My Highlights at IPBio: Bioacoustics, Glowing Mushrooms and Sunsets

This morning while annotating audio recordings of the forest, I was suddenly interrupted by a cute, strikingly green hummingbird that found itself stuck inside the building.  As I tried to help the little guy out, I was able to briefly hold it perched on my finger before it finally made its way outside.  I continued working with audio recordings until after lunch, when Imran and I hiked up the steep trail to collect more bioacoustics data, captured a small tree frog inside the volunteer house to release outside, and planned a spontaneous weekend camping trip to PETAR state park with some of the other staff members and volunteers.

It’s been two months since I first arrived in Iporanga and I can truly say that no two days here have been a like.  Between the interesting and diverse projects at IPBio and being fully immersed in an environment so different from home, I’m constantly surprised by the things I get to do and experience.  I’ll share a few highlights:

• Getting caught in a torrential downpour while hiking the challenging trail to Casa de Pedra (the world’s largest cave opening!), but only feeling a few raindrops because of such dense vegetation above us
• Tagging along on an Introduction to Field Biology course taught by UNICAMP university at Reserva Betary and learning to set up nets to catch birds, finding amphibians at night, using camera traps, and using slingshots to set up small vertebrate traps in trees
• Mom, Dad you can skip this one J.  Learning what it means to get a “carona.” No, I don’t mean beer, but a lift into town.  While the 6km walk to town is pleasant, it is sometimes nice to hitchhike with one of the warm, friendly locals.  (For those who may be worried – as a single female here, I have never felt unsafe and have found it very easy to get around)
• Walking to the grocery store, cold beer in hand, overlooking the valley at sunset.
• And my personal favorite: searching for bioluminescent mushrooms in the forest at night and learning the hard way where the expression “ants in your pants” comes from.

So how did I end up here in the rainforest?

When people ask me the question where I’m from, I always shrug and have to explain why that simple question isn’t so simple.  My family moved around quite a bit growing up (roughly every three years!) and while I can definitively say I’m American, it is tough to get much more specific than that. São Paulo, Brazil is among those places my family called “home” for a few years.  I had been working as a design engineer for a few years in Ohio post-college when I started feeling the need to switch things up, so I began looking for volunteer opportunities abroad.  When I found the technical bioacoustics position in a country I already held near and dear, I new IPBio was the right fit.

During my time here, I have been leading the bioacoustics project, which was made possible by a grant from Wildlife Acoustics.  At a high level, I set up and monitor audio equipment in the forest and teach specialized software to automatically detect and recognize vocalizations from known animal species.  The goal of this project is to monitor biodiversity in the area over the next two years for conservation purposes and to establish a sound bank for each of the species found on the Betary Reserve.  While teaching the software to recognize species, I’ve enjoyed listening to a lot of audio and now “see” the sounds I hear while hiking like in the sound frequency graph below.

I’ll be here for another three months before heading back to the states, so fingers crossed I’ll be able to share a recording of some howler monkeys during my next blog post!

Até mais!

Written by: Tess Leggio, Bioacoustic Volunteer from USA