We have
gotten a ton more volunteers lately, which is great! We need the help especially
because the hatchlings are coming. However, new volunteers mean lots of
training. I’m hoping to groom some new long-term volunteers to do crawl counts
since two of the more experienced volunteers here are leaving at the end of the
month.
After
breakfast and crawl counts, I took the volunteers to Monterrico in order for
them to get some money and groceries. I, of course, got a cake! On the way
back, we got a ride with the Monterrico police. We had already waited a half
hour for the bus and it still hadn’t come, so when the police pulled up we
asked them for a ride. I think they were bored because they said yes. So we got
a ride in the back of the police pick-up truck haha.
In the
afternoon, we released 3 iguanas in the mangroves. I’ve been pushing Mariachi
to release more animals, so I was really happy. They ran away in hurry, so you
can tell they were glad to be released. Later, when I was trying to identify
the 4 types of freshwater turtles we have at the park, I noticed a dead musk
turtle in the cage. I couldn’t tell why it died, but it helped me convince
Mariachi to release more turtles next week. Back to identifying turtles
though…we don’t have a field guide of any kind here, so I had to go on the
internet. The internet is super slow, so it took me forever to figure out the
scientific names based on the Spanish common names. I also created a cheat
sheet for volunteers to use when giving a tour to visitors, which is why I was
trying to identify the different turtles. Finally, I calculated the number of
eggs that have been collected in July/August this year vs. last year. We were
ahead in July’s counts and it is tough to say how we are doing in comparison to
August. I’m hoping we beat last year’s egg counts!
The beautiful mangroves :)
The 3 iguanas we released
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