The new TREES logo

Hello everyone, a very exciting moment, we have our new logo!!! Heeeere it is!!!

Pineapple Pigs

I will put this next picture a little ways down in this post for those of you who happen to be squeamish.......

If you don't know already, I would like to tell you a little story of a pig who just couldn't stop eating pineapples. It ate them and it ate them, and it got its friends to eat them, and then it rooted up the backyard, and it rooted up the orchard, and it got its friends to root up the backyard, and it got its friends to root up the orchard..........

And then one day we told the neighbour that this just had to stop. She has 50 pigs, a little pig farm really, but they are all running free and our plants and grounds are all paying for their freedom. These aren't pet pigs, they are meat pigs, but she was having a hard time selling them all, and apparently pigs are a little like rabbits in their reproductive habits.

She felt bad and saw their destruction. One day her son came over and told us "your pig is ready!"

This is a picture of Mathieu preparing the pig for our dinners. We called this one Payback Pig, and it was the most delicious pig, really the most delicious meat, either of us had ever had. In fact, it was so delicious, we ordered a second pig, which Mat is out there preparing as we speak. We are very lucky to be able to stock our freezer with delicious organic pork, about as local as it gets! Thank-you pigs!!!!

Our Bioblitz!

As Mathieu mentioned in a previous post, we have just had the privilege of hosting Tony and Dorothy Diamond, profs from our days at UNB in Fredericton. They were here to help us learn to mist-net and inventory the bird species on our property, along with the help of Courtney and Gord. Here are some pictures of the pretty little birds (and their lovely little captors) we caught over our two days of banding.



I think we will be lucky enough to have them come next year with their UNB field course, to be held at our very own research station! Over the next few months we will be busy preparing for this exciting opportunity! The funny thing is, it was Tony and another prof from UNB, Graham, who helped me fall in love with Belize in the first place, on the very same field course that I took all the way back in 2002!

For those of you interested in nerdy things, we will be posting our most recent list of birds observed on our property, including ones that my friend Christopher observed when he was visiting us in December, and the ones we saw over the week of our Bioblitz! Thank-you Tony, Dorothy, Courtney and Gord for helping us learn who lives here, and reminding us of the real reason why we came!

Yours,

Vanessa and Mathieu

Fun in the Sun!

I am sure everyone feels really badly for us, thinking all we do is work work work in the hot hot sun! Exhausting! Well, we do have some fun too. We went on a great kayaking trip with our friends Courtney and Gord - Here I am enjoying the sun from the comfort of my kayak, and Mat enjoying his Brittle Star that he found off of Tobacco Caye! We even got to visit the Mayan Ruins of Altun Ha with them, where Mat held up a Mayan Temple! Wow, what a strong bwai! (First Belizean Kriol word of the blog.....)

Our remodelled house!

In the excitement and busy-ness of Christmas, we never had a chance to post pics of our new home, complete with new paint job, installed kitchen, and tile floor! For those of you who got to see us on House Hunters, you will have seen at least the half-finished version of our house.....but a lot was done after the filming for that episode!

The Deck

As part of the building blitz, we can't forget to mention the beautiful deck that my dear father managed to frame out for us in the last 1 hour of daylight of his building trip.............way to go Dad! It took Mat and I a while to finish it as it was a pretty complicated design on a very steep slope, but we are happy to say that the deck is now complete with a beautiful mango tree in the middle of it. I also just hung up some hummingbird feeders to really top it off!

So far in our deck's mango tree we have had two snake encounters! For those of you fearful of snakes, beware the deck! The first snake was a beautiful little Blunt-headed Treesnake (But don't worry Moms, non-poisonous!) and the second was a large Bird-eating Treesnake (also non-poisonous Moms!) They sure like that mango tree. The second snake actually fell out of the tree onto our signal booster line unexpectedly while I was working on my computer in the office. All of a sudden the cable starting waving back and forth out of the blue and there was a large snake curling on it! I guess he missed whatever bird or bird egg he was trying to eat...............Look at Mat go! He is getting more comfortable with snakes. This Bird-eating one was pretty big, even I was a bit nervous to grab it, and it quickly started making its way off the deck so I yelled for Mat to grab it, and he did! (After I confirmed that it wasn't poisonous!)

This sure is an exciting place for a herpetologist to be!

Yours, Vanessa

Alive and well!

Ok, we are back, we promise we will be a little better at keeping the blog updated, we have been really busy with people in the last three weeks. First we had Vanessa's father and uncle come down for a building blitz. They really helped us out in forming the large building into all of the future communal rooms we will need for our station. All of the rooms have been partitioned off, so the old restaurant will now consist of a storage room and laundry room for our personal things, an office for the project, a lab with scopes, aquariums etc, one large room for students to chill out in and this room will also serve as a presentation hall, a second large room for dining, a small library, a kitchen, 2 bathrooms, a change room and a shower for the kitchen staff. Finally a large space has been reserved outside for a large outdoor patio and a place to string hammocks! It does not look like much right now but we are in the process of closing off the partitions. Before I go on, the whole Ecorana team, Vanessa, Mathieu, Eva, Diesel and Big O, thank Chris and Clark for all of their great work and effort in making this project actually happen!

A classic picture of Chris and Clark working on our wall partitions, something they had to do for two weeks while they were at the Station.

Here Chris is showing us how to work the new compressor!

Overlapping with Chris and Clark, was my cousin Jeremie, once the wall partitions were up, we had the electrician come in and help us wire the place up. While it is not complete, much still needs to be done, he installed some very needed lights and fans and installed the wiring between the walls with Canadian standards. Now we are another step from getting this big momba buidling in a fonctional station. We thank Jeremie for all of his good work on the station!

Here Jeremie is being philosophical while picking a pineapple on the property!

Eva wanted to help too! Better put on your safety goggles Babygirl!


Ok, next step was the visit of Vanessa's friends Courtney and Gord from Vancouver, as well as my former Master's supervisor Dr. Diamond and his wife Dorothy, who came to start the biology component of this station, the actual reason we are here! So stay posted, more good stuff to come soon!

Sincerely,

The Ecorana Team