Hi there..!! Hope you have all enjoyed your the summer holidays so far. It's now time for us here in the Trinidadian jungle to start packing up the research station.. no one can BELIEVE that 8 weeks passed so quickly and that its now time to move on to Tobago which is an island that's a part of Trinidad to have a look at the coral reefs there..VERY exiting and different from what we have been doing so far! We have experienced so many amazing things and places here and its both sad and happy goodbyes..sad because we don't want to leave and happy because some of us will come back to work here again for sure, myself included!! But it's not over till it's over, and even though this is the very last blog I'll of course tell you about some of the things we have seen and done this week.

This week has been a very good one and also a very hard one as we have climbed 2 mountains! On Friday we climbed El Tucuche, Trinidad's 2nd highest mountain.

We had to wake up at 5 in the morning as the climb to the top was nearly 6 hours long..BUT the reason we did this was because we know from previous years that the endangered and rare golden tree frog (picture mountain) lives only on the top of El Tucuche all the way up in the canopies inside a flower..sound like a game of hide and seek..??

The view from the top of El Tucuche

So we set off, but as we came closer to the top a storm came in over the mountain and we were suddenly surrounded by hard rain, lightning and very LOUD thunder, so when we reached the top it was way too dangerous to try and climb up the trees to look for the little golden Kermit, so this time we won't get to see him. In a way that's okay because its one of the things researcher and biologists encounter ALL the time..things NEVER go according to plan and more often than not you won't find what your looking for in your first try..or second..The golden tree frog study is a continuous one hopefully next year the new team Trinidad will have better weather..and luck when they set up the rough mountain once again.

Sunday we went up Trinidad's 4th highest mountain (don't be fooled..it's still VERY high!) to do some research on a species of bromeliad..and guess what we found in the plant..tadpoles..not from the golden tree frog but from another rare frog that also lives in these plants.

Dissecting a bromeliad to look for tree-frogs atop Chaguaramal.

Here are a few thoughts and reflections from some of us about our experiences here the past 8 weeks.

Nina: When I first came here I was absolutely overwhelmed by this place and now, 8 weeks later even more so. Ive seen so many cool and amazing animals and plants here and its hard to say whats been the most exiting, all of it!! (but I really did enjoy getting close to some of the big snakes and spiders here..) I really love all the noises here, it will be strange to go back to Glasgow..to hear only the traffic.

Cara: I've had an amazing time on this expedition and it is very difficult to pick just one favourite moment...there have been so many! However I would definitely count seeing Leatherback sea turtles nesting on the beach as one of my favourite moments as well as spotting monkeys at Nariva swamp and looking for the many species of frogs found out here. As Nina has mentioned above, scientific research often never goes according to plan....but that's the fun of it! There have been several times when we have set out on a trip to look for something and end up finding something completely different. It is difficult to sum up our time out here in just a few sentences so I guess you guys will have to come out and see for yourself!

Innes: Like Nina said, it's really difficult to believe that my time working in the forests of Trinidad this Summer have come to an end. This is the second time I've visited the island, and I'm really glad that I came back, as I've seen such a different side to the country than I had experienced before. The rainforests here are the coolest environment I've ever worked in, and they've definitely been the highlight of our time here for me. It's seemed like every place we went to work in the forest had a different feel to it, and there was always something new to see. I'd have loved to have been able to see a golden tree-frog, but our work looking for them was part of a larger study that Dan had been running this year and last (and will next Summer too) and in the places we looked this year he had never found any golden tree-frogs, although they are known to live there. Bad weather accounts a lot for us being unable to find the frogs, but also their elusive nature could be indicative of their increasing rarity, and just emphasizes how important it is to conserve their habitat, as this beautiful little animal, and others around it, might disappear. I can't help but have some optimism after the great time I've had working here though, and I hope that I can come back and work in the rainforest again very soon.

We really hope you have enjoyed reading our little updates here from the jungle and hope you all have a very nice summer onwards. Just before we go we would all like to give a HUGE thanks to Amazonia for showing a genuine interest in this conservation project here and for helping us sponsor this trip. It's made a big difference to us..and it's been FUN and a great experience working with them too..:)

BYE NOW!

