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At night, armed with head lamps and UV torches (and a lot of bug spray), you can actually see tons of spiders and other nocturnal arthropods doing what they live for, i.e., eating, preying, mating, etc. without much search effort. During the daytime, you have to look harder for the various microhabitats; of course, it is easy see the orb weaver spiders as well as some other weavers and a few cursorial spiders but this is only a small portion of the total spider fauna.

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We awoke to rain....heavy rain..…that kind of Amazon rain where you can’t keep your eyelids open and that promises to last all day. And we are in the middle of the dry season!  Well, this is time to recover from hectic preparations in Kansas, the long journey here, and to orient to our new home. This field station’s set meal schedule (6 am, 12 noon, 6.30 pm) allows all the current station residents to meet. It is a great opportunity to learn about other exciting research going on here.

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For my third visit to Peru, I am developing a system of long-term sampling plots distributed along an elevational transect from the lowland Amazon to the Andes, up to ~3500 m. I can select plots already established by botanists who have been working here for about 30 years. It is an uncommon ideal to have most of the plants known in a tropical habitat before I start looking for the herbivores of those plants.

We are finally in Peru for my third expedition. I visited alone previously to explore the diversity of chrysomelid leaf beetles and their host plants. During the first trip in 2007, I discovered how wonderful a field station can be, as opposed to expeditions involving daily travel from one campsite to another, hauling food, water, supplies, and, for me, tubs of live baby insects that I am trying to rear to adults before I run out of their food plant from the last site. (Baby insect systematics is so primitive that without the adult, I have no hope of identifying the species.)

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And so, a scant 10 days after it began, my Greenlandic adventure is at an end. I got to experience big polar science, witness the first suggestions of climate change in the form of retreating glaciers and early mosquito and flower emergence, and eat some delicious whale and cured fishes of many sorts.

Three highlights:

Our final day in Greenland was best characterized by last-minute good intentions and chaos as we tried to do everything we had been putting off all week. After breakfast, we visited the Kangerlussuaq Museum. As we were driving up, the man who is the museum (ticket taker, curator, and docent) ran up and greeted us enthusiastically and followed us around asking if we had any questions and telling us all about the history of the army base and airstrip known as Kangerlussuaq.

Yesterday I got up early and hiked up into the hills outside of town with one of the professors. We found a beautiful pond at the top and were at last greeted with a view of the elusive Mallard. Still, it’s the first one of the trip. Yay! Then a pair of Phalaropes then came around the corner to smooth things over--that was a nice treat.

Today was full of wow! It was another day of driving, hiking, sun, and awe in the vicinity of Russell Glacier.

This morning getting up early to look for birds, this time down by the rapids at the bridge, proved sadly fruitless. Except there were rapids, which was in itself neat.

Morning in Kangerlussuaq was not much different from afternoon or evening—sun shining cheerfully away, temperatures of around fifty degrees, and a light wind keeping away the hungry swarms of Satan’s air force known colloquially as “mosquitoes”. I got up early so I could get a first crack at wildlife, Greenland-style. It turns out KISS is right on the Watson River, which was a lovely morning scramble down fine silt dunes and over glacier- and water-carved rocks. I got my first looks of the trip at Snow bunting, Common redpoll, and Northern wheatear.