Cristalino Jungle Lodge Butterflies & Birds and Disaster on the Computer Front

Jim Brock and I led the WINGS tour to Cristalino Jungle Lodge from August 15-23. With the exception of the doomed day of August 19, it was a great tour. What happened on August 19? On that day my iBook hard drive gave up the ghost. It froze, a whining fan sound appeared, and I had to force the power off. I tried booting it several times, and it did come on a couple, but then it was extremely slow and would freeze when I tried turning it off. Not good. Meanwhile, 4650 miles to the NW, on the very same day, someone kicked in my back door and ran off with my iMac desktop computer. They also took my USB Transceiver (which I had bought because the older iMacs had a horribly weak antenna), Yamaha P60 electronic piano, piano stand, printer, about $10 in loose change, 108 music CD's, and 8 pieces of frozen Upper Crust pizza (with pepperoni, olives, and anchovies) from my freezer. That sums up to about $4100 worth of stuff they could probably sell for $200 if they're lucky. How many hits of their elixir of choice would that buy? Meanwhile, I lost 2 years of data (my backup habits weren't very good) and a year's worth of photos. I managed to save all my contacts and e-mails, magically.

Meanwhile, we enjoyed some 350 species of butterflies, maybe 250 species of birds, and had a great time in Brazil not worring about anything at all. A sampler:

Red-fan Parrot behind the Floresta Amazonica Hotel in Alta Floresta.


Croesus Eyemark, one of the commoner species that occurs in little groups in the understory.