Elisabeth an Cheryl

Lesa, Cheryl, I managed to speak to some of the menonites that live in a colonia close to our village...it turns out there are Fehr's and Klassen's living there! Wanted to share this wit you two!

times are slower

Need to keep the blog updated but we are kind of in a slow session for now. Julien is going back to Sherbrooke this week and then we will be three until the end of this stint. I am coming back on Jan 18th and will return here in a few months for another long aventure with a new team. I have to say it will be hard to beat this one!

Anyhow, the rain continues in the field and we have not seen many birds in the last month. We won't get discouraged, they will be back...right?

I will try to add a few new cool pics in the next couple of days!

Abrazos!

Full moon in the Jungle!!!

Do I really need to add anything else!

Julien's croc

Here is picture of a crock found in a lagoon on our way to our field site! Another of Julien's photos!

busy in the field but here are few new pictures!

am sorry, I have not been adding to much info lately, we are deep in the crunch of things and very rapidly seeing the end of the 2009 field season! Anyhow, here are some new pictures, taken by Julien of more of the critters and great views we are getting here right now! Gotta guess which one is the monkey and which one the biologist, I ask myself the same question sometimes!

So about the vulture...

I figured it was time I discuss a little more about the famous King Vulture. The King Vulture is one of the New World vultures (Vultures of north and south america) and is closely related to Condors. It ranges from southern Mexico to Brazil. There are records of the King Vultures in Florida but have been extirpated a long time ago.

King vultures inhabit tropical forests and we are still unsure where they nest. As far as we know, males and females are identical.

Although King Vultures are not endangered, habitat destruction, the use of venom and pesticides to control other species and deforestation is threatening to send this species into decline. They are no longer found in many of their old home ranges. The problem with King Vultures is that they are so elusive and difficult to study, thus its population numbers and status are very difficult to estimate. This is why we are trying to get more information on this beautiful bird.

The King Vulture has been classified as Least Concern by the IUCN. To get more information on the species you can have a look at the IUCN red list; IUCN Red List of Threatened Species for more information on the classification of the King Vulture).

San Cristobal

I will be sending some more field adventures but I am know going to Africam Safari to conduct a new experiment on a few King Vultures they have in the zoo. We are trying to find out once and for all if they use Olfaction to find their prey. I will keep all of you posted with pictures of the zoo and the experiments.

As for the rest of the crew they are still working hard in the field, observing King Vultures as much as we can!

Here a couple of pictures of our last little vacation to San Cristobal, up in the Sierra Madre, just an amazing place. We spent of the days visiting Mayan pueblos on our little horses, I thought it would not make it, but he was stronger than I thought! Oye Pobre!

Becan

This ancient Mayan town which means "Protected by moats" was a very important ground for commerce in the beginning of the century millenium is completely surrounded by moats which well the protected the village. It is about 10 km from our village and this is one of the most impressive ruins I have seen so far. It is not as big as say Calakmul but the diversity and carvings on the buildings make this place stunning. This area was abandonned in the 1200's and was never affected by the conquistadors!

The 'king' Vulture

Just another day at work, these pictures were taken yesterday from one of our blinds! What an amazing species!

The things you can fix with duct tape!

Our latest Jeep problem, oh right, it is already three problems ago. But on that day a brach knocked out the muffler, so here I am taping the parts together, well got us working for a couple of hours anyway!

The team!

Here is a picture of our team with the Jeep and T-Shirts that Mauro made up for the project (yes they are for sale!). Did I mention, I love the jeep, beats the little black volk bug we were using!

Pas seulement des moments difficiles!

Je sais, je sais je vous parle surtout des moments difficiles...mais il y a un peu d'avantage d`être au Méxique quand même! La semaine dernière nous avons passé la fin de semaine à Tullum! Nous avons enfin passés des heures sur la plage, faire du snorkel, du vélo et boire des margaritas bien sur! Nous avons aussi passè un peu de temps au ruines de Tullum.

J`étais vraiment excité d`allé à ce village où Jas, Rico et Marie-Hélène était allé il y a quelques années. Enfin, j`avais besoin de déccrocher un peu et ceci à fait la job! J`inclus quelques photos de moi très malheureux...Il fait combien dont au Québec c`est temps-ci! lol

King Vultures at carcass

After weeks of hard work preparing we are finally getting some very good quality data. I thought I would share with you a group of King Vultures feeding at a carcass. There is lots of action as the different individuals are trying to get their share of the prey item and maintain their social rank within the group. The bigger darker birds are young King Vulture and the smaller birds are Black vultures.

