It has been raining constantly since the early hours and now the power has gone off for the first time – the station is dependent on solar power for most of its electricity so I’m not sure if we were just particularly greedy yesterday! The rain had eased by the time I had to go and collect today’s leaves, fortunately, and the rest of the day was pretty much a repeat of yesterday, with more fungi and armadillo! 

The rain has really brought on the fungal fruiting bodies and today we found Jelly ear, a coral fungus and Earthstars – a first for me. – on the Maya trail.

It’s also stimulated a lot of new growth in the palms, many of which are now producing fresh, yellow-green leaves. In the afternoon, even more excitingly, two of the girls stumbled on a small armadillo, when setting out their point-centre-quadrant survey. They were working quietly so didn’t scare it away and we were able to watch for a while until it seemed to sense our presence and disappeared into a hole it had dug underneath the roots of an overturned tree. Its slight purple tinge in the photo below is something to do with the effects of high humidity on my camera…

Jonathan helped with setting up a light trap and pitfall traps before getting an early night as he’s leading the dawn chorus activity tomorrow which starts at 5 am! I collected moths and grasshoppers from the sheet we’d hung up after a couple of hours to show the students tomorrow but there was nothing particularly spectacular. There was a Gulf Coast toad hanging around by the steps all evening, though.

I’d been so busy consolidating my plant knowledge that I’d taken my eye off the ball with thinking about the insect practicals tomorrow. Hopefully a mixture of pootering, sweep netting and pitfall traps, plus the moths we caught this evening, should give them a good introduction to the group.