Los Farallones

Los Farallones

Yesterday, Roselvy and I took our friend Dan Germer on a boat trip to a group of rocky islets in the Gulf of Fonseca called Los Farallones. Our objective was to find breeding Bridled Terns, and who knows what else pelagic. These rocks are about 10 km from the Cosiguïna Peninsula of Nicaragua, and about 10 km from Meanguera, an island that belongs to El Salvador. We left from Amapala, a Honduran island at about 25 km distance. Yes, the small Gulf of Fonseca is littered with volcanic islands and peninsulas from all three countries. Most authorities now accept that Los Farallones belong to Nicaragua, although the (Honduran) harbor master of Amapala was of the opinion that those rocks really belong to all three countries. It matters little to the birds that breed there, and ultimately — I'm not really a lister — not that much to me either. I was excited to see these birds no matter what nationality they possess.

Bridled Terns (and a Brown Booby)

The Bridled Tern colony on Los Farallones was first described by my friend Oliver Komar (Komar & Rodríguez 1996), who encountered an estimated 600 breeding pairs in 1993. Nineteen years later, this colony still exists, although my impression was of fewer individuals. 

Bridled Terns

As we circled the islands, it was difficult to get an accurate sense of how many Bridled Terns were there, but we estimated about 600 individuals, or 300 pairs. There may be a fairly wide margin of error in this estimate.

breeding Bridled Terns - note chick on right

We found at least one chick, and many apparently incubating birds. Komar and Rodríguez reported 8 chicks in early August of 1993, so the breeding season there appears to be July/August.

Blue-footed Boobies and a Brown Pelican

We saw five other species on the island: Blue-footed Booby (estimated 30, possibly more); Brown Booby (estimated 60, possibly also a low estimate); 300 Magnificent Frigatebirds; 80 Brown Pelicans; and 15 Gray-breasted Martins. A Least Storm-Petrel was seen darting away from the islands just as we approached.

Blue-footed Booby with a USFW band on its left leg

One of the Blue-footed Boobies was banded. Blue-footed Booby, a relatively recent addition to the Honduran list, now appears to be regular in the Gulf of Fonseca, as well as off the coast of El Salvador. Jenner et al. (2007) listed the species as unknown but expected from the Honduran part of the Gulf of Fonseca, and indeed eBird shows several recent records for the area.

Adult male Brown Booby

Unlike Atlantic Brown Boobies, adult male eastern Pacific Brown Boobies have a beautiful frosty-pale head around the face.

Note: a trip to Los Farallones needs to be planned beforehand; you can't just show up there and ask a fisherman to take you to 'those rocks out there'. If traveling from the Honduran side, a permit can be obtained from the harbor master in Amapala. Bring your passport and enough money to buy gasoline. From Amapala, the roundtrip is about 50 km. We spent about 80 USD in gasoline (which included the boatsman's fee) plus 12 USD for the permit.

Cited literature:

Jenner, T., O. Komar & A. Narish. 2007. Noteworthy bird records from the Gulf of Fonseca, Honduras. Cotinga 28: 13—20.

Komar, O. & W. Rodríguez. 1996. A Major Bridled Tern (Sterna anaethetus) Colony in the Gulf of Fonseca, Nicaragua. Colonial Waterbirds Vol. 19, Nr. 2: 264—267. 

The shrub

The Regal Greatstreak that I found a couple of days ago and reported in the previous post was found on a shrub that is turning out to be very productive for me. I'm here at the Laguna de Apoyo in Nicaragua to make an inventory of the butterflies that are in the reserve, and I've found many species that weren't on the reserve's species list. But once you pass 200 species, it gets harder to find any that you haven't already seen.

That is, until you find a bush that is so incredibly attractive to butterflies that you can go there three days in a row and find several 'new' species every single day. This really is a treasure trove of butterflies, and I've told the folks at the biological station that they should get this plant in their yard. Its flowers produce a lovely fragrance, and attract a ton of butterflies.

The biological station I'm staying at is also a Spanish language school, and the students there now ask me over breakfast "Are you going to the Magic Bush again?" Well, yeah! It's about an hour's walk away, but it's such a productive spot that it's hard not to.

The butterfly at the very top of today's post is a Carousing Jewelmark. (Gotta love those names!) I saw it on the bush yesterday only.

And this beautiful thing is a Hackberry Greenmark. Had it there today.

This is a Clytie Ministreak. It fed methodically and seemingly unperturbed for more than 15 minutes in one spot.

More or less the same goes for this Dusky-blue Groundstreak.

Here's an Orange-spotted Skipper, rather a colorful species for a skipper. I saw one individual on the shrub yesterday, and again today.

This finally is a Many-banded Daggerwing, a common species throughout the reserve, and found in large numbers on the shrub.