Hi everyone, hope everything's good where you are. It's been a busy week as usual for the expedition. as we near the end of our time in Trinidad most of the main projects we've been running here are starting to wrap up, so that means lots of data collection and compiling, which means our brains have to run at full-steam! As well as keeping busy with things in the labs we've had plenty of time in the bush this week, with three climbing trips up Mt. Aripo alone. There still haven't been any sightings of those ever-elusive golden tree frogs, although we did find another frog in one of the bromeliads we looked in. This was a marsupial tree-frog, which is so-called because it carries its eggs in a special pouch on its body. We're not losing hope of seeing an example of one of the shiny frogs that we seek, as we've still some other sites that they might live in to visit, so fingers crossed! The multiple mountain hikes we took this week gave some of the usually more lab-bound members of the team a great chance to stretch their legs (a lot!), and it was nice to see that the once utterly exhausting hike was now merely exhausting! I guess we've all got a bit fitter since we've been working in the jungle.

Our temporary shelter at the top of the mountain.

As usual there were lots of fascinating things to see on the mountain, including a giant orb-weaving spider and a baby fer-de-lance.

The "cute" little viper had chosen a rather awkward position to sit (for us) as it was right on top of a log that we had no choice but to clamber over. We managed to gently move the wee snake with our machete and it slithered away with no harm done.

Not so nice, but still quite cool (in a gross way) was this tick we found...crawling up my neck. Luckily we spotted the beasty before it could try and bury it's mouthparts into me!

Aside from mountain-work this week Nina and I helped out at a Summer-camp that the Asa Wright Nature Centre was putting on for school kids. About twenty local children were there to learn a bit about animals and their environment, so we brought along some examples of local frog species and some of their nests for the kids to look at and even handle a little. We'd spent the previous night catching a monkey frog and another tree frog called crepitans to show the kids, as the monkey frog is quite a docile little creature and patient enough to deal with gentle handling.

A wee lassy checks out some tadpoles from one of our ponds at the research station.

Nina shows the kids some tadpoles

Me showing the kids a monkey-frog nest

Here's a video of the kids getting to know some of their frog neighbours. Unfortunately the video doesn't have any sound, but the kids' reaction to the cane toad we showed them speaks for itself!

It was great fun showing the kids the animals, most of which they didn't realize were from their own country, and it was good to teach them a little too, as a lot of people in Trinidad dislike or are frightened of frogs, as they think that they are poisonous (none of them here are!).
At the end of the week we went on an extended praying-mantis hunt for Dan's project to a place called Cumaca. There is a great big cave filled with oilbirds, which you might remember from one of our previous posts. The rock formations in the cave were really impressive, and it was worth the long journey, despite being down probably the bumpiest road I've ever seen!

We also found time to relax and soak up some local culture when a Trinidadian friend of Dan's came by with his steel-drum band to play us a few tunes, I hope you enjoy the video!

Until next time, take care!
Innes

Greetings from the expedition climbing team. In week one I promised you that I'd tell you more about our exploration of the Northern Range, Trinidad. Several thousand years ago (estimates range from 1000 - 4000 years ago) Trinidad was not an island, it was connected to mainland South America (to what is now Venezuela) so the Northern Range was probably once part of a larger mountain range. In geological time Trinidad is still very young and active, and as a result the mountains of the Northern Ridge are still growing in height. The first thing you'd notice about the Northern Range is that it is beautifully lush, displaying every shade of green you can imagine.