Late night Jaguar!

Here is one of our latest competitors to the carcasses. This is a large male Jaguar that actually took the whole carcass away! Not a very long video but very cool! Campeche is the one of the Mexican states with the highest jaguar population in Mexico. So far at least 2 out of 8 bait sites have been predated by Jaguar! Althought it makes our time here a little longer, it is great to see this beautiful cats!

We got some Vultures

After a couple of weeks of bad luck, bad weather, breaking trucks, we finally had a break! Julien and I went to put up a camera at one of our sites last week. Usually there is very little action at the roost trees during the day so this is when we do some of our manual work (fixing blinds etc.) Sure enough, as we arrived there were three adults in the roost and I finally managed to get some ok pictures that we can use to start identifying individual based on their facial features! Here is a picture of two of them clearly curious of our presence!

Chicana!

This is the Chicana Mayan archeological site near our village! While I could not give Mayan history justice in a paragraph here goes! The Mayans are probably the best-known of the classical civilizations of Mesoamerica. The originated in the Yucatan Peninsula around 2600 BC and around A.D. 250 may their way to southern Mexico, Guatemala, Western Honduras, El salvador and northern Belize. The Mayans are best known for ther development of astronomy, calendrical systems and hierglyphic writting. They were noted for their elaborate and highly decorated ceremonial architecture such as seen above at the Chicana site. They were also very skilled potters and weavers and had extensive trade networks throughout central america
They also developed a comlex, hierchical society divided into classes and professions. They had a centralized goverment system headed by a king which ruled a territoriy clearly defined with boundaries. Unfortuneatly, this sophisticated society was eliminated in the early 1500´s by the Cortez and Montejo and the spanish conquistadors managed to obliterate the nation. Today while much smaller in number, Mayan culture has remained somewhat intact. The Mayans in the Yucatan still speak Yukatek and are often seen wearing traditional close. They are Mayan first and will always be! (source: www.crystallinks.com/mayanhistory.html)

Cuidado con el habanero

There are numerous dangers working in the field and working in tropical areas, danger number the habanero

pepper! One must be really careful not to scratch eyes, nose and/or private parts after handling and cutting these little guys! Julien found out the hard way, he is now soaking his poor throbbing eye ball in a cup of cold water! Aye aye aye!

Si Tengo Huevos amigo!

Si Tengo huevos amigo!

Northern Jacana

Here a couple pictures of two Northen Jacanas I found in an early morning walk to the Laguna close to our camp last week. While they are quite shy, I was able to take a couple nice shots. I especially like the one below which is hard to tell from this small frame, anyhow it made my day and thought I would share this beautiful bird with you!

Cool bugs

Well here are the insects of the week that got our attention in camp! The first one is this beetle which we found last night on the basketball court near our house. Part of the rhinocerous beetle family, you can see by the size of the regular duct tape role I big this one actually was! The amazing thing is that these masthodons can actually fly!

The second choise was this praying manthis, not sure of the species as there are many around our camp but this one chose to hang out on Tom for a little while. It is like having your own little mosquito guard!!!

No news, good news, I guess!

Well this week has been a restructuring week, we are trying new experiments and new ways to obtain observations of our very hard to find bird. I worked on tough species but this bird truly is rare and elusive...

We finally got a couple of decent trucks and a little motorcycle, so we on inally on full throttle!

Sorry for the lack of news, I will put some nice pictures and a couple of stories on this week!

Suerte,

Mateo

la Fiesta!

I don´t want to give everyone the false impression that all we have been doing here is running around the bush like crazy gringos!!! We are using our extra time to try out all the varieties of Mexican beers (there is much more than just Corona) and sampling the different tequilas off course!!!! This is one of the tame pictures but we will leave it at that for now! Ah yes and are famous homemade mexican BBQ!

Jaguar!!!

Here is the latest pictures from our remote cameras! We are not just picking up King Vultures! Here are pictures from two nights ago with the jaguar! Cuidado!

Turkey vulture Piñatas

We will be trying a new experiment this week to observe the interactions between King Vultures and Turkey Vultures. Thus, we had to build Turkey Vultures piñatas, I am not sure if the king Vulture will like them but I can say that the kids really want me to fill´em with candies!

La maison

Je peux bien me permettre une petite note en francais de temps en temps! Voici notre petite maison a Zoh Laguna, parfaite petite maison de terrain! Nous avons eau semi-courant, electricite et poele propane, l´essentiel dans le fond, pas mal mieux que notre camp dans le bois!

Menonites

Lesa and Cheryl, I have to tell you that there are many many Menonites in the region that we are working in, this makes me think of both of you!

now with the cool stuff!