Regal Greatstreak

Today a few shots of a Regal Greatstreak (Evenus regalis) that I found this morning on a shrub here in the reserve.

The blooming shrub had a deliciously intoxicating fragrance, attracting over 25 different butterfly species, including this stunningly beautiful Regal Greatstreak.

I have never seen this species before, and was quite taken in by its beauty. It's fairly big too for a hairstreak.

Even head on, it looks good.

Tomorrow, I'm going back there with a net to try a collect a specimen for the biological station's growing collection.

Butterflies in Laguna de Apoyo

I've been at the Laguna de Apoyo in Nicaragua since early June looking for butterflies, so I figured it's high time for an entry on what I've found so far. I'm here to make an inventory of the butterflies found in the reserve, and I go out practically each day armed with binoculars and camera, and sometimes hand nets or butterfly traps.

Back in 1995, a group of entomologists from the University of Maryland published an inventory of butterflies they found at the Reserva Natural Laguna de Apoyo in a Nicaraguan scientific journal. They collected periodically over a series of five years during the rainy season (when species diversity is highest) and found 108 species of diurnal butterflies to be present in the reserve, including 3 species new for Nicaragua.

Their list formed the basis of a list to which Nicaraguan field biologists have added since then, and to which I am now adding as well. Since early June, I have added approximately 30 species to the list, and revised the list's taxonomy for several others, to reflect recent work on butterfly taxonomy. The current list stands at 174 species, but I'm still finding new ones every day, and I'm starting to wonder how accurate parts of that list really are. To give an example: the 1995 publication mentions a Cissia satyr as new for the country: Cissia calixta. But the species in that genus are notoriously difficult to separate, and this particular record - of a species with a known range from Costa Rica south to Ecuador, and with an elevational range between 800 and 3,000 m - may very well represent a misidentification. Laguna de Apoyo is outside its normal geographical as well as elevational range. However, abundant here right now is Cissia themis (Nicaraguan Satyr), which is very similar to Cissia calixta but is not illustrated in the guide used by the U of Maryland team, and curiously absent from their 1995 list.

Here's a picture of Cissia themis (undina) mating.

The butterfly at the very top of today's post is a firetip, Elbella scylla, or Red-collared Firetip. Then an underside of a scintillant, Calephelis sp., another notoriously difficult genus. The purplewing is a male Eunica sydonia, or Plain Purplewing. Both the firetip and the purplewing were new to the list. I found the first purplewing four or five days ago. The next day, I saw two or three individuals, and now it appears to be fairly common. Every day, I see certain species a little more or a little less abundant than the day before, or new ones adding to the mix. But that firetip remains the only individual I have found so far.

Stay tuned for more on the butterfly community at Laguna de Apoyo.

On Volcan Mombacho

Last weekend, Xavier, Marissa and I visited Volcan Mombacho near the Nicaraguan town of Granada. Near the top of the volcano, there's a biological station where we stayed overnight. Saturday night, we went out on a guided tour of the area around the biological station, and encountered the above salamander, Bolitoglossa mombachoensis, the Mombacho Salamander, one of a few endemic species described so far for this volcano. Also here and nowhere else in the world are a butterfly and an orchid, and probably yet unfound representatives from other taxa. We saw the orchid the next day, but strong wind and cloud and rain prevented us from seeing the butterfly - or indeed much else. Mountain Elaenia's were common there, we did see several of them.

This frog, also there, is more widely distributed. It is called the Red-eyed Tree Frog.

Bats

I am not the only field technician doing field work at the biological station at Laguna de Apoyo in Nicaragua. Xavier, a Quebecker, is here also, working on bats.

Today a few shots of the bats he's caught with a regular mist net. Couple of nights ago, after he took measurements, he hung them on the clothesline, where they went into a brief torpor, before taking off.

I haven't written much about my butterfly studies here, but I'll try to get around that soon. With the rainy season well underway, diversity and numbers have greatly increased, and I'm still finding new species for the reserve almost every day.

Eat, eat, eat

Here in Nicaragua, the rainy season has been underway for about a month, with rain on most nights now, sometimes heavy and/or prolonged rains. This has turned Laguna de Apoyo's Tropical Dry Forest into a lush, green world where everyday there are more butterflies out and about.

All those butterflies were eggs first, then caterpillars. This caterpillar will eat, eat, eat, and eventually metamorphose into a Mexican Fritillary (Euptoieta hegesia), a small to medium-sized orange butterfly that's common from the southwestern US into South America. As usual, click on the photo for a detailed view.

Here's a little video of it eating.



When it's done eating, it will retreat to secluded spot, usually under a leaf, and metamorphose into a chrysalis, from which the adult butterfly will emerge. It will then look like this:

In Granada

Wakako and I spent a few days in Granada, trying to get away from the daily grind (ahem) of field work at Laguna de Apoyo.