Like all mountain ranges it affects the climate, making northern Trinidad wetter and more humid than mid - southern Trinidad.
The first mountain we climbed was Morne Bleu, the third highest ridge on the island. It is important to set off early. The morning is cooler for walking in and we need plenty of time to climb trees when we reach the top and enough time to get off the mountain before nightfall. It gets dark at around 19:00 every night here because we are very close to the equator. We set off at around 07:30 and when we reached the summit we were concerned by how dry it was. The rainy season was a little late in getting started and the leaf litter was crunchy underfoot, which is most unusual in a rainforest! Mud and glistening, wet leaf litter (which is extremely slippery to walk on and leads to many slips and tumbles) is much more common. Sean accidentally trod on a small coral snake (Micrurus circinalis), one of the three highly venomous snakes that live in Trinidad. They usually aren't dangerous though because their mouths are too small to bite us. Neither Sean or the coral snake were harmed and we watched the snake glide away into the leaf litter.
The trees here are taller than the trees I've climbed in the UK. It is vital to select the correct type of tree to climb. Some species are soft wood which is not safe to climb, others shed their branches during heavy downpours of rain, some are being eaten from the inside by termites, others have damaged root systems. Luckily we know what we're looking for and are always safety conscious. Around half way up the tree I reached a small clearing in the canopy, the view I had from there was stunning. I could see for miles, all the way to the sea, with a slight shimmer of heat haze over the whole scene. Despite our best laid plans and early start we were still descending when darkness fell. We have head torches and, to my mind, the jungle is an interesting place at night simply because you can see creatures you don't see during the day. By the end of the day we felt tired and glad to have made it home safely.
Living in the bromeliads we examined we found many spiders, including a tarantula and a wolf spider, various beetle larva, woodlice, cockroaches.

Essentially we found a wide variety of insects, which is especially great for Dan as he's an entomologist, but no golden tree frogs or tadpoles.

The golden tree frog is endemic to Trinidad, it is found nowhere else on earth, and it is critically endangered. Climate change makes the future of the golden tree frog even more uncertain. That is why we are so keen to find them and to make a record of their current range.
Our next climbing adventure took us to El Cerro Del Aripo (a.k.a. Aripo). It is the highest ridge on Trinidad. Knowing this made us feel slightly apprehensive since climbing Morne Bleu had been tough. In addition to climbing we are carrying heavy rucksacks, over rough terrain in a hot, humid climate none of us are yet used to. However we all like a challenge! As usual we set off early. The whole team came along for the trek, rather than just the climbers who had decided to camp at the summit. It was a difficult climb, mainly due to the weight of the climbing and camping equipment required. Suffice to say that it was the first and only time the whole team climbed a mountain together and that the climbers camped at the summit! Since then we've streamlined the amount of equipment we carry, e.g. by not camping we don't require a tent etc, and are now able to ascend and descend in one day in parties of 3 or 4. It is working well. We have found some incredible things inhabiting the bromeliads on Aripo, such as 3 species of scorpion and a fantastic, brown gecko.

We were excited to find damselfly larva in a bromeliad because they predate tadpoles (golden tree frog tadpoles perhaps?) and to find a crab because our own Professor Downie thinks that these crabs may compete with golden tree frogs for bromeliads given that crabs and golden tree frogs have been found in bromeliads adjacent to one another. The one frog we have found in a bromeliad is the marsupial tree frog. It, like the golden tree frog, is endemic to Trinidad and Tobago. All endemic species in Trinidad are endangered, even those that are locally common, because Trinidad and Tobago are small islands so in the event of a natural disaster, such as a massive earthquake or hurricane, the endemic species could easily be wiped out.
We've had a few close encounters with Fer-de-Lance on Aripo. Once when we got too close and Dan stood on one (they are very well camouflaged and difficult to spot) the Fer-de-Lance flicked its tail from side to side, like a rattlesnake which is a classic warning given prior to a (potentially fatal) strike.
In summary, we still haven't found a golden tree frog or tadpoles on this expedition (Dan has found them on previous expeditions) however we continue to search for them and would love to write in the next blog entry that we've found one (or more!) In the meantime we enjoy climbing the ridges, climbing the trees and noting all the weird and wonderful life forms inhabiting the bromeliad Glomeropitcairnia erectiflora.



You may have noticed we left out the second highest ridge, El Tucuche. I can assure you we very much hope to climb there soon and will certainly let you know when we do. Although El Tucuche isn't as high as Aripo the climb is longer. Let's hope we're rewarded with a golden tree frog find, yet even if not we'll still be thrilled to discover whatever we discover...!
Bye for now
the climbing team (and their wonderful helpers!)

