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A Belize Field Journal
Excerpts from September, 1995
John A. Shuey
(The following paragraphs are excerpted from my field record book that was maintained on a daily basis in Belize. My field book is part personal journal and part data log - I have excerpted it to provide an overview and the flavor of what its like to perform field research in the tropics.)
August 31 - Worked all day, then caught my flight to Chicago for the night. Am headed to Belize to continue sampling for biodiversity project. Dr. Peter Kovarik, a recent grad student at Ohio State and I are sampling to see if butterfly diversity is related to anything real on a local basis. Lots of people are claiming that you can monitor butterflies in tropical ecosystems as a tool for assessing ecosystem integrity, or insect diversity in general, but most of the arguments are circular. Towards that end, we are collecting concurrent samples of butterflies, scarab beetles, and hister beetles at a number of stations in the rain forests of NW Belize. On our next trip we will have a botanist sample tree diversity and forest structure at the same sites, and at some point, we'll run a correlation analysis on our data to see if any of these groups track each other. Our work is being partially subsidized by The Nature Conservancy, Latin American Division in conjunction with Program for Belize, a private organization working towards an ecologically sustainable future for Belize.
September 1 - Fly to Miami - then Belize. Arrived at Belize International Airport at 11:00 am local time. Pete is supposed to meet me here, but I can't find him. A representative of Program for Belize tracks me down, and relays the message that Pete's flight was canceled yesterday in Miami, and he will arrive at 3:00 today. Decide to go into Belize City to kill time and buy supplies for the two weeks ahead - mostly rubbing alcohol for preserving beetles, and raw sugar, over-ripe plantains, and bananas for bait. Met Pete at airport and with Bart Romero, Director of the Rio Bravo Field Station, and head north to Rio Bravo. Rio Bravo base camp is located in a 5 to 7 acre clearing in surrounded by miles and miles of unbroken rain forest. Program for Belize is a private organization that owns 230,000 acres at Rio Bravo - that's around 300 square miles! Their primary goal is protecting biodiversity, but they realize that protecting ecosystems at this scale must be integrated into real-world economics. Along those lines, they bring in young people from the States and Europe for week-long classes on rain forest ecology, and have a developing eco-tourism facility. They are also exploring sustainable uses for the forest, such as chicle harvesting, selective cut forestry and very soon, micro-propagation of orchids. Program for Belize also brings in about 1,000 Belizian students a year for the rain forest ecology and conservation classes - an incredible number considering that the entire population of Belize is a little over 200,000!
Rio Bravo camp is almost deserted, no students from the States or Belize, and just a skeleton staff of naturalist interns, rangers, and the cook - most of the staff are on leave. Pete and I locate our stored gear from last April, and set up shop in a bunk house designed to hold 20 people. Seems like there should be adequate space for us to spread out! Before I hit the sac, I dice and slice plantains and bananas, add water and sugar, sprinkle with bakers yeast, and shake well. I should have 2 gallons of fermenting fruit cocktail ready for use in the morning.
September 2 - Up at dawn (5:30 am) to look around. Even at this early hour, a few butterflies such as tropical buckeyes and the peacocks, Anartia jatrophae and A. fatima, are moving about in the open compound area. It is very lush compared to my last memories of Rio Bravo. In April, Belize was in the middle of an 18-month drought, and everything was very dusty and hazy: the forest was very stressed and shedding leaves constantly and smoke from burning savanna and cane fields was apparent on most days. Now everything is sopping wet and green - very clean and lush looking now. Grabbed my net and headed to the well trail, mostly to see if our sampling stations are still marked. I have a fear that all the students that trek these trails, might not be able to resist yanking on our red flagging that marks the ends and center points of our twelve sampling stations. Much to my relief, I am able to find most of our flagging on the three sampling stations that are located on this trail. Knowing that our other stations are located well away from heavily used trails, I feel pretty good that we will be able to get right to work.
After breakfast, Pete and I get the rest of our gear out of storage. Both of us manage to step though the narrow steps on the storage building. I am amazed that my leg isn't broken (and Pete is likewise amazed about his). Both of us have badly bruised right legs, and both of our ankles are quickly turning purple. We're twins from the knees down! This would have been hard to explain, if we had both managed to break our legs in less than 24 hours of our arrival at camp. We swear an oath together to avoid those steps at all costs, forever and forever.
