Diario del proyecto Santa Lucia Cloud Forest Reserve, Ecuador

Hello there,

2023 was a very successfull year for Santa Lucia in many respects (tourism, forest school, ...), but also the activity on inaturalist was quite impressive. There's a total of 1621 obervations by 59 observers including 557 species. It seems that inaturalist becomes more popular especially amongst students that visit us with the 15+ student groups we receive each year.

The top 10 observed species in inaturalist are:
1) Violet-tailed Sylph (12 observations)
1) Golden-headed Quetzal (12)
1) Gem Anole (12)
4) Flame-faced Tanager (10)
5) Pleurothallis cordata (8)
5) Heliconia burleana (8)
5) Maxillaria caucana (8)
8) Empress Brilliant (7)
8) Dusky Chlorospingus (7)
8) Masked Trogon (7)
8) Equatorial Anole (7)
8) Stelis argentata (7)
8) Stelis restripioides (7)

Birds and orchids, no surprises here as all those species can be observed easily around the lodge and in the orchid garden.

Amongst the observers @holgerbeck 's advantage (586 observations / 158 species) wasn't as huge as it usually is. Especially @meganhanson was close on his heels. 306 observations / 105 species are pretty impressive considering that she spent only 4 or 5 days in the reserve. Numbers 3 is @oliverpatrick with 67 observations / 37 species. Number 4 is @ben-adams1227 ams1227 (60 observations / 21 species) and the 5th place goes to @anna-easton with 57 observations / 32 species.

Thanks to everybody for contributing to Santa Lucía's species lists!