Jonathan and I sorted the kit into piles for the students first thing Wednesday morning, then waved off little groups after breakfast, heading off into the forest on the various trails, like they were setting off for their first day at school! There were the inevitable first day of project hiccups, particularly for the group using the PEA machine to measure the photosynthetic efficiency of leaves, with and without epiphylls (fungi and lichens growing on their leaves). I’d not realised the machine’s memory was nearly full and that we’d have to download the software onto a PC before we could empty the memory… Fortunately one computer-savvy student in the group was able to do this quickly and they were not delayed too much.

Jonathan and I spent the rest of the morning tweaking questions for the evening’s ID test and he was kind enough to download my photos and airdrop them to me as my iPad has stopped recognising the card reader, in protest at the humidity. I’m very glad to be able to label up my photos as best I can as we go, rather than waiting till we get home when there will be many conflicting demands on my time. 

After lunch we collected plant and insect samples for the test, then set it all up in the classroom. It was quite straightforward to administer the questions which are on PowerPoint slides but a bit of a logistical challenge to set up the practical samples and allow 21 people 90 seconds to look at each of them in turn. The students, of course, were quite stressed by the whole thing but nearly all did very well. We marked all the tests after dinner, with a little beer for lubrication – it was good to get that done and to return the lab space to normal for tomorrow. One student equalled the highest mark Jonathan has ever seen on a field course test! It’s good to see how much they have learned.

Thursday was our penultimate full day here, which seemed hard to believe. Eight of us went up to the Bird Tower early and, for the first time, I really got to see the spectacular view. The wildlife highlight though was, undoubtedly, seeing a Coral snake by the road on the way home.

Alvin, who came with us, pointed out that the hill up to the tower is the remains of a Mayan temple, though the steps which form part of the route were probably put in by the British army when they built the bunkhouses at Las Cuevas. After breakfast, Jonathan and I walked the Maya trail and to the 50 hectare plot first, then around the saffron trail with Cam, touching base with all the groups of students working on their various projects. Lots of them were a bit worried about the amount of data they collected on the first day but were much happier with how things were going today. 

We saw lots of lovely butterflies along the roadside and interesting fungi in the woods, as well as insects including a robber fly with its prey. It was lovely just to be able to amble, with plenty of time to stop and look at whatever caught our interest. Some of the ‘Hot lips’ (Palicourea tormentosa) which was flowering when we arrived now has glorious, metallic blue fruits. We checked the camera trap on the Bird Tower trail where we saw an Ocelot last week; this week’s treat was a Margay – a slightly smaller wild cat with a longer, bushier tail.

The students started handing in their field notebooks after lunch and we marked them as they came in – it took all afternoon, but we were finished by dinner time, rather than having to spend the evening reading them, as we’d expected. As with the tests, nearly all were very good and some were works of art!  We spent a bit of time tidying up the field kit returned by the students,  then Dan, Cam and I went for a short night walk. We saw two Cat-eye snakes again by the pond and then went to sit in the dark at the log circle by the Mayan temple with our head torches off, while Dan tried to attract owls by playing back their songs using the Merlin app. At least three responded and came closer, and Dan also thought he’d heard a Black-and-white Owl, but none came close enough for us to see them.

I was more than a little nervous about all the rustling noises as we sat in total darkness in the forest but then we spotted fireflies flitting about in the canopy above us, which was truly magical. When we finally gave up and headed back to the station, we saw that the full moon of our first few nights here had waned to nothing, and the Milky Way in all its glory stretched across the sky from horizon to horizon – more stars than I’ve seen in a very long time.