Avian and Amphibian Antics

A busy week with GVI Amazon was jam-packed with all sorts of activities to keep the volunteers out of mischief! After closing the amphibian pitfalls, the project’s preliminary results showed a higher species richness within the primary forest compared to that of the secondary forest. There will of course be a lot more analysis of the statistics in coming months as there will still be more sessions of opening the traps throughout the course of the year, as just over six months of the planned one year study have been completed so far. Continuing on the amphibian theme, night transects began in earnest for the first time this phase with some successful results. In one transect, 16 separate individuals were found including Edalorhina perezi. That’s some good eagle-eyed spotting from the volunteers.

On the birding front, a surprise Piha project kicked off at the unsociable hour of 5.30am! It was however, an enjoyable introduction to a new project on Screaming Pihas (Lipaugus vociferans) and their calling behaviours. Sam Brimble was further surprised by the Western Striped Forest Pit Viper (Bothriopsis bilineata) centimetres from her head during this particular trip! That’s a couple of tricky snake encounters she’s had over the past couple of weeks.

For this particular phase, the first bird transects along the road (small gravel track, that cuts through the reserve) took place and teemed with a plethora of birds; these will be continuing throughout the following weeks to build on the data already collected last phase for this particular stretch of the reserve. Finally, initial work into a study about birds in relation to fruiting trees got underway, with promising prospects. Watch this space in the future to see how things progress.

Avian and Amphibian Antics