PS - Here's a video that we wanted to upload a few weeks ago, but were unable to due to technical difficulties/internet-gremlins. It's the little High-woods coral snake we found near one of the ponds at the research station. It was a lovely wee snake, so we were keen to let you see it.

Hello there everyone!

Its now time for our 6th blog to be posted, time has gone by so fast and its now 6 weeks since we all set of to the Trinidadian jungle to do our projects and to get a glimpse of the amazing wild life that live in these evergreen forests. Everyday the jungle greets you with all its noises, the giant bamboo trees rumble in the wind, all the birds sing and some display with loud high pitch noises, and the constant singing of the different cicadas. The last week has been a very wet one and there have been days with constant and heavy rain and wind. Here we have all been working on our different projects which I'll now tell you a bit more about.

Cara and Susie are both working on their honours projects here in Trinidad. The projects had been carefully planned out from before we left Glasgow and they will have to hand in this project to pass their zoology degree later this year. Cara is looking at competition between the tadpoles of 2 species of frog.

Susie's project is about tics..more precisely ticks on TOADS. Ticks are parasites that attach themselves to a body, usually a warmblooded one, and then live of the blood of its victim! She's looking at how and why ticks attach themselves onto cold-blooded animals in particular toads, so she's sampling in different areas to see if there's any difference in the amount of tics on the toads that live there. Yesterday there was a surprise in store for her as there was a big box in the hallway in the morning. It turned out to be a HUGE boa constrictor that some guys had found down the road and brought up for us to have a look at it. The boa is a constrictor which means it bites its prey with its many razor sharp teeth and then strangle it to death. It was about 7 feet long .

This picture shows Susie and Dan handling the boa to see if it had any tics on it. It turned out to have about 5 on its big snakehead!.

Myself and Innes have been working on a few different projects since we came here. The first one we set up was a tadpole feeding behavior experiment where we looked at the preference of food sources in different species of tadpoles. To do this we set 9 tubs with leaves, 9 with mud, 9 with mud and leaves and 9 with only fish food and put 5 tadpoles that we had weighed first and water in each tub. After 8 days we took them all out and weighed them individually to se which group had gained most weight hence most adapted to the food source we provided. We did this with 3 different species. It was a fun project except from other frogs snakes (and puppies!) kept messing with the tubs and eating the tadpoles..hmm!  Our current projects have to do with the cute little Phyllomedusa frog also called the MONKEY frog as it lives in trees and its nesting habits.

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It lays its eggs surrounded by gel and wrapped in leaves hanging over open water so the tadpoles can just drop in the water when they are ready to hatch.

Here at Simla where we live we have 5 ponds and the monkey frogs are nesting here, but we also go to other sites and cut of the nest from the plant it hanging from to bring it back and hang it up over a tub in a piece of string. This we do to see if it makes a difference to the number of tadpoles hatching, if the nest is attached to the plant and thereby takes up oxygen from it. Were hoping to have the results in two weeks!

Other than experiments it was Innes birthday on Friday,he turned 25!! Many HAPPY BIRTHDAY WISHES...

Just before I say goodbye here's some pictures from the week that passed! Enjoy!

One of the highlights from our insect-net in the past few days

A very colourful caterpillar (which apparently turns into a rather somber moth).

Dan collecting coconuts for everybody

Next week there will be 2 blogs here from Trinidad. One of them will be an update on the climbing in the canopies from the climbing team (Dan, Sean and Gail)..! The other one will be from next week where we will, amongst other things, play environmental games with some of the kids from a summer school here. It will all be very exciting so remember to tune in!!!

Bye for now!

