Sinharaja Forest Reserve – ESS Trip

First day we arrived by bus at our lodge, the trip to the reserve was 2 hours. Once there all the science students came together at the ESS lodge where we would be staying. The lodge was in the middle of the jungle surrounded by mountains. We ate lunch and chatted, then my class got settled in our rooms and we headed out with the rest of the grade to a small section of jungle next to a dirt path. There out instructor explained to us how we would be collecting data using our 2-by-2-meter plots of land. Though this was practice my group sped through the data collection and completed all 3 plots downhill. Some of the data that we had to collect was things such as canopy which we used our phones to measure by taking a picture of the top trees and the app on our phones did our canopy automatically. Other pieces of data included PH of the soil as well as counting how many plants were in our plots below 5cm but above 1cm.  Taking into account the different plant species and noting down the different animals present in our plot as well. Usually, there were only insects or no animals at all but during our first trail we found a snake (Blossom Krait) as it crawled over my shoe fast I managed to snap a picture and identify it using an app called I-Naturalist.

As we continued to gather data our time came to a close and we had to head back to eat dinner and rest. As we had our dinner Mr.Lockwood proposed that we take a night walk and go frog hunting. We put on our raincoats and grabbed our flashlights, now headed on a rocky slippery path to find frogs, we saw one or two but everyone was more distracted by the rain load than the actual frogs. We decided to head back as the rain got stronger and this was the aftermath.

(Blossom Krait)

Me drenched in rainwater