12 July

It turned out that all 10 frogs from yesterday were the same species, Eleutherodactylus crassidigitus. That might seem like a let-down but it is so interesting to see how different the colouration can be between individuals of the same species. Some have a racing strip along the back, others are light coloured and some suddenly very dark. At least we now know the characteristics of this species by heart.
In the evening we did transects on the Rio trail. The first one is a very small, steep and slippery path that is barely used, only for these surveys. At one point it even got so steep that there is a rope to hold on to and pull yourself up. Very exciting! Unfortunately, we did not find any frogs on this transect. Jen told us that in the dry season she normally finds lots as this transect runs along a stream, but now that it is raining a lot more frequent the frogs are more spread across the forest. On the other transects we had more luck, finding 5 frogs (of which one escaped) and a small snake! The snake was very well hidden, curled around a branch like a root of a plant, but luckily Louise still managed to spot it. We also found our first tree frog. They are a lot bigger than the ones we have found so far, so a lot easier to find and handle.