We plow though our gear and sort out our equipment. Most of Pete's gear consists of pit-fall traps and flight intercept traps for the twelve stations. I have a total of 16 bait traps, nine of which will be tied up in research, seven that I can use for general inventory, and two U.V. lights for night collecting. I grab a few of the bait traps, and hang them along the forest edge behind the bunk house. My bait isn't very strong yet, but what the heck.
The afternoon is spent roughing in six of Pete's sampling stations. Each station consists of three pitfall traps with rain covers, and a flight intercept trap that literally blocks the trail. Pete is pretty particular about how the flight intercept trap is set up, so I limit myself to digging holes for the pitfalls. Each of the pitfall traps will be baited tomorrow, one with rotting mushrooms, one with rotting fish and the last with human feces (pureed to a nice, even consistency, and spiked with maltose to activate those pleasant smelling bacteria). Needless to say, I let Pete bait all his own traps.
September 3 - Checked my bait traps- lots of the owl butterfly, Opsiphanes cassina a common forest edge species. I keep a couple and let 20 or so go - I'm sure I'll see these same individuals in the traps again this evening. Also I chase out the black witches which apparently love my bait.
Decided to get to work, and set bait traps at sampling stations. My bait smells pretty good, and tastes like some weird rum-based tropical fruit drink - it should work fine! At each station three traps are placed in a light gap and allowed to run for two days; one trap is 1 meter above the ground, another is 5-7 above ground, and the last is _ to _ of the way to the canopy. Getting that last trap up there can be a real pain, and usually requires that I find a "lucky rock" which somehow finds its own way over the correct limb at the right height. It can take up to an hour to find the correct lucky rock, and you waste a lot of time testing those unlucky ones. I wish there was some way to tell the lucky ones before you test them. The well trail runs through some pretty beat-up forest, so it only took about 2 hrs to set up three sampling stations - 9 traps are about my limit for checking twice a day for quantitative sampling. As I walk the trail towards camp, I see several butterflies circling the traps already.
A huge thunderstorm rolls through at 3:30, so I go about setting up the U.V. lights next to the bunk house. I have a 15 watt blacklight bulb and a 165 watt mercury vapor. I put both on the same sheet.
The rain continues all night, and the frogs are deafening. There seem to be four basic frog types. In the background is a constant "dripping water" frog, a blink-blink-blink that underlays the whole symphony. Then there is an occasional normal "rivet" frog that chimes in. The "bahhing sheep" frogs kick in once every couple of minutes or so. But the real offender is the "barking dog" or "clucking chicken" frog - I can't decide which is really more accurate. These guys only kick in when the rain intensity increases suddenly, lightning flashes, or we turn on a light. Then they all start up in unison, and literally sound like a kennel. And, at least one of them lives inside the water tank that collects rain from our roof - this guy has his own amplification system and a unique heavy-metal sound, and he rocks all night. I hope I can get used to these soothing sounds of nature.
September 4 - Up at 4:30 to check the sheet - YOWSA - are there some moths out here. On the downside, the sheet is now setting in the middle of a huge mud-puddle. I make Pete get up just to look. There must be 80 sphingids and a really cool brown silk moth with five-inch tails. I collect a solid sub-sample of all the moths and spend most of the morning processing the catch. Pete had placed a tray of soapy water under the light to collect small beetles - he spends the morning pulling out all the moths that drowned - what a mess! At breakfast, someone mentions casually that the batteries that supply electricity for the whole camp were almost completely drained last night - it was some kind of mystery. I guess we'd better lay off the mercury vapor lamp for a while.
Afterwards, Pete checks out the sampling stations and starts baiting them. Many of the pitfalls are flooded out - rain was the furthest thing from our minds in April when laid out the sampling grid. Pete has to move most of the pitfall traps to slight rises - most of my hole-digging was for naught.
Decided to start the second part of my sampling regime, composed of two 1-hour, 100 meter transects at each of the stations. Thus, each sample of butterflies at a station is composed of six trap days (2 days times three traps) and two hours of netting along a 100 meter stretch of trail. I start the first transect at 10:00 but quickly give up. Even though it is very sunny, the forest is still soaked from last night's rain - no butterflies are moving inside the forest. A lone spider monkey follows me as I leave the forest. He seems curious, but at the same time he is sending every dead limb in sight to the forest floor. I hope he doesn't develop a taste for fermenting fruit.
