for the rest of my trip when I am traveling I’m planning to actually learn to speak enough to get by.

Not a bad view from the balcony

Only the coolest beetle ever: the elephant beetle. It feels soft like velvet.

An owl butterfly in the low altitude garden

Silver crysalids from which glass butterflies will one day emerge.

A stingless bee colony

Turns out I have curly hair! Me in my room.

I’m excited to be doing tours and working here for the next 2.5 months! I’ll probably be blogging about neat insects and stuff for the rest of my time here, there is a lot to learn!

Love to Canada from Costa Rica, hope you’re all enjoying winter!

P.S. I saw a tucan and a white faced monkey today! I didn’t get pictures though.