Hi there, or "How ya goin'?" as they say here. It's been a funny week since our last blog post, as apart from all the work on all of the projects that we're running on the expedition there's been a bit of a mixture of sadness and celebration as well as one of our team, Prof. Downie, returned to Scotland during the week, his time in the jungle finished. He left with a bang though, or maybe more of a hop and a skip, as we held a wee ceilidh in the research station to wish him a fond "bon-voyage" on Wednesday night, which was a new experience for some present! There was a little bit more mountain-climbing again, as the tree-climbing team clambered up Mt.Aripo again to check out all the bugs inside the bromeliads at the top, and to look for the ever-elusive golden tree-frog. Unfortunately none of the shiny little frogs were spotted, but it never ceases to amaze how many creatures dwell within these plants way up in the trees. Each plant is like a mini-ecosystem with predators and prey, and predators preying on the other predators!
On Friday morning the team were all up and out early to visit a cave near the Asa Wright Centre inhabited by a very special type of bird. These birds are known commonly as oil-birds, as in the past they were hunted for their fat, which could be used to produce fuel, but that's really one of the least special things about them. Looking like something out of prehistory, these surprisingly big birds are able to use high-frequency sounds to find their way around when they fly. This is like a special type of natural sonar, which is called echolocation. Only a few species of birds use this type of navigation, which is normally associated with bats, and it was really impressive to see these big birds swooping in the near-darkness of their cave, managing to avoid the jagged walls.
This shed exoskeleton of a tail-less whip-scorpion was in the cave that the birds lived in

On Saturday a few of us took another trip back to the South-Western tip of the island to return some of our amphibian house-guests. The big black tadpoles that we showed you in one of our last blogs had since turned into little grey-spotted frogs, and it was time to let them go in the swamp that we found them in.

Surprisingly the young frogs seemed smaller than the fat black tadpoles they had started out as.

Even more surprisingly, when they mature fully the frogs will be bright yellow!

Sunday was a fun-day, as we visited a secluded beach with a fantastic waterfall nearby to celebrate Susie turning 21, so I think it would be appropriate to end by wishing her a big Happy Birthday once again.
See you later!

PS. I couldn't think of any way to link things to this picture, but I really like jumping spiders, and thought this little guy was great, so here's a cool photo! - Innes

Hi everyone! Its time for a new update here from Trinidad. Its been another exciting week here in the jungle and this week we have even experienced an earthquake, it was a small one but you still got the feeling of how powerful a big one could be. One of the cool things we did this week was a trip down to the south east of the island to Nariva Swamp National Park and the coconut groves. Nariva Swamp is a mangrove freshwater wetland and it's home to more than 200 species of bird and animal, the most famous being the manatee (or sea cow), red howler monkeys swinging in the massive silk cotton trees, lots of colourful parrots and butterflies.

In the middle of the swamp lies a big island called Bush Bush island and that's were we went for a hike. We saw so many cool animals.

One we all had close encounters with was the mosquito..they were everywhere in the swamp and if you stopped walking for just a second they would attack you in swarms! We all got bitten a LOT!

Sunday we went to the beach to look for toads and to have a swim and today everyone is back on their project working away so this week we have decided to make a picture blog showing you all the amazing, creepy, colourful, scary-looking and DANGEROUS animals we have come across so far..SO if you don't like to see big scary insects and snakes ...dont read any further..

A pretty pink dragonfly at the side of one of the ponds next to our research station. As pretty as this fellow is, they are fierce and efficient predators that use their large compound eyes to home in on their fast moving prey, which they are able to catch mid-flight!

A cool beetle that looks like metal that was sitting on the bug-net outside the research-station.

Another beetle that we find on our net at night, both these guys are more than an inch long.

An enormous "white-witch" moth, look at the match sitting next to it to get an idea how big it is!

This little caterpillar was near another of our ponds at the research station, I'd like to find out what kind of butterfly he'll turn into.

This beautiful glass-winged butterfly had lost its way, and ended up on one of the bedroom doors in the research station. Even the coloured parts of its wings let light pass through, and cast their colour onto the white paint on the door like stained-glass.

Hylocrepitans, a species of tree-frog, which changes its skin-colour to a ghostly white during the day to camouflage into its surroundings.

This bright green little guy is a monkey frog.

A tired little monkey frog chilling out on a leaf to shelter from the heat of the day. These frogs can alter their shade of green to hide against the plants they rest on.

A 5-feet long tree-boa that staff from Asa wright had found in one of the properties owned by the centre and were taking to be released elsewhere. The video below shows that although these snakes are not poisonous, they're definitely to be respected.

A little high woods coral snake that we found hunting for tadpoles under a monkey-frog nest in one of our ponds. These colourful little snakes are not venomous either, so it was safe for us to hold him.

