My home for the next three months, La Selva Biological Park (they have a website...just google it if youīre interested!), is a working biological research station. It is operated by the 'Organisation for Tropical Studies', founded in 1963to provide leadership in the education, research and wise use of tropical natural resources. Many well-known tropical ecologists have studied at La Selva!

The area protected by La Selva is 1513 hectares of pre-montane wet-tropical rain forest, much of it undisturbed. It's bordered to the south by th 476 sq km of Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo, creating a protected are large enough to support a great diversity of life. More than 430 bird species have been recorded here, as well as 120 mammal species, 1900 species of vascular plants and thousands of insects species. (Sorry Lonely Planet for plagarising those two paragraphs but I couldn't have said it better!).

I really love it here. The four of us (Adam, Jeff, Eric and I) share a (small)room at the river station (by the river...obviously...wé've been swimming once but it's a little scary coz teh current is so strong and there are crocodiles-though i haven't seen any yet!). Itīs about a 5 minute walk to either the labs, the library, and the dining hall. Not too bad unless itīs dark and you're wearing flip-flops with no flashlight! Bad Idea! I actually stepped on a snake the other day....I just didnīt see it....even though it was light! Luckily it was a little one and a rear-fanged snake (and to those of you, like me, who are unfamiliar with snakes...that means itīs fangs turn inwards in its mouth...no fangs on itsī tail...which apparently is a stupid thing to think!).

Manakins make this special type of "snapping" sound with their wings to attract females. The males lek in groups of 3-15. Each one clears a "court" which is about one meter squared (it variates greatly depending on the quality of the male) surrounded by several strong saplings on which they jump from one to another while making their "snapping" sound (thereīs a lot more info, including some videos of this snapping behaviour on adamīs website: www.adamcstein.com).

They usually axhibit this snapping behaviour early in the mornings (6-9) and in the afternoons (11:30-3). So the first few days we had to go around the whole park and listen out for the manakin snapping. La Selva has over 50km of well-developed jungle trails, often paved, so we got bikes to ride around! Makes it a lot easier! Once we located the snapping we had to go off the path into the jungle to find the lek exactly and then find out how many courts there are (once you know what they look like theyīre really easy to recognise!). Then we had to measure the distance and direction of each of the courts.

Out of the many leks we found, weīre using three main good ones at the moment. The past four days weīve been misnetting which involves putting up these nets (which to me look like fishnets) in the forest. They're reallyt hin and hard to spot so the birds just fly into them and get stuck. Sounds horrific but it isn't. We just have to check them about every half an hour and then untangle any caught birds. I was very scared at doing this in the beginning but iīm getiing used to it and better so i kinda like it now. I think iīve freed about 15 birds in the past 4 days. Not bad. Plus you get to hold them and play with them after you free them. Fun! We've caught some pretty birds so far...the nicest definitely was a royal flycatcher...beautiful! If a manakin gets caught then we bring them back to "camp", tag and measure them etc...and after about half an hour let them go again. Weīve caught 16 manakins so far and Adam wants to catch all the birds from those three leks which probably comes to about 40 birds....so we still have a lot of work to do. After this we will be filming them, observing them and teleometrying (I don't know if thatīs a verb but now it is!) them.

I think thatīs about it for now...itīs getting close to dinner time. My rice and beans are waiting for me...

xxxxx