We visited a 'butterfly reserve', went in a so-called 'eco-tour' of a 'private natural reserve', drank juice from a freshly harvested coconut, enjoyed creature comforts such as fast wireless, excellent pizza, and great coffee, and witnessed the arrest of a boy held at gunpoint. I place the first items in quotation marks, because this is Nicaragua, sometimes called "the poor man's Costa Rica", where they try to imitate Costa Rican tourism success stories, but often end up producing a simulacrum of that experience. I don't mean to bitch about this, but the butterfly reserve was little more than a small net-covered garden where a fraction more butterflies were flying around compared to outside the garden, and the 5 dollar admission seemed pricey. (The 7 dollar admission to the one I visited in San Jose, Costa Rica a few weeks ago on the other hand was worth it.)

The guided eco-tour was recommended to us by the tour company as great for birding, and in fairness, the birding there was pretty good. But we were birding in habitat quite similar to that of Laguna de Apoyo, and were seeing familiar birds everywhere. I felt a bit sorry for our guide David, who worked hard to identify birds he spotted or heard, and then enthusiastically would bring a bird to our attention, only to hear us say "yes, those are cool birds, and it's amazing how common they are here." No matter what bird he came up with, we jaded birders had already seen or heard the species many times before. At one point, he became quite excited because he thought he had spotted "the national bird of Costa Rica". Someone had once told me which bird this is, but I had forgotten. He had forgotten the English and scientific names of this bird, so for a while there was confusion about this "national bird of Costa Rica". Eventually, we worked it out, and the answer came as a bit of an anti-climax: Clay-colored Thrush (or Robin). Think about it: a country with a ton of endemics, with many colorful, exotic birds, chooses one of the drabbest, dullest birds around that is common from south Texas all the way down to northern Colombia. Its songs are pretty, but even vocally, it isn't exactly unsurpassed. It just doesn't make sense.

We did get great looks at a pair of White-necked Puffbirds, saw another Osprey, found a Royal Tern, saw some Northern Jacanas and Purple Gallinules, and many Black-headed Trogons. Also several Bare-throated Tiger-Herons (one pictured at top of post), and lots of Howler Monkeys. We enjoyed this trip, but I didn't see any new birds, and I was clearly a lot more knowledgeable about birds and butterflies than our guide. That's OK. This wasn't one of those specialist tours where the objective is to tick off as many species as possible. I've never been on one of those and I don't see myself doing that anytime soon.

From the ferry port in Granada we observed four Black Terns, although we didn't see any on our 20-minute boat trip to the 'private nature reserve'. I've entered my Black Tern sightings into eBird, where they now show up as the southernmost records for this species in June.

Common Morphos were the most common butterfly in the butterfly garden outside of Granada.

In an orchard around the butterfly garden was this Ferrugineous Pygmy-Owl.

We never did figure out what the kid who was arrested at gunpoint on the beach near the ferry port was arrested for. Less than a minute before his arrest, he was swimming in the water along the pier - where the city sewage runs into the lake - and asked us for some money. He did not strike me as a hardened criminal who could only be captured at gunpoint, or who needed to be hit with a police club while lying on the ground, but obviously the Nicaraguan police has a much better handle on these things than I do.

Black Terns

North American Black Terns winter along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of Central and northern South America. In spring, they are a common migrant along both coastlines in Central America, and are also seen in smaller numbers at inland sites. Some non-breeders, presumably first cycle birds, will summer in Central and northern South America, primarily along the Pacific coast, and possibly also along the Atlantic coast. During this time, the species is rare inland (Heath, Dunn & Agro 2009).

And indeed, at the biological station in Laguna de Apoyo, Nicaragua, folks were quite surprised when I said that almost every other day, I’d see Black Terns fishing on the Laguna. Usually I’d see just one or two individuals, and then one day there were 7.

The next day I had a bird point count scheduled for a waterside location, and hoped to get them on the point count. I did: I got no less than 17 Black Terns! Jeffrey McCrary, the resident biologist at Laguna de Apoyo, has never seen the species at the Laguna in June.

Then today, after Wakako and I arrived in nearby Granada on Lake Nicaragua, we observed three individuals hanging around the ferry port for Ometepe, on the outskirts of town.

All birds I’ve seen here so far had whitish body feathers, indicating first cycle birds.

With birds showing up in multiple locations, I have to wonder: are these birds really so rare here in summer, or is it just that nobody has ever reported them before?

Wednesday, we have a birding trip scheduled to the northwestern side of a nearby volcano, which will include a boat trip on Lake Nicaragua. We will definitely be on the lookout for Black Terns...

