Thursday, November 30, 2006

Back and busy (Again...)

So it{s back to Cuenca for the final time and that means one thing: Finals! I have so much to do I might be a long time in getting anything ubstantial up here. Maybe some pictures, but nothing too long. But needless to say it is very nice to get back to the city. This last hitch was pretty tiring. But now I have papers and exams. What a break! But then we get to travel. We decide where tonight. But I suppose that will have to be it for now.

Friday, November 10, 2006

More pictures

So I put some pictures up from our trip to Cajas national park. I can{t expalin them now except to say that mountain is about 14,300 feet high, behind me is te continental divide, we{re all eating pop corn and the older guy is Stu. Sorry to be so breif.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Go Dems!

Yay we have both houses!!!!! See: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/09/va.senate/index.html
That is amazing, though there is also bad news as well. My lovely dirt road is now paved. Yes, it´s true, my dad informed me and it is so sad.
http://graultykin.blogspot.com/2006/10/ode-to-road.html
But anyway, I´ve been having fun and eating my fair share of icecream (this place called Tuteo fredo is simply amazing)I´ve also been working on a project to study bird composition in could forest and a pine plantation. I get to hold birds in my hand and look at them and love them all up (just kidding I´m not that obsessed, but it is cool to hold a hummingbird in your hand)So I´m doing that with a Christine (from Colby) and we´re almost done with the data collection part. Now we just have to write the damned thing. But now I have to do sokme midterms and other junk so this will have to be quick. I´ll do a quick run down on the pictures (and by the way there may be more to come.) Any questions just email me.
1. That´s a hummingbird nest with a 3 day old chick in it. It´s a bit fuzzy but I´ll get a better one
2.This one didn´t come out that great but it´s me trying to be artsy and show how sttep the slopes are.
3. Oh shoot, I forget what kind of bird this is, i´ll have to get back to you. But we got it in a 12m by 2m net we use to id and mark birds in our study area.
4. This is a backlog of birds we had to id. Each one of those bags has a bird. Kind of like an ornithologist´s christmas tree, no?
5. This is the crew (minus me) From right to left: Catherine, Elliot, Amy, Lindsey, Christine, Kristina and Emily. Kristina is the bird expert and we´re having a little teachable moment. How cute.
6. This is a woodpecker we caught. It was a hell of a time getting him out of the net.
7. This one doesn´t show up too well either. But anyway, it´s a shining starfrontlet humming bird. Pretty amazing feathers, right?

So taht´s the slideshow and there are pleasntly more and I´ll be taking more as well. Maybe we´ll catch a toucan. By the way I saw a Gray Breasted Mountain Toucan from about 15 m. I was amazing. Here´s a pic

http://www.birding-peru.com/upload/picsfiles/Gray-breasted%20Mountain-Toucan%20small.jpg

So that´s it for a few days at least. We leve monday for a mini trip to an alpaca raising community near mabato (north of here) We´ll be there for 3-4 days come back to Cuenca then go back out into the firld. Keep in touch and I´ll update asap.

Also, as for my spelling etc. I´m currently typing on a crappy, sticky, letter white-outed on keyboad in an internet cafe. So sorry.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

So I´m Back...

Hey ya´ll, I just got back today and managed to get some pics up. Sorry to make you ponder them all without proper explanation, but it´s more fun that way isn´t it? More to follow...and and just follow the same insturctions explained below.