6/6/2012——— Caught another early ride out with Ummat to Pipeline. Victoria, a noctural bat person, surprisingly shows up to join along at this early hour. She’s leaving soon and is trying to get as much different Panama experience in before her time is up. After years here, this is apparently her first time down pipeline…

6/5/2012 Cecropia Rotation Tests Late night early morn. Race the sun, setup at 9. Used chair trick learned from last night’s flower-carrying Leafcutter recording to make my tripods taller. Ran across Ummat and his bugs this morning. A group of adorable panamanian 8 year-old girls were interested in what he was doing with bugs, and…

6/4/12 Ummat gave us a ride as far as we could go on pipeline. The goal for the day is to walk back in order to make it to the talk at 4pm. 11-12km down the road, trees had fallen across the road from the storms last night. Saw Howlers, Filmed. One had hideous growths…

  6/3/2012 Got an early morning ride with Ummat and Yann. Went to Rio Frijole on pipeline road. Peter had explored this area earlier and tipped Ummat off to groves of helaconia trees. Takes 20 mins of river walking to get into the growth. Ummat finds his hemipterans on these plants. Males and epsecially mating…

6/2/2012 First day “off.” Bringing my equipment with me anyway. Victoria (who seemingly serves as gamboa’s social liason) set up an incredible trip. Bus to coast to boat to island (the island is maybe not an island, just a hard to get to penninsula). Entire day of fun!    Day kicks off with spotting a…

6/1/2012 Peter picked me up with the truck and drove us to the Pipeline road for my very first time. He showed me an Army ant bivouac inside a tree that he tracked down the day before. Tracking video would be hard to get of the inside of the tree, so I wedged the GoPro…

5/31/12| ——– 11:30 AM Testing capturing footage of leafcutter ants outside the schoolhouse. Filming under a short tree is not a good idea. This tree is full of thousands of small biting ants, and everytime I am filled with the desire to change focus, exposure values, I accidentally stand up fully and the shirt refills…

Day before went with Peter to Barro Colorado Island. Hiked across the island through the rain. Peter shows me walking trees.     Lunch with Apes. Shiny Bugs. Poison Frogs. Crocodile in the distance. Susi did not like how we smelled on the boat ride back.

5/29 | —— Start day with peter looking under microscope to identify ants. There are apparently 20+ varieties of Azteca ants around, but there are only identification keys for 4 species. These ants I hear are also notoriously hard to tell apart, especially between workers. Queens are apparently the key to identifying species, but they…