By noon, things are up and moving, and I manage to get one hour in at each of the first three transects. This is going to be a problem, if things don't dry out until noon, and the sun is to low in the sky to penetrate the light gaps by 4:00 pm. And then throw in the constant threat of isolated storms, which can shut down the forest interior until it dries out again. On the best of days, I will be lucky to get three transect periods completed.
Gilroy, the camp chef, invited a Mennonite family that lives just outside of the north gate for dinner. A very quite bunch. The Mennonites in Belize are very industrious, and grow almost all of the produce consumed within the country (while most others grow sugar and citrus for export). This family is typical, they grow rice and run a mechanical shop that is really the only automobile repair shop for 30 or so miles, including an amazing array of metal machining tools. If you can't find a part, you can bet these guys can make it for you! They also have rental cars (if you need one) and own a small airplane.
I spend the remainder of the evening moving the light sheet to the volleyball court and then reading. My ankle is pretty amazing now, a deep purple with scattered pink chigger-bite polka-dots. September 5 - Spent most of the day minding bait traps and walking transects. There are two Morpho species about, the white polythemes is most common, and a few have squeezed into my traps, and occasionally a blue peleides comes barreling right down the trail. Also an amazing sight is the owl butterfly, Caligo uranus, with purple-blue metallic forewings and a broad orange hindwing band - and its bigger than either species of Morpho. You only find it in densely shaded stream bottoms with little or no understory.
I obviously have not worn my work boots for most of the summer, and my feet are killing me. I bet I'm walking 6-7 miles a day minimum.
September 6 - Low-point of the trip: I left my work boots on the bunkhouse porch last night, and of course it rained. Now I have to walk all day with wet feet. I moved the bait traps to new sampling sites and began three hours of transect walking. I understand the term "tired dogs" now, plus I think wet dogs probably smell better than my tired ones. New rule - keep boots indoors.
September 7 - Sunny skies in the morning - what a surprise! Propped up my boots for maximal drying effect, and loitered as long as I could justify in an attempt to dry them out, but they didn't quite make it. Then spent the reminder of the day walking transects. I'm popping 5-6 aspirin a day now, mostly because of my feet: if I get cut I'll probably bleed to death. In the evening, Pete and I drive about 15 miles south to Cedar Crossing, to place out a portable blacklight next to the Rio Bravo River. Cedar Crossing shows up on every road map I've ever seen of Belize, but has never consisted of more than a single house! It now marks the boundary between Rio Bravo and the Gallon Jug property, a 100,000 hectare ranch. The entire population of this thriving metropolis is dedicated to operating the gate that blocks the road between these two properties. The interns at Rio Bravo later explain to me that it indeed should be on the map because that house has always been there - well OK I guess. I wonder how many of the remote "villages" that show up on Belize maps are similar.
Before going to bed, I remove two scorpions from my room. I am totally pooped, and thinking seriously about killing the "heavy-metal dog-frog band".
September 8 - We head back to Cedar Crossing at dawn to retrieve the blacklight. I have Pete drop me off a couple of miles from Rio Bravo camp to collect while he drives south, and I make an important skipper discovery. In the early morning, a select group of skippers come out of the forest to nectar on a common, forest edge shrub, Thevetia ahouai, better known as "monkey balls" (something to do with its peculiar-shaped red fruits). Skippers that I had seen only one or two of so far are here in big numbers, like Perichares and Carystoides. Skippers that I have never seen period are here in big numbers, (two species of red-eyed Carystus). But, only hesperiine skippers with a long proboscis are here, as the flowers are very deep, and it is obvious that most other butterflies cannot tap them.
Back at Rio Bravo, I move my bait traps to the next three sampling stations, and then leave with Pete and Benjamin, the head ranger, for Hill Bank, in the southern portion of the Conservation Area. I was told that the road to Hill Bank was a little soupy, and that we probably couldn't get there on our own. A little soupy translates as multiple stretches of road where there is nothing but mud for 20-40 meters, and one stretch where 2 feet of water from Irish Creek covers the road for about 100 meters. We only had to use the land rover's electric winch once! I'm glad the road was only a little soupy. We spend the night at Hill Bank (which also makes all the maps), an abandoned timber camp that overlooks the New River Lagoon - no-one lives here. This is a very beautiful place that will soon be developed as a low impact research and eco-tourist center - tourists will boat in from a decent road about 20 miles down river. Pete and I sleep in a very warm, abandoned camper with a least a few screens to keep out the mosquitoes. High-pitched buzzing blood-suckers rule the night.
