Jan 7 Escameca Grande

N11.20326 W85.74863
Dan Taylor joined the group last night. He is and old friend of Bill's and works for Bat Conervation International. Last night we also swapped vehicles so the the other could get service and new tires. With the new vehicle, Carol had to take it to the boarder with Costa Rica to do some paperwork for the vehicle. Dan, who speaks good Spanish (Peace Corps Belize mid 1980s), and Martín went with her to help. Bill, Stu and I stayed at the house to do prep work. I had time to load up more photos to the blog site, update GIS data, scan data sheets, fix nets, etc. Carol et al returned about 2pm. We had a delicious dinner of chicken, vegetables, beans and rice, then loaded up and hit the road about 3:30 to head farther into Escameca Grande. Today we had two addition helpers, two neices of Christian (teen girls), Jessica and Sofia, who met bats fir the first tume and helped collect acoustic data.
On the way we saw another sloth (Cucala), and several red spider monkeys (mono de araña). Once at the net site there were lots of spiders and frogs; a giant toad, and a "Putu" high in a tree.
We set up the triple-high with 6m, two 12 m and one 9m net along an intermittent stream in a large forest patch with lots of really large trees.
Tonight wasn't as crazy as the night before. 24 Bats and 13 species. Nes species tonight is Saccoptery bilineata (greater white-lined bat).
I'm feeling much better about IDing bats. I've mostly figured out the family resemblance and I got caught up on sleep so my brain works.
The best part of tonight was working the Glossophaga sorcina (Common long-tongued bat) because I offered it a little mango jelly and water mixture on my latex gloved finger and it lapped it up with it's very long tongue!
We shut down about 10 pm, took down nets, etc. and got home about mid-night. We sat up a little while to toast Stu with 7-year old Flor de Caña rum because this was his last night. Tomorrow he goes to Managua and flies home on Monday.
Asleep about 2am. Tomorrow is a rest day...