The turtles hatched and a summary of the past two weeks

My time in the jungle is going to an end. 10 more days to stay before I'll continue my trip to Costa Rica. I'm already really excited to get there and hopefully to continue the travel with Laura J.

Many things happened the past two weeks and it's difficult to write an update every week. I'll try to resume everything.

I'm sorry for the delay. ;)

The highlight was the turtles who started to hatch on thursday night. About 40 (or more) turtles came out of the three different nest in the first night. Until now 6-7 nest hatched. The volunteers of Taricaya collected the eggs on the beaches at Madre de Dios some months ago and burrow them in the sand place in Taricaya.

The protecting and relasing of turtles is one of the main conservation projects of Taricaya. By collecting the eggs and breeding them in Taricaya they try to protect the species and prevent their local extinction.

Actually it is forbidden to collect turtles eggs on the sand beaches at the Madre de Dios but many local people still go out to collect them and to sell them on the black market in Puerto Maldonado. The collecting of turtle eggs has an impact of the turtle population. The number of the population is going down if there are no new turtles following.

After the turtles hatched they get measured and marked by a triangle cut in the armature. The cut, this year the forth on the left side counted from the back, showes the which turtles come from this conservation project and which age they have. It's possible to see this mark years ago when the turtle are on logs in the river.

Furthermore we went to the reintroduced spidermonkey group in the jungle. With volunteers and the monkey papi Raul we walked to the observation place next to the reserveTaricaya.

The weather situation was shitty. It was raining for the whole time which made it almost impossible for any photos of the monkeys. Fortunately for us the monkeys heard Raul calling. Instead of walking for hours in the rainy jungle to search the monkeys in the trees, they came to the camp place. Like this the observation was easy to do.

We also started to observe the spectacled bears in Taricaya. I acutally thought this would be an relaxing activity, observing the bears how the sleep and eat and write down some notes. However, one of the bears (Sabina) decided to have the most craziest time ever, to jump around, to fight, eat and bite everything, to swim and jump in the pool, to climb up trees,... The observation wasn't that easy.

We observed each bear for two hours. Every activity get marked on a letter with the duration and other notes. The biologist (and Courtney) at the reserve will use this data to improve the diet and activities for the animals.

The name of the bears: Lucho, Sabina, Cholita.

The birdringing activity gets more and more exciting. In the past 8 months Rachel K., the ornithologist in Taricaya, caught between 300-400 birds. During my time here in the jungle we caught about 312 birds and 92 species. About 85% of them are new for me.

Furthermore we found until now 7 new species for the nature reserve Taricaya. 4 new species in the last two weeks (two by Kyara).

The highlight capture: Common Parauque, Long-billed Woodcreeper, Lemon-throated Barbet, Pheasant Cuckoo

Last weekend we went with a little group of interested volunteers and Staff members of Taricaya to a small Claylick near Puerto Maldonado. The Claylick doesn't attract the big macaws like in the Tombopata reserve but it's still a good place to observe different parrots and parakeets species. On the weekend we were really lucky because we could observe 6 Blued-headed Macaws which are rare to see!