Our final day at El Copal started a little later, only 5:45am! The birding was much improved this morning over yesterday with a few new species added to our total bird list for the lodge. One last traditional breakfast of eggs, rice, beans and another fresh tortilla, and a relaxing morning of packing, bird watching, and having a last look at El Copal, for the time being of course! Maya (our taxi driver) arrived at noon, just as it began raining, so after a hurried goodbye to Beto and Patricia, we tossed our gear and Andrew into the trunk of the 4×4 again and off we went back towards San Jose. Maya’s son Johnny ended up driving us from El Humo to San Jose, but only after they shared some raw sugar cane with us. That is some sweet, sweet grass! Surprisingly it wasn’t as sweet as regular granulated sugar, but the liquid extracted from the cane was extremely tasty and made a good supplement for lunch en route. I had the middle seat in the back of the 4×4 which got to be fairly uncomfortable after 2.5 hours, but Johnny was a great driver and a lot of fun. We got back into San Jose about 3pm, just as the skies opened and the rain poured down again. Some more confusion at the Adventure Inn, but eventually we had our room, our baggage and our computers back on the ‘net! After each of us enjoyed a warm shower and some clean clothes we headed off to the conference to register and meet up with old acquaintances and new friends. A little rant, but it seems that the student registration doesn’t include the congress monographed satchel and coffee press, which were reserved for the full price “Delegate” members, even though I would guess it’d be appreciated by students more than professors and research scientists. That’s pretty damn ridiculous in my mind, and doesn’t seem to encourage students to attend these meetings if they are to be treated as second class scientists, but nothing much I can do about it besides this little rant! We decided to walk from the conference centre back to our hotel (about 20 minutes) and picked up some peanut butter, Nutella, and Bimbo (Latin American bread, similar to Wonder Bread) for dinners over the next few days to save some money. We walked back to the conference centre for the opening night mixer, and were pleasantly surprised to find an open bar and lots of high-quality hors d’oeuvres! It was great getting to meet other Dipterists and become reacquainted with those I’d met before. After a few hours of socializing and wine/dining we headed back to the hotel en masse via taxi. The driver had a good night as he swindled all 12 of us for $2 US a piece for a 3 minute cab ride. Dipterists are generally a cheap bunch to start with, but faced with the injustice of this cab ride, there were a lot of pissed off fly specialists! Luckily we’re also pretty laid back, so a few minutes of griping and we were back to normal and ready for bed. Polishing and publishing my backlog of blog entries for our time at El Copal finished off my evening, and the pillow was calling my name from across the hotel!

MTC…

Today is our last full day here at El Copal Lodge, so I tried to make the most of it by getting up at 5:15 to catch the sunrise and snag some photos before birding with Joel until breakfast. The birds must have decided to sleep in however as there wasn’t much activity today. Patricia prepared another traditional breakfast of eggs, rice, beans, cheese and fresh tortilla to fuel our collecting for the morning, and we headed off to the Mariposa (butterfly in Spanish) trail. The clouds decided they were going to roll in early today so the collecting wasn’t nearly as good as the last 2 days, but we did hit the target groups and each got some interesting specimens. Apparently the mosquitoes didn’t get the message that it was going to be cloudy today though, as they were the thickest we’ve had to deal with yet. It turns out our malaise didn’t survive the previous night’s rain, with the duct tape and twine failing us. All of our hard work and MacGyver training for naught! Oh well, that’s the way it goes sometimes. At least we won’t have to worry about setting it up in Guanacaste! A lunch of steak, salad and palm heart finished off with freshly made rice pudding took our minds off the malaise failure however. The rains came again this afternoon, meaning time to pin our meager catch from the day and relaxation time in the hammocks processing images. Our final dinner at El Copal Reserve, and Patricia outdid herself again (pan fried fish, fried potatoes, fresh salsa)! Tonight has been the first night where the clouds and rain have stuck around, so the 5 of us just hung out and talked late into the night. Beto had enjoyed a little too much wine with the birder’s who came today, and came out to join us around midnight to thank us for coming and to encourage us to bring our friends in the future! It was a great way to spend our final evening at the El Copal Ecolodge.