A mantis on our bug-net. Although Dan is studying a species of mantid here, this guy is much bigger than the ones we keep in the house - it was about 5 inches long!

This mantis was really hard to spot. It's adapted to look just like a dried-up leaf so that it's food doesn't see it until it's too late!

This scorpion was found crawling along the floor in Prof. Downie's bedroom! We all check our beds and shoes regularly now...

This mean-looking character is a tail-less whip scorpion, which is related to spiders and scorpions, but isn't poisonous.

Some of these hairy tarantulas have taken up residence in metal poles in the ground near our house. We also found some other tarantulas living in the bat-cave at Tamana hill, which is where we found the tail-less whip-scorpion we showed you earlier.

That cave was filled with so many creepy-crawlies, including predators like these spiders and whip-scorpions because a whole food-web of bugs and things exists in there based on bugs that eat the bats' poo!

These are definitely the scariest and fiercest animals you can find in the area around the research station!

I hope you liked our photo-collection of some of the weird and wonderful animals we've seen since we've been here.

I'll speak to you again soon to let you know what else we've been up to and what we find.

Take care.

Hi again everyone!! Hope you enjoyed the last blog from Team Trinidad ! Week 3 has now begun...and so has the RAINY season. At the moment it rains almost all the time, really heavy rain..much like standing under a shower in fact, and at night it rains so heavily that's its even hard to fall asleep because its SO loud on the roof of the house. The frogs LOVE the rain and we can hear the many different species calling all the time now as soon as nightfall arrives.

This past week has been very exciting, I'll tell you all about it, so lets start from the beginning..

On Sunday we decided to go to a swamp called Coroni Swamp in the north western part of Trinidad to see if we could see some cool animals. A swamp is a place where the water just stands still and flows into channels, usually lots of trees called Mangroves hang down over the water so it almost like a tunnel sometimes..and theres LOTS of cool animals there, we saw BIG green tree Boas hanging down from the branches, we thought they might fall on our heads sometimes! We were on a boat that sailed through the swamp into a big open space where we could see Trinidad's national bird, the scarlet Ibis. It was SO beautiful and big and it looked pink against the green forest. Another weird creature lives in the swamp, a four-eyed fish that can see above and under water..at the SAME time!

On Monday VERY early (6a.m!) we decided to try and climb Mt. Aripo again..remember it got rained off last time we attempted because it was to dangerous.

The climb to the top was estimated to around 4 hours so we knew it was going to be a rough morning, the 3 climbers Dan, Sean and Gail were going to set up camp on the top and then climb trees to try and locate the golden treefrog so the rest of us had to climb back down the mountain again.. before nightfall when all the creepy-crawlies come out... The climbing equipment is very heavy so they needed us to climb all the way back up again the next day to help them carry it back down. The climb to the top was rough indeed, lots of VERY steep cliffs and lots of us fell over many times (quite funny when it was OTHER people than yourself..!)

Half way up Dan spotted a really cool scorpion, and it had little babies on its back too, so everyone wanted to get close..untill we found ourselves face to face with a very venomous snake.. A Fer De Lance..RIGHT NEXT TO US, watching us..it was scary..but we got away safe this time!
The Fer De Lance is a pit viper, this means it has hollow fangs to inject the venom directly into its prey (or your foot!) also it can spit venom at you if you go too near.. Another Fer De Lance lives around our house so we have to watch out for it!

When we finally came down from the mountain we very VERY VERY tired(and soaked as the rains came!) after climbing for nearly 7 hours to find that some bandits had stolen the battery in our car..ohh nooo we all said out loud when we discovered the car would not start and we were very far from home! So we had to put our hiking boots back on our aching feet and start walking down to the main road to get help..it was another loooong 2 hour walk..no need to tell you we slept well that night!