September 9 - We head to our real destination, the Pine Ridge near Rancho Delores. (people actually live in Rancho Delores - I'm amazed). The ridge of Pine Ridge is really more a gentle slope of deep sand, but the pine is for real. Pine Ridge is a unique ecosystem that supports an open savanna with Caribbean pine, various oaks, and palmetto, but mostly open grassland. Fires are frequent here. In moister pockets there are hammocks of tropical forests. Pete and I both set out our respective traps, and I collect a little. The highlight includes what looks for all the world to be a Euphyes species, most likely undescribed. A different buckeye species than the one back at base camp is abundant here, and US species like Polites vibex, Hylephila phyleas, Copaeodes minima, and even an Erynnis are flying about. We leave at about 1:00 pm and are back at base camp by 4:30, just enough time left for me to service my bait traps.
September 10 - Spent almost all day getting caught-up from my day off yesterday. Transects and more transects (and more and more aspirin). As I walk transects 10-12, a troop of spider monkeys tail me. These stations are located on the out-skirts of La Milpa, the 3rd largest set of Mayan ruins in Belize, and the very mature forest here winds through heaps of rubble - small ceremonial ruins. These monkeys peed on Pete yesterday in an attempt to chase him away, so I keep a close eye on them.
September 11 - Still trying to catch up. Stations 7-9 are about 3 miles from camp, so I have Gilroy drop me off and tell him that I will walk back when I'm done. But, if a big thunderstorm hit, he is supposed to rescue me. I manage to get in 2 hours of transect work before it clouds over. When you are inside a rain forest, your view of the sky is very limited. You can usually see only bits and pieces, but you have no idea if what you are seeing is really representative of the situation. Thus, by the time I really notice what is going on, it is too late. It's not raining yet, but I can hear thunder. I hustle out to the road to get a clear picture and find that a huge storm-cell is sitting right on top of me. Worse, its moving from the south, so base camp, three miles east of me probably has no idea. I decide to hustle my buns home, maybe I can outrun this thing. Yea, right. It's really weird - I can hear it raining, and I mean really raining hard, but not on me. The rain just gets louder and louder, and I keep walking faster and faster. When it finally catches up with me, it's a light sprinkle, but I can still hear a serious downpour. And then about 30 seconds after that sprinkling started, it catches me and for about 20 minutes it rains really hard. And then, just as quickly, it stops, just in time for me to hear wheels on gravel. I can only congratulate Gilroy on his exquisite timing, and he of course apologizes, because it never did rain back at base camp.
Back at camp I wring out my jockey shorts, pout a little, eat, and settle in to watch some really bad videos with the interns. A British tourist, Phil, is really hot to see jaguars, and he and a guide heard one earlier in the day. They want to go out and "call" it in, the caller being a local Mayan guide, Mr. Tebo. I decline, having had enough for the day, and they head out. When they get back, Pete shows me this "moth" that had come into Phil's halogen headlamp. It is a crespuscular skipper, Bungalotis, a genus I've never seen in the wild before.
September 12 - Worked on transects 7-9 but the damp morning and rain minimized my effectiveness. Got caught again in thunderstorm, only this time I walked to within a quarter mile of base camp before rescuers remember me.
The ankle is looking better, and is turning a nice shade of deep bluish-brown. Gilroy agrees to run the generator all night, so we fire up the mercury vapor light to take advantage of the heavy clouds which obscure an almost full moon. The moths are pretty good.
September 13 - A very damp morning, so I bum around the open compound where lots of leps fly. I make the second important skipper discovery of the trip. A flowering tree (identity unknown) behind the kitchen seems to suck big skippers out of the surrounding forest. Species of Astraptes, Urbanus, Epargyreus, Codatractus, Phocides, Pyrrhopyge, Myscelus, and so on. I would guess I saw over 40 species in the tree. But it only lasts until the forest dries out, and by 11:00 nothing but the common open compound species are on the tree. I collect the heck out of the tree, using my extension net to its fullest. I picked up at least 20 species that I hadn't even seen previously. Then I pull the bait traps from the last three sampling stations: the official part of the field research is now completed!
