Week 1: 15 December 2016

We arrived on 15 December 2016 to an empty research station. The usual tasks awaited: unpacking and setting up the lab, moving into our room, and walking around to locate iguanas. This trip I would be assisted by my husband for 2 weeks; afterwards I'm on my own. The pressure felt immense to get everything accomplished before he left as well as enjoy Palo Verde and all its beauty.

With 30 Encounternet proximity tags, I decided to use 25 leaving a few for back up. Below is Yellow-Yellow-Blue re-beaded at the neck with her proximity tag attached. (She' none too happy about even gentle human handling; when else would she be restrained?)

With each capture, besides morphometric measurements, making sure I had a blood sample, replacing neck beads, and attaching a proximity tag, I also ran a personality assay, seeing how much movement an iguana would undertake in an arena with a predator replica.

Palo Verde OTS staff built m an arena with door that nicely fits my trap, as well as a ladder on which to mount a video camera. It works perfectly for my needs!

Trapping, tagging, and testing 25 animals went well -- we were done in a mere 5 days. And then, well, you know what happens in field work....