So last day after breakfast the well oiled machine goes into action…..the cataloguing complete the fixation of the phylogeographic samples whilst Luis checks the health of the earthworms for transplantation. We process four sites in under 2 hours…..this means we have doubled our speed !! Practice makes perfect.

Then we get on the road leaving Furnas and splitting into two teams a transplant team for the control site and a phlogeographic team to complete the sampling of the far east of the Island. Again Joca drove and his local knowledge of the island is essentiel…..after 20 minutes we left the main tarmac road and entered the forest on the old forest road. Until a few years ago this was the only way around the east of the island. We were glad to be in a four wheel drive as the ‘road’ was really a logging track. The surrounding area was a ‘Natura 2000 site’ (EC habitats directive) and was really beautiful. It is most famous for being the range of the Azores Bullfinch – only found in these forests. We did spend 20 minutes trying to see this rare bird….but we ‘dipped out’ as bird watchers would say but we probably spent the fraction of the time we needed too. Here’s an image of the landscape…..but you need to come and see it to get a sense of its beauty.

As we moved further on the forest road Dave spotted some organic matter in a gully along the side of the road….so Joca pulled over and the earthworm sampling started. After 10 minutes hard sampling the call went up….Mark had found an Amynthas sp.. This was very exciting, the site was surrounded by dense forest and not where we had previous found Amynthas. We continued the sampling for 40 minutes but could only find 4 Amynthas (lots of other earthworms), but this promises to be an very interesting site.

We continued down out of the forest and immediately we were in dairy pasture and stopping we found a site where we harvested 20 earthworm in less than 15 minutes. After a great lunch in Nordeste….the seafood here is fantastic, Mark and Joca were served-up with nearly a whole Octopus….and this was for lunch. Since I am on a diet then I only had a tuna fish steak!!

But having stocked up on sampling fuel we hit the field. The only hard aspect was the driving, Joca had to navigate the countryside to give us sites at the same altitude but equally spaced along the North Eastern mountain range. But the Earthworm sampling team was not forged into a magnificent machine…..and we had our secrete weapon…..Dave the great worm hunter himself (this picture is for you Claus).

Whilst we were making our tired way back to base the transplant team had delivered Hugo to his lectures and headed into the hills to set up the second transplantation site. Again the elegance of the ‘worm saloons’ was amazing and the assistance of Catarina and Fatima the construction was soon completed.