On Wednesday we really needed a more relaxing day after the past days excitement so we went up north to a place called Grand Riviere hoping see the BIG leatherback turtles nest and lay eggs as its just the right time for them to come up to the beach..they only come up at night and once every 2-3 years so we took our flashlights and went to look for them. We had to be very carefull not to disturb them and NOT the shine light on them as that would confuse them and maybe even make them go back to the sea without laying ANY eggs! It's the first time I had ever seen a turtle like that..it was HUGE but if felt soft and it was very friendly. First it finds a good spot on the beach, then it starts digging a hole with its flippers so it can lay its eggs under the sand. It laid about 80 eggs...WOW! The eggs looked like small round balls..and the shell was not like that of a chicken egg at all, but soft and bouncy so they wouldn't break when they got dumped in the hole! After that it started to bury the eggs again, and here comes the coolest part, it made a lot of fake tracks and footsteps in the sand leading AWAY from its nest so that other animals that might want to eat the eggs would get confused and follow the false tracks leading away from the real nest..SMART TURTLE!!

On sunday 4 of us went down to the south of the island to look for sites for later collection of frogs and tadpoles.

Here's a video showing the 4 of us tadpole-hunting at the southern tip of Trinidad yesterday.

We were also searching for a GIANT tadpole thats said to be living in a swamps there. Its a FOOT long..can you imagine that!!?? We didnt find it this time(well get it at some point!!) but we found some big black tadpoles..the biggest ive seen so far!

Back at the house everyone is working on their projects, and were now sharing the house with American researchers that are here to do some work on different fish types, so lots of people doing different projects!

That's all for now , come back next week as im sure there will be LOTS of exciting stuff going on this week as well..!!

(Note:This entry was meant to be posted on Friday the 20th, but was delayed due to technical difficulties at our local net-cafe!)

Hello everyone, we've now spent our first full week working in the rainforests of Trinidad, and it certainly feels like we've seen and done a lot in that time! Last weekend we visited an underground cave near the top of a place called Tamana hill. Inside the cave there is a colony of more than 5 million bats, of several different species, as well as lots of other weird subterranean creatures adapted to a life without light. The air was so thick with insects feeding off the bats' droppings that you couldn't open your mouth without breathing in bugs! When the sun set just before we left we saw the bats leave their roosts in the cave to go out hunting for the night. So many bats leaving a big hole in the ground at one time was an amazing sight, and it seemed like there will still thousands of bats coming out constantly even after we'd been watching them leave for about 20 minutes!

After a relaxing Sunday at a beautiful beach on the island's North coast (the heat was still exhausting then...) it was back to hard-work on Monday as our climbing team of Dan, Gail and Sean travelled to Morne Bleu, the third highest mountain in Trinidad. The climbers were beginning their work searching for the golden tree-frog, which only lives in Trinidad inside special plants called bromeliads that grow at the top of very tall trees, and only on very tall trees on very tall hills!

This video shows Dan setting up the climbing rig used to scale the trees at the top of the mountain with his sling-shot.

Meanwhile myself and the others got on with our other experiments elsewhere, collecting frogs' foam-nests whilst Susie worked on her project studying ticks link that suck the blood of the big, fat cane toads link that are all over the place here. If you look hard enough at this video you can make out some of the warty little guys getting released after Susie had examined them.

On Tuesday we visited the Asa Wright Nature Centre, which is the main headquarters for the foundation that owns the research station we are based at, called Simla. The Asa Wright Centre is in the middle of a large section of protected rainforest, and is a great place to spot amazing wildlife, particularly loads of different species of birds. It seemed like every time we looked we'd see a new type of bird fly past, and the experience was really cool - the birds here are all so colourful!

After a few more days of frog and nest collecting our plan was to take the whole team up the top of Aripo, the highest mountain in Trinidad, on Friday so that the climbers could continue looking for the golden tree frog, as it has only ever been found atop the two highest peaks on the island. We'd been hoping for wet weather since we arrived over a week ago as it's really important for the work that we're doing here that it rains a lot, we might not normally like the rain so much but frogs love it, so whilst we're here so do we! It just so happened that the weather we'd been hoping for arrived on the day that we didn't need it, so torrential rain all day on Friday meant that climbing the mountain had to be put off until next week, as it might have been dangerous to climb trees in such heavy rain. The rain really was heavy as well, it's as if all the rain you might get back in Scotland in a nasty February was dropped on us in one day! Instead of climbing we went for a walk through some amazing forest near the foot of the mountain, the thickest rainforest we'd been in yet.

