Panama Travel Journal - Day 5

Day 5, November 17, 2009

Tuesday – It's my birthday today. This morning started like many camps do; people mill around working to wake up, stretch their backs and legs to check to see if they are sore, sort gear and eat breakfast. This morning though, people greeted me with “happy birthday” or the Spanish equivalent, instead of “good morning.” I’ve decided to get out on my own today, which may not seem like much, but an eight hours hike into nowhere; it is something.

I will walk the stream down below what we call “the waterfall,” a 15-foot steep drop into a deep but narrow slot-type pool below. My trek today has been quiet and wonderful. I am most impressed by the shiny green fern that is so green it looks plastic. It has many tendrils on the underside of the leaf and feels weird to the touch.

Also, out of nowhere today, I found “Bob” the frog! This is that secret place in my heart that I was looking to find when I wrote to you on the first day while in the plane. As I told you earlier, “Bob” is our prime target species, atelopus limosus.

He is a good find since we are still in search of 25 males and 25 females and we have not found that many yet. I found him on a rock appearing as if, literally, from nowhere. They blend in perfectly on the black and green moss of the rocks. As a species, they sit up on the rock and look as if they are flexing their broad peck muscles and always looking for something. I don’t mean upright like a begging dog, I just mean that they don’t lay flat against the rock or leaf with their stomach pressed flat as many species do. Almost as if they are stuck with glue to the leaf.

He is a base color of black with squiggly green stripes. Yes, squiggly is a scientific term. His two tips are yellow. Almost to the point you would describe it as yellow fingernail paint. He has orange on the underside of his thighs and his mate will have even more orange as it goes under the belly more. He is wonderful and the find is wonderful and my heart feels just a little healed.

November 17, 2009 / after lunch.

There is a rhythm to frog hunting. Periods of excitement fade slowly as a quiet searching takes place. I have met up with Edgardo, Kevin and Jamie. We spread out following our hunches on where the frogs might be. Most of our hunches mean nothing. Maybe less than nothing, because we have no experience and looking in the wrong places only serves to keep you focused someplace you should not. Jorge, Roberto, and Edgardo have hunches. They find more frogs than all the rest of us together. They find frogs in areas we have just walked.

Today, as expected, we have been finding limosus which is good since they are the reason we came. Everyone has their own style of searching. Fast and cover ground, slow and meticulous and everything in-between. Slow and meticulous seems to be the best during slow times and fast and cover ground can work well at night when the frogs are at their peak calling times.

The best strategy though seems to be not looking at all, like around camp on the first day. If you go to do something else like eat lunch or pee, you are sure to find one. We haven’t found much since lunch, but as I sit down to write now Edgardo found two female limosus and a baby glass frog.

We are farther now than we have ever been, but distance in the jungle is measured by time traveled and not miles. Sometimes we will search for three hours and turn around to return home only to find we’ve walked a few hundred yards down stream.

Just today, the magnitude of what we are doing is setting in. I am searching in the jungles of Panama with the same guy who took Jeff Corwin on his most recent trip to a remote area of Panama called the Darien to film “100 Heart Beats” which will be out in a month or so. And back at camp is the world expert on the frogs of Panama. We are searching for frogs that may be gone soon.

There are six described species of atelopus in Panama and half are basically gone in the wild. Limosus is only still around because it is east of the Panama Canal and chytrid has just jumped the canal in only the last two years.
-Bob