Spiders, transects, and British accents.

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Spiders, spiders everywhere, and all of them on your face. Or at least across your path. It's amazing how fast spiders are at building webs across our paths in the forest even if we had been there 3 hours before. And they are big, at least compared to spiders back in North America that I've seen. The biggest was a Golden Orb spider which was as big as my hand, and I almost walked into him.

As you might have guessed, this week was all about the forest. We have been out every day this week, and done so much. We did bird point count surveys, where we watched for all of the birds we could spot. We did human disturbance where we walked along our transects and would look for signs of humans (ie: stumps, planks, charcoal pits, etc) for 5 meters on either side. And primates, oh so many primates. We have done primate community, where we watch for the size of a group and how many males, females, adults, juveniles, and infants there are. Lastly we have done primate behaviour, where we watch one individual with binoculars for as long as we can and record what they do. We also did a night survey on Wednesday. We went out after 6pm and looked for any nocturnal animals such as small eared galigos (bush babies) and anything else we could find. I learned that spiders have blue eyes, and moths have red. I didn't see a galigo, but I did see a few really cool looking moths.

Lastly, British accents. I say this because the majority of the people at the Shimoni base right now are British, so I'm sure that I will come home with some semblance of a British accent. I'm already starting to think in a British accent sometimes so it's all downhill from here. XD

This weekend we do emergency first responder training as part of our internship. It should be fun. Next week I have my survey leader day. I have yet to decide what I want to do.

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Comments

[Liam]

Sounds like you should've taken your hiking poles with you so you could use them to knock down spider webs before you walk into them! Maybe for your survey leader day you can go count spiders? Hehehe. I'm trying to imagine you with a British accent. I somehow can't manage to do it. Guess I'll have to wait and see (hear?) for myself when I get there! By that point you should be fluent. =D Sounds like you're still having a great time. Yay! Go say hi to a monkey for me!

[Bill]

Are any of these spiders dangerous to people? I'm not sure what would be worse, the spiders the size of your hand or the millipede your friend had crawl across her lap. Both would creep me out completely.