That night we knew it would be perfect conditions for "frogging" so we went out to collect some Kermit look-a-likes at a place we'd been to the week before. The foundations of a building that had never been finished had just seemed like a dusty hole in the ground last week, but on Friday night the rain had turned it into a big pond alive with frogs!

There were so many frogs that you had to shout to be heard above the noise they were making!

It's been a really busy week, and although it feels like we've been here longer than that, I'm glad to say that there's still so much to do and see, and now that the rainy-season seems to have started, and it's nice weather for frogs we'll be getting even busier from here!
For now, see you later!

It's been more than 8 months since we first met and assembled our team of zoologists to organise our expedition to study animals in the rainforests of Trinidad. It feels like it's been a long journey, and that's without even taking into account how far we had to travel to get here!

My name is Innes, and I'm the student-leader on the expedition. It's my second time in Trinidad, and my 3rd expedition to the tropics. I love studying wildlife in tropical forests, as they're my favourite habitat to work in - mostly because I'm totally fascinated by all the different bugs! There are 5 other students from Glasgow University here with us, as well as 2 members of staff from the Zoology department of our university - Professor Roger Downie (frog-expert) and Doctor Dan Thornham (entomologist).

As this is our first entry, the team are just going to introduce themselves and give a couple of their thoughts about the expedition after their first full day in the jungle:

My name is Cara and this is my first time on an expedition of any sort! Studying tropical wildlife has always been a major interest of mine and I have been looking forward to seeing all the different animals we will encounter during our stay. As well as studying frogs I am particularly looking forward to visiting the caves in Trinidad which are inhabited by various kinds of bats and birds.

My name is Susie and I am really looking forward to spending two months in the rainforest. However, I have only been here a day, and have already been bitten loads by mosquitoes, and had a cane toad pee on me! The cane toads are really cool though, as they are pretty big and warty-looking, but fairly tricky to capture! I'm really looking forward to working with them on the expedition, and seeing lots of other really cool animals as well.

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My name is Nina and this is the first time I've been in a real rainforest. One of the most amazing thing about being in the middle of the forest is all the noises you can hear all the time, its never quiet here...frogs, birds ,insects, each with their own special noise. The trees here are very tall and they have plants with very colourful flowers growing all over them. Today a huge cockroach came into the living room...at first it was a bit scary but really it was quite cool. I'm really looking forward to see more of the animals living on this island over the next 8 weeks.

My name is Gail. This is my second time in the rainforest, although it is my first time in Trinidad. I love the rainforest. It is very hot and humid, but it's also the coolest place on the planet. We have seen loads of amphibians, a few reptiles, my favourites the geckos, as well as a small snake that eats tadpoles, and beautiful birds of paradise, yet we hear a lot more than we see. We have a white sheet in the garden near a light to attract insects. Some of which are huge! It is a beautiful island. We are stationed near the northern mountain range, parts of which we will be exploring during the expedition so more about that later.

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Hi there everyone, my name is Sean. I have just finished my degree in university before coming here. I will tell you a little about our journey to get here and how it has been since arriving. To get here we had to travel for almost 30 hours, or 4 school days, overall, and we were all absolutely exhausted by the time we got here. We got 2 trains and 2 planes and it felt like we were waiting in stations forever but our last flight from Tobago to Trindad made it all worth it. We flew in a really small plane, very bumpy, over the mountains covered in what looked like a blanket of rainforest, and it was amazing!!

Once off the plane the first thing that struck me was the wall of hot humid heat, kind of like being in a really hot shower without the washing part. Some of the other things that I immediately noticed were the cool Caribbean accents and the Trinidad charm. After spending the first day here I feel completely at home. I feel like I am part of this big exciting ecosystem full of weird and wonderful creatures from dragonflies to beetles, loads of colourful birds with fantastic sounds that I never knew existed, never ending hissing of cicadas and the night calling of frogs. The noise that tiny little frogs make is unbelievably loud. Overall it is colourful, noisy, busy, and hot.