During the summer of 2006, I travelled to Santa Rosa National Park in the role of field assistant to my Masters supervisor, Dr. Stéphanie Doucet.  While Dr. Doucet has most recently been devoting her time to studying Long-tailed Manakins, the goal of this year's field season was to collect preliminary data on the behvaviour of another neotropical bird, the Royal Flyctatcher (Onychorhynchus coronatus).  Santa Rosa National Park is located in the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste, in Nortwestern Costa Rica.  

            My days began at four a.m., when my little battery-operated alarm clock would buzz loudly in my ear.  Peeling back my bed’s mosquito net, I would switch my flashlight on and hope that my feet wouldn’t land on something creepy-crawly as my bare feet touched the floor.  Making my way to the light switch creepy-crawly-free, I would sigh with relief.  Throwing on my least-smelly, most-resembling-clean field clothes, I nabbed some breakfast and generally tried to avoid bumping into my equally-sleepy housemates.  Getting ready for the field, I always made sure I had my birding essentials:  flashlight, field notebook, bird guide (essential for immediately looking up the amazing birds I’d encounter daily), granola bar, and water bottles.  We also each grab a walkie-talkie to stay in contact in the field.  Then we piled into our field vehicle, and took a short drive into Santa Rosa.  Tourists there generally flock to the beach, and the on-site housing for researchers are located deeper in the park from where we study our birds, so we didn’t usually encounter any other people. 

            Arriving in the park around a quarter to five a.m., everyone was dropped off where they needed to start their day, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone.  On days when I was dropped off by myself, it meant facing the walk to whichever nest I was looking for alone, in the dark.  Usually this took a fair bit of nervous swallowing, and telling myself that the sound I just heard in the pitch-black forest next to me wasn’t a giant venomous snake, or a puma!  One of my favourite experiences was the daily change from the darkness and quiet of just before 5 a.m., to the gradual lightening and increase in bird singing that happened shortly thereafter.

            Over the course of a usual field morning, I would gather a lot of different data, learning and putting to use different techniques.  I commonly spent time doing nest watches, where I would position myself inconspicuously somewhere within sight of a nest, and sit very still watching the nest with my binoculars.  It was during these very quiet periods when I would encounter the most wildlife.  While my attention was always focused on activity around the Royal Flycatcher nest itself, I often observed birds, agoutis, butterflies, deer, snakes, groups of monkeys, iguanas, basilisks, spiders, ants, and other creatures as they went about their daily routines, completely ignorant of my presence within their environment.  The monkeys were especially interesting; there are three species of monkey inhabiting the park where we work, namely Spider Monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi), Mantled Howler Monkeys (Alouatta palliata), and White-faced Capuchins (Cebus capucinus).  Sometimes these monkeys would ignore me, other times they liked to make faces, and occasionally they threw canopy debris at me!  It was always an incredible sight to see Spider Monkeys launch themselves from tree to tree with their extremely long, strong arms in order to cross the river where several of my nests were located.

            Our mornings in the field usually ended between 11am and noon, by which time a group of tired, smelly, hungry researchers piled back into our field vehicle for the ride home.  After some food, a shower, and a nap, though, we would spend the rest of the day reading, analysing sounds, entering data, or working on other projects.  Dinner is a team effort, and we're all tucked in by 8pm.