Las Tangaras Camera Trap Project

The 20^th August 2012 was a momentous day. On this day (my birthday) my wonderful girlfriend and fellow manager at Las Tangaras made the mistake of buying me a remote, night vision, sound-and-video-capturing camera trap. I was overcome and giddy with the range of possibilities that this presented to me. When at home in England I camera-trapped everything that moved with a child-like enthusiasm including girlfriend, house mate hanging out washing, a robin and many foxes all in anticipation of coming to the Ecuadorian cloud forest. What preparation!

The beauty of camera-trapping is that each of these magical little boxes can deliver the equivalent survey effort of a single surveyor, sitting silently in the jungle day and night for 365 days straight, without the need for a bath, loo breaks or mosquito repellent, all on a single set of batteries.

The results so far of the Las Tangaras Camera Trap Project have been encouraging. The first couple of locations are not so far away from the cabin, one on the ‘lawn’ outside the cabin and one on a trail called Sendero de Amor (I’ve not yet discovered why it is named so, but there must be a good reason…).

Our first capture is this male Red Brocket deer (Mazama americana). He’s a big fella and the camera trap location is clearly on his daily rounds. We’ve caught him a few times now and even three times in one day, once in the morning at 02:40, then again at 09:15 and once more at 12:20. The Nambillo river is a short distance away from this location, so he may be crossing the trail to drink.

The next video below is one of our most entertaining yet. We set up a small table feeder in the front garden to see what turned up, and this little fella did. On the first night. This Common Opposum (Didelphis marsupialis) (we think, although facial markings quite strong…any help with that anyone?) is clearly enjoying the papaya we left out – someone has to eat it as we cannot stand the stuff and the nice fruit lady in town keeps on giving us free ones.

Our solitary camera is out there watching all night, every night so there will undoubtedly be many more critters to come, in fact we caught some last  night! I will keep you posted!