November 2014

 

Some great bird watching this month:

Bird Watching:

Manuel, Pemela, Estelle, and Roy – guides from Manuel Antonio Park have been visiting Cloudbridge with plans to bring some of their birding clients up for a hike in the cloud forest.   We spent the morning hiking with them and learning from their expertise. What was normally a 2 hour hike stretched into 6 hours.  Not much gets by these guys.

 

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Flowers and Foliage:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Community participation:

There seems to be a large amount of recycling  this month at the community recycling station.  We made two trips into town with our volunteers to sort and crush cans and bottles.

 

Volunteers:

Emily – Australia

In July I left Australia to embark on my internship in Costa Rica with GVI. The first three months I was in Tortuguero on the Caribbean coastline living in the thick jungle, at sea level, walking for miles a day on the soft sand beach working with turtles. For the placement phase of my internship I was lucky enough to be sent to Cloudbridge in October. Cloudbridge could not be more different from Tortuguero. No turtles for starters, the climate is a lot cooler and nothing could have prepared me for how steep some of the trails are! I went from sea level to an elevation level of 1600 meters. My main responsibilities while here have been to carry on the research focusing mainly on bird point counts and camera trapping. I was NOT a bird person before I came to Costa Rica, and my time in Tortuguero slightly converted me, but its been Cloudbridge that has turned me into a complete bird person. Never before would I have dreamed of getting up before the sun to go look at birds, now I love it! The challenge of bird watching is a new daily thrill as well as making the rounds to pick up cameras which have captured the likes of pumas, oncillas and peccaries! The two best birding experiences have been the majestic Ornate Hawk-eagle and the Costa Rican Pygmy Owl, only the second time the adorable little guy has been sighted in Cloudbridge! I have a little under two weeks left at Cloudbridge and I could not be more grateful for the time I’ve had here. My final weeks here I am using to my full advantage to hopefully catch a sighting of the amazing resplendent quetzal! Fingers crossed!

 

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Victor – South Africa

Victor has recently graduated from high school and is traveling Central America volunteering at a number of different nature reserves. He plans on taking this year off before staring university.  He has been helping out with the biological survey here, as well as working in the tree nursery and doing tree maintenance and other projects.

 

 

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Oliver – Germany

Oliver has just completed university with a business engineering degree. He is taking some time off to travel before he enters the work force.  Here on the reserve he has  been assisting with the biological survey as well as getting plenty of practice with a machete clearing around seedlings.

 

 

 

Art Studio:

Linda is filling her studio at the reserve with lots of colorful and  exotic mixed media paintings of the rainforest.