News That Stays News

Or arrivals August 3, 2017

Almost every prediction I made on Sunday turned out to be wrong, which is exceptional even for me. Right after the undergrads left on Monday, two women from Belgium arrived and stayed the night before moving on to another national park. Tuesday, a PhD student planning to study epiphytic bromeliads showed up to scout Palo Verde for potential research subjects. On the weather front, it’s gone back to being dry. The mud did get packed down, but the mosquitoes seem to have decided that the remaining water has become suitably stagnant and are out in force.

Equally unexpected were the two chicks that the female curassow brought by the comedor at breakfast on Tuesday…I didn’t even know that curassows had chicks at this time of year. I didn’t have my camera, and the chicks looked unremarkable—like brown goslings without the webbed feet and pointier beaks—but it was the most exciting animal sighting I’ve had this week.