Tienen plantas en Panamá también!

Earlier this year, Boxing day sales to be precise, I treated myself to a beautiful new camera as my previous one died in San Blas last year.

I'm not at all confessing to being anything of a photographer but I do get a great deal of satisfaction out of taking beautiful photographs and really and stating to enjoy the past time now I have my lovely new Cannon Powershot and so far I've been delighted with the quality of the images that I have been able to take.

Normally where ever I travel in the world I spend the vast majority of my time trying to photograph the various creatures I find along the way - pretty normal for a Zoologist Abroad right?! However this year I though I would set myself a challenge to not only capture the wildlife but also make an active effort to photograph the botanical wonders that the tropics has to offer.

So here is my first collection of plant photographs and I would like to dedicate them to my dear friend and botanist Liam. He is currently being an academic hermit on the coast of Pembrokshire attempting to finish writing up with PhD thesis. I hope that some photos of plants other that Arabidopsis will inspire him with his great work!

Some plants even make things that you can eat mmmm fresh coconut!

Aún estamos vivos en Panamá

Firstly and for mostly I must apologise to you all for the complete lack of post recently!
I can mean only one thing I've been working so unbelievably hard on my field project that I haven't had a moment to write a message to you all.

Things are finally going well, for the last few weeks Robin myself and my great new assistant Dan have been diligently marking, censusing and watching the wasps. Over 1000 of the little critters have been marked since Robin and I started in June - new record!

Everyone has been stung, Dan only once and he barely reacted (unbelievably!) me only once too and poor Robin is now on his 8th sting in 2 months, one of which was through his glove so unluckily - the wasps seem to have it in for him!

As it comes to my last few weeks in Panama and work is finally a little less chaotic I will make much more effort to give you all a post every few days.

For the rest of this post just wanted to take the chance to share some selected photos with you all that I've taken over the last few months - mostly Panamanian animals!

Me exploring the ruins at the Fort of San Lorenzo 

Below you'll find two photos of the same Polybia nest which I have been following for the last few weeks to see how it has grown, these tiny little wasps have been super busy and look what they have created!

 

Of course another selection of the beautiful animals they have here!

And finally a few weekends ago the three of us took a few hours out of our normally working day to help out our friends at Punta Galeta with a beach clean up they were having, thats quite a lot of rubbish!

Avispas hizo famoso - Micro Monsters 3D with David Attenborough

This weekend sees a special occasion in which my wasps are being made famous - Avispas hizo famoso! They will be appearing of the new David Attenborough documentary Micro Monsters 3D on Sky1HD and Sky3D.

I was lucky enough to go and spend 4 brilliant days with the production team behind this new programme filming my wasps using the most state of the art micro 3D camera. It was a wonderful few days and I was able to see some amazing footage and view so many close ups of my wasps which I had never been able to see before. They are even more amazing on a bug screen in 3D. Unfortunately, being away on field work I am not going to be able to see the programme when it airs this Saturday (13th of July 2013) so if any of you are lucky enough to be able to watch it I would love to hear your comments.  I shall look forwards to watching it on my return to the UK.

In the mean time here are some other photos of my wasps (possibly not as great as the ones that will be shown on Saturday!).

Whilst stopping and each my lunch next to the coast I noticed a hug number of wasps surrounding the large piles of drift wood which line it. So naturally my camera and I went to investigate and I found something really cool. The wasps are using this wood to build their nests. They land on the wood and strip small amounts, process it and take it back to the nests to add cells! Ive never actually seen them collecting nesting material in the wild before so a real find.