It’s hard to believe, but it’s
already been more than a month since I first arrived in Palenque. There are five different groups of monkeys,
and today I finally got to do observations on the last of these groups. As of the last blog post, I had just finished
a week of observing the Unites group, which has only four monkeys. (FYI, I finally managed to upload the
pictures to my previous blog post, so check those out if you haven’t
already.) Next came the Motiepa group,
which was especially fun to watch because there are two infants. My third week, I observed the Naha group. The Nahas have the biggest home range of all
the monkeys in Palenque, and its dense vegetation and numerous streams make it
difficult to get around and find the monkeys.
Still, I really enjoyed watching this group due to their quirky
personalities. Several of them even
walked around on the ground. The Balam
group was next, with just two females and a male. Oddly enough, the male that week was
different from the one who was originally part of that group, so it seems that
he replaced the other one in recent weeks.
Last week, I was with Naha again, and today I had my first day of watching
the Pakal group. Unfortunately, we
couldn’t find them for the first half of the day, and when we finally
encountered them, there were only three of the nine. At first we were worried something had
happened to the rest, but they suddenly showed up an hour before the end of the
day.
Apart from the monkeys, there is
still quite a bit of interesting nature in the forest. We often see rodents called agoutis, and I
even saw a skunk today. There are loads
of interesting birds, my favorite of which are the toucans. If you take the time to look at them, the
insects are absolutely incredible.
Leaf-cutter ants carry leaves along well-worn miniature trails that they
themselves created. Several times, I
have encountered army ants. These form
dense swarms that cover the ground and vegetation, and there are so many that
you can actually hear their legs moving.
Spiders run out of the way of the oncoming sea of ants, and birds follow
the ants to snatch up these spiders.
 |
| One of the many fascinating insects of Palenque |
A few weeks ago, the other research
assistants and I took a trip to the nearby Catazajá Lake on one of our days
off. One of the other assistants, an
avid birder, counted more than fifty species of birds. Countless storks, egrets, and herons flocked
on in the trees on the shoreline. We
even saw iguanas and several groups of howler monkeys. Ironically, I actually have better monkey
photos from Catazajá than from Palenque, since the trees are much shorter and I
wasn’t busy recording observations.
 |
| Bare-throated tiger heron |
 |
| Howler monkey at Catazajá |
This past weekend, we noticed a
banner in town announcing the “Primera Semana Cultural,” the first Cultural
Week in Palenque. So on Saturday evening,
we all went into the main square in town to watch the performances. Most of these were people performing folk
dances in traditional attire. Some dance
groups were from Palenque itself, but others were from as far away as the state
of Chihuahua, on the U.S.-Mexico border.
I was glad we were able to see the performances, and I’m especially
excited that I will be able to witness more Mexican cultural traditions later
this year on Independence Day and on Day of the Dead.
