So given that we now have some new frogs complete with radio-transmitters running around the island, it’s now time for the radiotracking to begin. The core team Sarah-Louise, Blacka and Lloydie are all wonderfully proficient at this having had lots of experience, but for us the new volunteers (Emma & Heléna) there is a steep learning curve to be...
It's been four amazing months here on Montserrat for me and my fellow volunteer Blanca. The adventures have been countless and could possibly only be outnumbered by the good laughs. We have spent many nightly hours scrambling through the mud of the forest, listening out for calling males and gazing into the dark in search of that lustrous red...
The mountain chickens spend their first night in the wild and the release continues...
The team was eager to see where the frogs had settled down for the night after their release so headed out to do some rough fixes on the frogs’ positions during the day. We were avoiding working at night at this point because the frogs were...
Most of the team is here now with the arrival of Gerardo Garcia (head of the captive-breeding programme) yesterday evening and now Ben Baker from Chester so the cavalry has arrived. The team has been busy making the final preparations for the arrival of the mountain chickens with checking the holding facilities where the frogs will be housed for...
Well for the last month I have been on holiday in England and our project Research Officer, ‘Lloydie’ and Field Assistant, ‘Blacka’ have been holding the fort in terms of fieldwork in Montserrat. July has seen us take on more rain which has pushed the frogs further out of the ghaut. Only 3 different individual frogs were seen in...
In this blog I (Payana) am going to ignore the frogs. Yes that is right, no frogs. I am going to focus on the other things that happen in the forest at night.
I'd better start with admitting the fact that I am quite addicted to food (well I guess everyone is, but my addiction seems a bit more intense)....
The project has had a busy week this week with Montserrat Science Week. Originally set up by the Montserrat Volcano observatory to outreach to local Montserratians about the active volcano this week has evolved to include all aspects of science including terrestial and marine biology and of course the famous mountain chicken.
So the team has been busy this week...
With the release completed the focus now was to train the team remaining in Montserrat in everything they would need to monitor the released frogs successfully. This included a lot of frog catching practice in the field, practice in tracking radio-tagged frogs, learning more about the biology of these animals: life cycle, behaviour etc. and learning how to map...
We’ve been radio tracking for over a month now, so have decided to try and track at different times of night / early morning in case different frogs move around more at different times. So now we are larks as well as owls and coming up with some interesting finds…
We did our first late night search, going out at...