May 26- First Day

After a long day of travel yesterday, I am officially on Barro Colorado Island!  I got a few glimpses of the jungle as I drove from Panama City to Gamboa last night, but the sun had long since gone down by the time I arrived.  This close to the equator, there are around 12 hours of sunlight year round- the sun rises around 6 in the morning and sets at 6:30 in the evening.  Since I arrived in the dark after a storm, this morning was my first real glimpse of Panama's beautiful tropical forests and abundant wildlife.  It was actually fairly cool when I woke up (surprising, since the temperatures are regularly in the high 80's and the humidity takes the "real feel" up to 100), so everything was shrouded in fog.  It made for some truly stunning scenery as I took a boat across the canal to Barro Colorado (better known a BCI).

The Smithsonian has a very nice research base on BCI- two buildings of labs, a cafeteria, a visitor's center, and several dorm buildings.  The labs are air conditioned, while everything else is not.  This will definitely take some adjustment (see aforementioned temperatures).  I spent the morning hiking through BCI's incredible forests with Dr. Kaspari (who supervises my summer project), his wife (a wildlife artist), and his grad student Jane (who will be running the project on the island and working directly with me this summer).  We saw several Capuchin monkeys, lizards, agouti, and countless birds.  Since BCI was a mountaintop before the canal flooded around it, it is incredibly hilly.  Most of the steepest slopes on the trails have steps installed, but I will definitely be getting quite the workouts this summer.  My wildlife sightings continued back at my dorm, where there are several bats living in the rafters just outside of my window.  

Today was mostly an introductory day for me- I'll start the real work on my projects tomorrow (most of which examine invertebrates and the brown food web on the forest floor).  At the moment, a tremendous storm has me stuck in the lab until the rain eases up- this is definitely the tropics!