Fieldwork on BCI is full of small joys and large surprises in the forms of animals that share the island with us. Here a few of the herpetofauna we’ve encounted in the last two days. First, a lovely small frog – less than an inch long, but beautiful. The leaf litter here is very dry,…

Trees come in many sizes – but some tend to be very large indeed. This is a Ceiba (Bombacaceae) with a commanding presence on Barro Colorado Island. If I were in this picture, I would only reach two thirds the height of the main buttress. Large individuals like this one have a disproportionate impact on…

Panama – a narrow strip of land separating two oceans, until we were audacious enough to build a canal between them. The majority of this canal is Lake Gatún, which was formed by the damming of the Chagres river. What were once hills and valleys became islands and flat water. I’ll be spending two weeks…

Mt. Lemmon is the highest point of the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson. It is an excellent location for telescopes because of its high elevation (over 9100 feet), isolation from city lights, and consistently sunny weather. I recently had a chance to see through one of these instruments on a chilly evening spent with the…