Dracula Youth Reserve Expedition: Day 8
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Written By Natalia Espinoza
Callie and I had fallen asleep late after a midnight photoshoot with Dipsas elegans and awoke to the sound of the song “Angel Exterminador” by Ilegales and Miguel showing off his vocal skills in the shower before our alarm could even go off. We had breakfast at 7:30 with the now expanded team, including Marco, Gaby, and Rolando, whom we had all met the day before.
Dipsas elegans, photo by Callie Broaddus.
Pearson left for camp with the Herp Team around 10 AM to continue digging pitfall traps. By this point, we were almost starting to have different expeditions. We soon started joking that we were becoming old, estranged friends, only crossing each other’s paths in the hallway.
Imantodes cenchoa ex-situ without manipulation, photo by Callie Broaddus.
Callie and I spent the morning charging batteries, packing for our next camp at Casa Fischer, and taking final pictures of our sweet little Imantodes cenchoa, which we named Enid. Camila, the sweet and curious four-year-old daughter of a Casa Dracula staff member, followed us everywhere. As I held the snake, she hid behind me or kept her distance. She slowly warmed up to it. I taught her how to handle it and she told me that her mom always warns her that snakes will eat her.
Camila tentatively warming up to Enid the Imantodes cenchoa. Photo by Callie Broaddus.
The fear of snakes is widespread in El Chical. Many locals have stories regarding venomous snakes, including Milton, who told me that three people in his extended family had died of snake bites. While this fear of vipers is founded, snakes that are nonvenomous are also often demonized and killed indiscriminately. This points to the urgency of environmental education and awareness in order to mend certain relationships with nature. Many of the snakes we were lucky to handle and photograph on our expedition could have easily been killed if found by others.
Lunch at the Casa Fischer site. Photo by Callie Broaddus.
Around 1:30, Javier returned to take us to Casa Fischer, where we set up our tents in the wooden rooms upstairs. Though this campsite was a massive structural upgrade over our muddy camp at the Reserva site, we still zipped our tents up tightly. This structure would protect us from the elements, but not the insects and arachnids! Pearson soon came back from setting up pit traps around 2:30, and we recounted our mornings over lunch at the table Don Hector had finished building just five minutes earlier.
Jorge and the Minions review photos with Callie. Photo by Natalia Espinoza.
The rest of the afternoon involved more scientific work as the Herp Team spent their last afternoon together, as Mario and Juanito would be leaving for Alto Tambo in the morning, and Callie worked with Jorge and the Minions to photograph one of the rodents commonly found at Dracula Reserve, Heteromys australis. Before it got dark, Callie, Mario and I walked up the road so we could conduct an interview with our incredible lead herpetologist. After a great conversation with Mario, we headed back to Casa Fischeri at around 6:30 to get ready for a night of herping.
Heteromys australis, photo by Callie Broaddus.
Because Callie and I had been busy photographing almost every collected individual, we hadn’t had the chance to go out on monitoring hikes as much as the rest of the team. This would then be my second and last night herping. We broke up into teams, ours being composed of Mario, the Daniels, Rolando, Callie and me. It quickly became clear that Callie was the best at spotting frogs tonight. Before we even got to the creek, Callie had found five of them! Daniel C. and Mario pretended to be disgruntled, joking that we were making them look bad. After 20 minutes of walking down the creek, I spotted my first frog of the night and took it to Daniel C. for him to identify.
Sachatamia orejuela, photo by Callie Broaddus.
As I showed it to him, his eyes lit up: it was a Sachatamia orejuela—the first scientific record of the species collected in Carchi province! As Mario came up to take a look at it, he jokingly told Daniel that they needed to catch up to us, to which Daniel C. answered “Chicas (girls) 7 – Herpetólogos 0.” Shortly after, Rolando also caught a bird!
The Buff-rumped Warbler Rolando caught. Photo by Callie Broaddus.
We continued walking down the creek until we made it to the top of a small waterfall. There was no visible path in sight. When I caught up to Mario and Daniel C., Daniel told me we had a dilemma: we could either jump into the water beneath us to make it to the river or climb a very steep wall covered with tree roots. Although Mario laughed at this proposition, Daniel seemed seriously inclined to jump. We decided to climb up; jumping with all of Callie’s expensive equipment was simply not an option. Soon we were walking on what I had initially assumed was a ridge. In reality, we were walking on fake ground made up of roots, dead branches, and mosses disguising the precipice beneath our feet. Every step needed to be taken very carefully.
Oxybelis brevirostris, photo by Callie Broaddus.
One of the most chaotic yet fun moments of the night would happen around 9:30. Daniel C. spotted a small opossum on a tree trunk to our right just above eye level. Just when everyone’s attention was fixed on the wide-eyed mammal, Daniel V. launched himself into the foliage behind us and plucked out a tiny Oxybelis brevirostris vine snake. The two finds were only separated by 30 seconds (according to the timestamp on Callie’s photos), but I can still remember everything in perfect detail. Everyone was ecstatic at our two close finds, and especially at the rare opportunity to get such a good look at an opossum.
We spent the next hour trying to photograph it as it disappeared behind the branches and leaves, and then came back, realizing that our flashlights were attracting moths for its dinner. Two times it came so close that Daniel C. and Callie nearly caught it with their bare hands, hoping to bring it to Jorge and the Minions team to study, but to no avail.
A type of slender mouse opossum, Marmosops caucae, in situ. Photo by Callie Broaddus.
After an hour, Mario and I decided to continue hiking while Callie and the Daniels stayed behind to get a few more shots of our adorable furry model. Mario and I walked past some pit traps set up by our team, as well as some traditional Awá rodent traps made out of wood. At one point, a beautiful blue Morpho butterfly followed us for part of our hike. Mario heard the call of a Rhaebo blombergi, a 15-cm long toad. We kept walking, hoping that we weren’t too far from the water so we could look for it. Unfortunately, the Rhaebo soon stopped making its call. But we didn’t come back empty handed; other finds included Pristimantis achatinus, Pristimantis laticlavius, and Smilisca phaeota. We eventually ran into Juanito, and the three of us walked back together to camp, curious to see what the other teams had collected on their hikes. We all huddled together, sharing the night’s collections, which included three Basiliscus, several Smilisca and Pristimantis labiosus, Anolis princeps, a Bolitoglossa sp., Pristimantis muricatus, Leptodactylus melanonotus, and two more Sachatamia orejuela!
We were rewarded with some midnight dinner and chocolate before going to bed, a bittersweet meal as Callie and I would no longer be seeing Mario and Juanito, who were leaving the next morning to look for a specific frog species in nearby Alto Tambo. Since Callie, Javier and I would be leaving Casa Fischer before dawn to document a prospective Dracula Reserve land purchase, it was time for us to say goodbye to these incredible scientists from whom we had learned so much.
As Callie and I got into our sleeping bags, exhausted and happy after such an eventful day, she turned to me and said “Do you remember the first time that you went on a field trip as a kid and got to stay the night and were so excited? That’s how I feel right now.”