That afternoon, we return to Pine Ridge to pick up our traps. My bait traps don't catch much, except maybe a Memphis that I haven't seen yet. Pete set out portable black lights over a couple tributaries of Ramgoat (as opposed to ewegoat, I guess) Creek to collect caddisflies, so we stayed until about 7:00 pm. As we leave, the land rover seems to be running hot and we check under the hood to discover that a fan belt is broken. I convince our two escorts, Roberto and Gabriel that we can make it home without it, but I am wrong. Within about ten minutes we are close to blowing, so we pull into Puc Camp, a private logging operation. Roberto and Gabriel immediately get out their flashlights and start looking around, and I'll be darned it they don't find four beat-up fan belts of various sizes. They quickly determine that one will work, and using a small wrench set and absolute sheer determination, they manage to remove a belt that blocks their access, and get it and the replacement belt back on in about two hours. I personally had given up and am expecting to feed mosquitoes or worse all night long (Pete swears we were being circled by a vampire bat most of the time we worked on the car). Got back to base camp at about midnight. Even the heavy-metal dog-frog band can't keep me awake tonight.
September 14 - I spend the morning at what I now call the "manna tree" behind the kitchen, then the remainder of the day packing away field gear and taking a detailed inventory of the gear I'm leaving behind. It really helps to know what is and what isn't on site when packing for these trips. Pete manages to see a jaguar as he is pulling in the last of his traps. He saw a "large animal saunter into the bush", and that animal left behind jaguar paw prints. As usual, I am pulling his traps on a different trail, and miss out. Phil spends most of the evening hanging around on the trail, trying to spot that cat.
September 15 - Pete leaves today, and I thought I was going too, even though my flight doesn't leave until the 16th, but Gilroy points out that Roberto has to go into the city tomorrow morning. So, I spend most of the day hanging around base camp as it is very overcast and rain sputters on and off. I decide to head down to the spot were they found the Bungalotis thinking that beast might be flying under these conditions. I spend about 3 hours walking an old logging road to the spot where they found it, but no luck - just rain and mosquitoes. Spent the rest of the afternoon finishing reading Hunt for Red October.
September 16 - Leave Rio Bravo at 5:30 am - arrive at airport at 8:00. The airline won't check my bags this early, but I can leave them behind the counter, so I do. Roberto takes me into the Belize City, where I eat breakfast and try to find a string hammock to bring home. After two hours, I give up, and catch a cab back to the airport. By 5:00 I'm in Miami customs, declaring my insects and leaving a copy of all the paperwork and permits for Fish and Wildlife. By 10:00 I'm in a hotel room in Chicago, watching CNN. I'm hoping to hear that the OJ Simpson trial is over, but my hopes are quickly dashed. The best news is that the Reds still lead their division, and the Indian's have clinched theirs.
September 17 - Home to Indianapolis by 8:30 am. The trip was a certifiable success. I'm carrying at least 100 species of skippers in my luggage, probably a few undescribed species included. The transect work was likewise successful. In all, I would guess that close to 1,000 butterflies were collected total, and a few hundred moths for the Carnegie (and of course I scraped a few samples of the flying dirt that comes to blacklight into alcohol, so I collected thousands of other insects too). Pete probably has 20 pounds of beetles from the pit-fall traps to sort through, and the flight intercept traps certainly yielded tens-of-thousands of specimens to sort through. Pete picks out the beetles and the other groups that he knows people want to see, and the residue get distributed to Ohio State and the Carnegie Museum, where it is mounted and made available to other researchers. Hopefully, nothing we killed is wasted (except the 1,000's of mosquitoes we swatted).
Now all we have to do is get the material mounted, identified and logged into the computer before the next field effort.
Author's note - Rio Bravo Conservation Area is available for approved ecological research. General collecting, outside of approved research programs is not permitted. Nor is collecting insects in Belize permitted without a proper permit from the Department of Forestry.
The following images are examples for test purposes. An extensive checklist and image archive of Rio Bravo butterflies will be forthcoming.
Lepidoptera
Nymphalidae
Hesperiidae
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