The End of an Era

After over 6 years of intensive research and community development work in and around the Yachana Reserve, GVI Amazon is coming to a close. We have finished our final research project (look forward to our Road Effects paper, coming soon!) and are handing over the project to our partner, The Yachana Foundation. They will continue to maintain and monitor the reserve, using it as an hands-on science education center for students -- we're very excited to see what fabulous things this next generation of scientists find! For more detail on GVI Amazon's closure, and our accomplishments over the years, please read on...
GVI Amazon Closure Statement

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

No Rain in the Rainforest?

On Tuesday morning, some volunteers had the privilege of waking up with the sun for a bit of mist netting fun, reaping the rewards of the hours of fiddly work repairing the nets the previous week. For many of the volunteers this was their first experience seeing wild birds so up close and personal, and what an experience it was. Two brilliantly coloured hummingbirds, the one pictured is a Grey-breasted Sabrewing (Campylopterus largipennis), two manakins, one of which was a Green Manakin (Xenopipo holochlora) and a Dusky-throated Antshrike (Thamnomanes ardesiacus), truly made it a successful birding morning. The icing on the cake for the day was enjoying a much anticipated, cooling dip below the Cascada waterfall, a natural beauty.

At the end of the journey to camp, the group of volunteers were greeted by staff member Chris, tossing cup full’s of water high up into a tree, with an attempt to water GVI Amazon’s most recent resident, osteocephalus deridens. Mr. deridens has recently taken up residence in a bromeliad that appeared in one of the trees during the phase break and can now be heard every night cackling away in the hope to lure in a mate. There has been a lack of rain over recent weeks and the tree frog was in desperate need of some water up in his bromeliad home.

Next week the volunteers are looking forward to getting knee deep into rainforest research, and will also be praying for some rain!

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