Hectic finishing of the 2nd week of internship (Friday Edition)

Today is Saturday (here in Taiwan) and the current temperature in Taipei City is probably more than 35-degrees Celsius. I live in an apartment (with my aunt) with no air conditioning, so I am half-naked right now with warm air blowing through the electric fan. Such is the life living on a tropic island.

Anyways, I think I will be working on "work stuff" this weekend, so I doubt I will have anything interesting worth posting this weekend. So below is yesterday's events.

Following Thursday's situation, I had to wake up extra extra early on Friday so that my co-worker and I could release the captured adult barbet as early as possible. The city is quite different (in a pleasant and quieter way) between 6am and 8am.

First time I came so early to the botanical garden.

After we released the adult barbet, all we could do now was to wait and prey the parent will come back and feed its nestlings. According to some photographers, the nestlings had been hungry and calling for food ever since morning.

The nestlings are so hungry that they poked their head out to see if the parents had arrived yet.

I kept watching and hoping the parents would not abandon the nest. However, after 10am (when I had to go back to the office), no parent had showed up yet.

Then in the afternoon, it was my shift (with another volunteer) to observe this particular nest tree (below) for three hours.

Since it was past noon and the entrance of the nest cavity was facing towards the afternoon sun, the parent barbet incubating the eggs poked its head out of the hole (with its beak wide open) every few minutes or so. Everytime it poked its head out, it also jumped onto a side branch outside the nest to cool down.

So hot!

The restless adult barbet

While on my shift, a beautiful Graphium sarpedon connectens butterfly came near me and allowed me to capture some nice moments.

After my shift, we had to use the endoscope to check on the status of the nest. Since my co-worker sprained his foot, it was my (first) shot to operate the endoscope on the nest cavity at least 17-m above ground. Initially, I was pretty nervous about climbing so high since I am a featherweight and I wonder if the strong wind can blow me off the ladder. But once I got up there, the surrounding view overpowered my nervousness and it was time to go to work. It took me several tries to get the endoscope into the nest because I was unable to see the nest entrance from where I was. With the help of people down below, I finally did it and was relieved to hear that one of the three eggs had hatched.

After this nest tree, I had to use the endoscope for another tall nest tree. What an amazing experience!

During this time, we heard the wonderful news that the male adult barbet (that we released in the morning) had came back to feed its nestlings! I am pretty sure all of us let out a huge sigh of relief when we heard the news.

What a beautiful day to be alive...
.