We tried putting some fruit out today in an effort to catch more flies (and see more birds), but it didn’t work as well as we had hoped for either. A few vinegar flies (Drosophilidae) were all we saw.

Everyone seemed to be able to find micropezids except for me, with Joel, Andrew and Gil each contributing 2 apiece.

Andrew Rick-Rolled us while walking along the trail…

A colony of army ants decided to crash the lodge today and were swarming over the porch and into Gil and Andrew’s room. Sandals weren’t a good idea tonight!

MTC….

5:30am and the sun is just peeking over the mountains; time to go birding! Without leaving the grounds of the lodge, we had a good hour of birding before breakfast with about 20 species confidently identified. A hearty breakfast of arrepes (dense pancakes), eggs, and honey and we were off. Beto needed to walk into town today for groceries, so we had to fend for ourselves on the trails. Gil wanted to revisit the grassy bog at the top of the mountain, so he lead us on a break-neck death march, getting us to the top around 8am. After about 3 hours of steady collecting we came back down at a leisurely pace, collecting and shooting when we found something worthwhile. Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be as much moving around today, so it wasn’t quite as good as yesterday, but we did manage to find 2 genera of Micropezidae that we hadn’t seen yet. I experienced how cold the mountain-fed showers were after we got back (and they were cold alright, but refreshing after the hike) then Patricia called us in for lunch (marinated chicken, potato & beet salad, broccoli, and of course, rice). The clouds were beginning to look ominous, but Patricia reassured us that it wouldn’t rain this afternoon, no problemo. Turns out she was a little off, as half an hour later the clouds opened and it started pouring!

Before dinner and during a lull in the rain, Joel, Andrew and I figured we better set up the malaise trap, since we brought it all this way! Now, this isn’t your ordinary, off-the-shelf malaise trap! Oh no, this is a hack job that Joel and I put together at the last minute while packing last week. The netting itself has long seen better days and the head was composed of a urine sample vial with the bottom cut out, a plastic pasta sauce jar with a hole cut in the side and a mason jar screwring glued to the mouth, finished off with a large Nalgene screwed underneath, plus a healthy proportion of duct tape and hot glue! We decided to set up the trap across a small trail in the hopes that the local flies would be using it as a super highway, and strung it up with a few dozen feet of twine and some sticks acting as pegs. We had high hopes for our contraption, but when the urine vial peeled off the pasta jar, and we added a few more feet of duct tape, we began to think we were fighting a losing battle. Perseverance, plus some more twine and duct tape, and we were set to catch us some insects! It started raining right before we finalized the set up, so we didn’t have time to really admire our handiwork, but hopefully it’ll still be in one piece and standing tomorrow morning. A quick run through the jungle in the rain to avoid getting my camera gear wet and we were back at the lodge and ready for dinner! Another excellent dinner (marinated cubed beef, pasta, rice, dulce square) was followed with a long conversation with Beto & Patricia about the history of El Copal, the environmental issues facing Costa Rica, and how we came to find out about El Copal. I truly can’t express how great this lodge and the owners are! Conversation was cut short (a figurative term as we sat there talking for over an hour) when Beto ran out listening to an owl. We never did see the owl, but the sky was so clear, the star viewing was even better than last night. I spent a good half an hour making new images of the Milky Way, before going inside to show the others what I had captured. Beto & Patricia in particular were very excited to see the shots and also some of the insects that we’ve encountered on their property. While everyone else headed off to bed, I saw that the star conditions had further improved, so I spent another hour outside playing and making images. By far and away the most amazing nightscapes I’ve ever seen, and I couldn’t be happier with the pictures (they need some more advanced post-processing, but I’ll have them up here shortly after getting back to Canada).

We came across a huge colony of army ants swarming the trail this morning, providing a nice break from the brisk pace Gil set. Seeing thousands of ants swarming through the undergrowth is a pretty neat experience. Collected some army ant-associated thick-headed flies (Conopidae: Stylogaster) and Tachinidae.

Gil had me try and get some shots of hovering Ornidia (Syrphidae), which presented a new challenge that will need some practice, despite the flies staying relatively still while hovering.

MTC…