Cross-Pollination: Back in the Field!

This field season is off to a fast start! I’ve been back in Mexico for 4 ½ weeks now and it seems like just a couple weeks! I’ve been quite remiss in keeping up with my blog. This summer has been a lot more jam-packed than last summer, since this year I have funding to support my field work and have been able to rent my own field truck, and therefore get into the field a lot more. This year my work is being supported by a Rufford Foundation Grant, a Phoenix Zoo Conservation Fund Grant, an Idea Wild equipment grant, and the Kate Barlow Award from the Bat Conservation Trust. Without these groups this work would not be possible!

While 4 ½ weeks is a lot to cover, I’d like to share a few highlights so far so you can get an idea of what life has been like during my third field season!

First off, getting all my equipment down here was a FIASCO. I found out a mere two weeks before flying down that there is a baggage embargo/restriction for flying to Mexico this year (which there never has been before when I’ve flown down), meaning that you cannot take any baggage over the two checked bag limit. You can’t even pay for more bags. I had been planning to pay for several pieces of excess baggage to get all the equipment down here, including two small tents, backpacks, sleeping bags and pads, four camcorders and tripods, 12V batteries, etc. So this discovery put a huge wrench in my plan. I frantically tried to figure out my options, and discovered that shipping some stuff down via FedEx was the best option. After much angst and uncertainty about how that would work, I mailed two large packages and managed to spend only about $120 in shipping plus customs fees, and the FedEx in Monterrey could hold my package for several days until I picked it up. Crisis averted! Or so I thought…Then came my departure day. I got to the airport, waited in the check-in line, and lifted my first bag onto the scale to be weighed. It was over the 50 pound limit. No problem, right? I’ll just pay for the overweight bag. Turns out, with an embargo only first-class passengers can have overweight bags! I swore I had read all the fine print online and didn’t see that anywhere! I was SO frustrated, since both bags were over, and I had to ashamedly get out of line and unpack the bags and remove many things. Luckily Tom was there and he took those things and ended up FedExing them to me. However, I previously had to have some special equipment mailed from the company I bought the items from to somewhere in the U.S., so I already had another package going to Laredo, Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border. So I had Tom ship the airport stuff to Laredo. Later, once I arrived in Mexico, my friend and colleague Emma Gomez drove me from Monterrey to Laredo to pick up those packages. Man, what a complicated way to get all my stuff to Mexico! Luckily I now have everything, but I learned my lesson: next year when I return home to the U.S. after my final field season, I’m DEFINITELY going to drive home instead of fly!

After getting all my equipment in order, I was ready to head out to the field to begin collecting data. We headed on our first trip to Ejido Guadalupe Victoria, Coahuila, about 2 hours from Monterrey. When I visited Guadalupe Victoria last year, there were HUNDREDS of flowering agaves, but they were too old by the time I visited in June. So this year I went back earlier, in mid-May. Unfortunately, when I got there I discovered that the agaves had decided to flower early this year, starting around early April instead of May like normal (probably because the region had a warm winter this year). The agaves weren’t quite as old as when I went last year, but many of them were too old to have fresh nectar for the bats to eat. Agaves open their flowers from the bottom flowers upwards, and I did manage to find some agaves that had at least some of the top flowers still with nectar and therefore were suitable to monitor with the infrared cameras. We sat out in the COLD (44°!) for six hours (for two nights) and didn’t see any bats, likely because there were either no bats in the area, it was too cold for good bat activity, and/or the flowers were too old. However, I did an interview with the community leader and will be returning to the area soon to do more interviews.

Stylish in a cool hat!

Setting up an infrared camera at an agave to monitor

the bats at night (photo by Jaileen Rivera-Rodriguez)

An old agave flower that had fallen to the

ground. You can see the nectar (now thick

and viscous) inside!

So far we’ve been on five field trips to about six different communities, and many of the agaves in each area are older (i.e. they started flowering early this year), including those in the desert scrub areas of Coahuila and the montane pine-oak forests of Nuevo Leon. We’ve luckily been able to find some “good” agaves to monitor in most locations (even if the majority of agaves in the area are too old for the bats). I’ve also seen some pretty interesting things, including my first emerging agave stalk, tiny agaves (only about a foot tall) flowering (very strange!), and an informal tour of a community’s mezcal distillery and their process of making mezcal.

Rain in the distance at Ejido Estanque

de Norias, Coahuila

A very different landscape from Estanque de Norias,

this time in Laguna de Sanchez, Nuevo Leon

An emerging agave stalk, before the

branches and flowers grow.

So crazy to see such a tiny agave plant flowering

(the one on the left)!

Watching an agave harvester/mezcal maker

pour agua miel into a tank to ferment and then

be distilled into mezcal.

The mule with two containers that the harvester uses to

collect agua miel (sap) from the plant once a day in the

afternoon/evening. The ash-filled pit is where they roast

the agave hearts to add to the agua miel and then distill

into mezcal.

Perhaps one of the most exciting things about my field work is the gastronomic aspect, in which I have gotten to try numerous products made from agaves. There is the quiote, the boiled stalk of the agave that is chewed and spit out to get the sweet juices. There’s also agua miel (the liquid sap collected from the agave heart/base that is very earthy in flavor but that varies by agave species and region, and that is either consumed as-is or boiled slightly (hervida)), pulque (fermented agua miel), miel espesa or jarabe (agua miel that is boiled to create a thick, syrupy “honey”), pan de pulque (bread made from pulque), destilado (one community’s alcoholic beverage made from distilling pulque), mezcal (which is made in several communities by distilling the combination of pulque and the juice from mashed piñas (agave hearts)), and even the nectar from the agave flowers themselves (which people don’t consume, but I wanted to try it to see what the bats eat!). And the best part is that I’ve been able to buy several bottles of mezcal so far to bring home with me, from different communities and different production processes. Nothing beats a project that includes bats, tasty sweet things, AND mezcal!

So many products made from agaves. And these are only the edible ones! From top left: quiote (stalk); agua miel (both raw (left) and boiled/hervida (right)); mezcal; pulque (fermented agua miel); pan de pulque (bread made from pulque); destilado; and the nectar in the flower that the bats eat!