Our first experiment is proving to be very fruitful. Last week we set field cameras at carcass sites and waited a week to see what magical things we would get. This morning the team retrived the cameras and the results... incredible. We have over 50 pictures of videos and photos of our famous King Vulture, yup it really exists! Here is one of the shots then by the cam and in the back you can see the second camera, really cool! You can see how their throat areas (typically called the crop) are really extended, meaning they are feeding like mad! Que suerte!

I lied to all of you last week! I told you that Julien and I did not see anything in the observation tower... I managed to take this pretty decent picture of a Keel Billed Toucan! Another incredible bird!

Night adventure

A late night adventure, part of the group went in the field yesterday at noon, by 7 pm they had not returned, sowe went out to search for them. After bargaining with a local to bring me with his 4 wheeler to the site where they were doing the study, we left in the darkness along a small sendero deep in the jungle. Fortuneatly they were exactly were I thought they would be, stuck in the mud, all three in the front compartment of the pickup half naked from the humid warmth of the jungle eating some of the food they had left. They explained that all was well but then a quick intense rain flash made the trail into a big muddy hole and they were stuck in deep. Fortuneatly it did not take us very long to get them out, 10 minutes and a lot of reving and pushing and we were on our way back to cozy beds!

Ya esta!

Rainy blind stint!

Our first stint passed in the blind was not successful! After spending three days at the camp and in the observation tower we did not even see one King Vulture!

Althoutgh this is rare, it happens. One of the guides told me that there is a cow carcass not very far from our site and that in these instances the birds will sleep near the carcass for a few days! Oh well, we will be going back next week! Patience is key!

Here a little picture of our camp as well! I guess I forgot to mention that it rained for the first time in a month, for the whole three days we were in camp! It did not take very long but some of my clothes and gear are already getting mouldy, the joys of the jungle!

our new beetle field car!

I´ve been in lots of different types of field vehicles but I must say this one tops all of them! I don´t think we will keep it very long but this car is really strong for its

size!!!

Now that´s a spider!

A couple of nights ago we had a little visitor on our porch, not as scary as the Coral snake in our bathroom last night but its definiteley up there in Matt´s yikes scale!

Then there was the little less dangerous house mouse that fell in our sink which still had a little water left in there. I managed to save it on time and it made it but this picture is priceless, pobrecito!

Finally I just had to post this picture of me and our guide Nicolas laughing at one of our assistant was going up the ladder to the observation point for the first time!

Los ninos del campo

A couple of days ago we were building the ladders for the observation sites, as we were doing this I noticed that the local kids seemed quite intruiged by the ladder we were trying out in the tree in front of our house. As I had a little rope left and a board I built a swing for the kids, it did not take 5 minutes that they were all in our yard playing, and then in the house in the back yard and now they come whenever we are around to play with the gringos. Its great to have them around, anyhow I took a picture of the kids which is great!

The canopy observation site is complete

Well after days of preparation we have finally completed our first observation tower in a large tree at the top of the canopy. The observation tower is 25 m in the air and we get to see all of the jungle from up there, truly amazing. I will send pictures soon of the view. As for now here are a couple of us going up to the obsdervation point.

I must add after 12 hours of strenous work at 35 degrees celcius, the team of 4 went up and 2 minutes after we sat down the first king vulture landed at his roost site about 30 meters away from us, a perfect day!

getting ready

Well I am sorry about this quick entry but we are busy building all of the special gear needed to go to the top of the high canopy trees...here are a couple of pictures of the funny things we have been doing!

And oh yes, the temple pictures are pictures of the Calaktmul Ruins, one of the biggest ruins after Tikkal, truly amazing!

I will find time in a couple of days to keep you posted!!!

Ah yes, and the picture is of our first day in the field... ah the life of a biologist! It took us about 2 hours to get out of this one!

Arrival in Cancun

Well after an easy flight from Montreal to Cancun, I arrived in Mexico in the afternoon and felt at home again in this great country. I was picked up by the staff of the Cancun Botanical Gardens where I dropped off my stuff and spend the rest of the day at the beach!

That night I spent it with the rest of our crews who arrived at different hours from different parts of the world! Spending the night in a beautiful tropical garden with with free ranging spider monkeys was quite at treat!

The next day we heading down south to Chetumal, the largest city in the area to stock up on the food and gear before our arrival at our homebase in the small Mayan Village of Zoh Laguna.

In Zoh Laguna both groups established themselves in their living quarters which will be our homebase for the next three months! Its a good start!