Category: - tropicalbats.com

Drone Research at the Firestone Center, Costa Rica

2/8/2017

A recently released paper on the most recent aerial drone research at the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology is out. And Pitzer College has just released a nice communique on it, featuring the heroic Donald McFarlane for some juicy quotes like, “It’s important data for the Firestone Center and has potential use for much larger areas as well.”

You can read all about this here:

http://pitweb.pitzer.edu/communications/2017/02/08/drone-research-documents-reforestation-pitzers-firestone-center-costa-rica/

And, in an obvious omission, they forgot to mention the previous drone work at the FCRE, so, in the name of great science here is a video by Guy Van Rentergem showing some of the earlier work. Science is never complete without the whole picture, or video as is the case here. And if you haven't seen this video, you are in for a real treat!

National Geographic video "Expedition Raw" from Gomantong Caves, Borneo (think lots of bugs!)

10/30/2015

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Just posted by Nora Rappaport of National Geographic is a cool video of the creepy crawly critters of Gomantong Caves in Borneo. The footage was shot by Guy van Rentergem on our last trip there. I am the guy standing there while McFarlane narrates about how all these bugs gets in your boots and gear. Wild caves to work in and if you follow this blog you have seen many photos from there.

A link to the blog post with the video and text is here:

http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/29/billions-of-bugs-feast-on-flesh-and-dung-in-borneo/

Here is the video, but it is worth a look at the blog post to read the text, enjoy!

And since I should add a photo of yet another crawly from the cave's guano, here is a greenish-yellow snail mucking about.

Pretty snail for all the crud it lives in on the floor of the Gomantong Caves

Drones Gone Wild and the Tree of Doom

7/27/2015

Back at the end of May and early June, I posted a series of pics about recovering an airplane drone from a most horrible tree in Costa Rica. There is a new, great, video out on the whole deal. It is quite well done, and produced by Guy Van Rentergem, the dude who did all the tree climbing. Really worth watching, and having been there, it was even worse than the video shows.

If you enjoyed watching that, please share it with your friends.

DRONE FAILURE UPDATE #1

5/26/2015

These updates will read better if you start from the first Drone Failure post. This is first update.

So, the recovery team headed out this morning with a world of gear to try and figure out where the drone was and what it would take to recover it. Greddy Arias, the FCRE property manager and his assistant Carlos went along to do all the logistics as for landowner permission and access and all that. Neither Don nor Guy speak much Spanish, and Greddy and Carlos speak very little English.

The hike to the tree that the GPS said the drone was in was brutal, or so they say. Someone had to work with the students while this little side adventure was going on, so I had an enjoyable day chasing down leaf cutter ant nests with MJ and Amanda.

And the initial recon proved that the airplane was so high up in the top of a dominant canopy tree that they couldn't even see it. They verified that it was there by having it run and could hear it up there somewhere. As seen in the previous post, yes, it is right up on top.

So the tree would need climbed and... this was no ordinary tree. It has thousands of giant thorns all over the trunk and main branches. The team returned back and got lots of ropes and cobbled together some tree-climbing gear and eventually headed out again. Here is a still shot from one of the videos of Guy van Rentergem climbing.

Guy van Rentergem well up the tree with the drone stuck at the top.

And here is one of the videos. There is a much better one but it is too long to post from here. I'll link to it when it is available. The video was shot by Don McFarlane and is posted on Guy's YouTube channel GVR63

More to come on this tomorrow.

Mountain Lion dragging off a deer at the Firestone Center in Costa Rica

4/19/2015

Okay, how about another video! I have been meaning to get this one up for a while now. This is a clip from a trail camera set up by Greddy Arias at the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology in Costa Rica. There are quite a number of peccaries on the property and a few deer, so yes, we have mountain lions as well.

And this video shows a cat in its prime, dragging off a kill. What a fabulous animal!

It is on youtube at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBNsxyounH4

or just click here to see it.

Latest video from Borneo

1/25/2015

I generally am behind the camera taking still photos of our cave work on expeditions. But on the trip to the Gomantong Caves of Borneo last summer, Guy van Rentergem got me to talk about several of the biological bits of the caves on video. The ecology of the caves is cool, and here is Guy's latest video production.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlmIOvcqong

Back at it

8/3/2014

Since returning from Broneo I have been busy, and jet lagged and all that. But no real excuse for not getting pics up. To get things going, here is a video link of a dog in motion that I took on Saturday.

http://youtu.be/hm3g2TugT1Q

I have been exploring the Olympus TG-3's capabilities as a slow motion camera. I am getting some interesting footage, but the downsize in digital clarity is troubling.

Falls Church, VA storm

6/12/2014

They were calling for possible tornadoes and such, so I just pointed my camera out the window and let it capture what it captured.

http://youtu.be/d2wBGod7cIE

Carp making carp

5/7/2014

Carp are generally brown. Koi are all different colors. So I leave it up to the blog viewers to decide exactly what is going on here. The fish in question included a carp, a silver-looking fish, and an orange carp-like fish.

They were clearly mating in the shallows.

Follow this link to see the action.

http://youtu.be/VnI5b8F2n7I

Yellow Butterfly

4/16/2014

A butterfly at night,

I tried real hard to figure out where this photo is from, but failed. Will update with a location if I can figure it out.

And I haven't put up any crazy video links lately, so here is one:

http://www.wimp.com/downhillbiking/