Postscript: oddest thing - I report my sightings of three Black Terns today in Granada in eBird, thinking eBird will probably want to double-check that sighting, but no. But the Osprey that we also saw, that eBird finds remarkable! I don't think summering Ospreys are that unusual around here.

Literature cited:
Heath, Shane R., Erica H. Dunn and David J. Agro. 2009. Black Tern (Chlidonias niger), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/147

Leaf display in motmots

Wakako is here with me for two weeks, and on a walk here at the Laguna de Apoyo a few days ago, she and I observed a Turquoise-browed Motmot performing the so-called Leaf Display. This is a curious behavior that is known from at least four of the ten motmot species (Murphy 2008). Use of inedible props has been described for only four avian groups: bowerbirds, fairy-wrens, birds-of-paradise, and the Central American motmots. In the first three taxa, the use of props plays a role in mate acquisition and is associated with males only, but in the case of motmots, both sexes exhibit this behavior and its use appears to be less specific, possibly associated with intraspecific aggression or with status (Murphy 2008).

This behavior is performed by paired and unpaired birds alike, during and outside the breeding season (Murphy 2008).

I have seen it many times myself. Usually what happens is that I will hear several motmots calling from a spot, then the calling reaches a feverish pitch and as I sneak up on them, I will find several birds sitting in the same tree, often with one individual holding a leaf in its bill. Many times, the leaf holder will remain in its place as other individuals fly off, which appears to confirm the aggression / status interpretation. Evidently, when you're a motmot, one of the worst things that could happen to you is being confronted by another motmot holding a leaf in its bill, showing you who is boss. These are curious birds, indeed.

Here's a picture of a Russet-crowned Motmot with a small green leaf in its bill. According to Murphy (2008), it is more common for motmots to use bigger and older (brown or yellow) leaves. I photographed this bird, a Mexican endemic, last summer when I assisted Troy Murphy with work on Streak-backed Orioles in the Sierra de Huautla, in the Mexican state of Morelos.

If you're interested in the article cited above, go here for a download link.

Cited literature:
Murphy, Troy (2008) "Display of an Inedible Prop as a Signal of Aggression? Adaptive Significance of Leaf-Display by the Turquoise-browed Motmot, Eumomota superciliosa" in Ethology 114: 16-21, Blackwell Verlag, Berlin.

Leaf-cutter ants

I arrived in Laguna de Apoyo, Nicaragua, about a week ago, but internet at the biological station was spotty at best until last night. Right now it is actually reasonably fast, so I'm going to taunt the digital powers that be by attempting to upload a couple of videos of leaf-cutter ants marching along on the forest floor. These little videos, shot yesterday, may not be epic cinema, but in my humble opinion they're already more fascinating than certain Warhol cinematic releases, such as Sleep (1963). Judge for yourself.



This video shows leaf-cutter ants that have cut pieces of leaf from a tree carrying those pieces back to their nest. If you're a leaf-cutter ant, that's what you do for a living. Neither the beginning nor the end of the line was in sight, so you can imagine these little guys have a lot of walking to do. But, as the saying goes, many hands make light work. It's all very well organized: one line with ants carrying bits of leaf to the nest, and a parallel line of empty-handed ants going out to the tree to get more.

Cinéma vérité indeed. The possibilities for slapstick are obvious, I guess. At the beginning of this movie, one directionally challenged ant bumps into another ant, and they both get a little disoriented for a short while. But there is no street scene - the other ant simply takes a few paces to the side, and resumes his journey.



Note how in this movie ("Leaf-cutter Ants 2: The Sequel"), the ant in the middle has trouble keeping his load up, especially when another ant starts walking over the leaf bit while the first one tries to pick it up!

There is a bird here - Clay-colored Robin - with a variety of songs, including one that sounds exactly like the opening credits tune of old Laurel & Hardy movies. So for me it is really not hard to use my imagination here in the forest and look at animals performing little scenes out of silent era slapstick comedies, while hearing the signature tune to one of them.

Which reminds me - there was a girl at the Whitefish Point hawk watch last month who remarked that the Black-throated Green Warbler "sang the Ozzy Osbourne song". I've been mulling over that intriguing statement for weeks now, trying to figure out just exactly which Ozzy Osbourne song shares its melody with a Black-throated Green Warbler song. She made the remark in reference to the so-called 'unaccented ending' song of the BT Green Warbler: "zee zee zee zo zee". I'm not familiar with Mr Osbourne's entire back catalog, but I do know a few classic Black Sabbath tunes, none of which come to mind when listening to the warbler. It seems likely that the statement was made in reference to the reality show that the singer and his family had on MTV some time ago, and I just don't know which song they used on that. It can't be "Paranoid", can it?

Rufous-capped Warbler

Today a picture of a Rufous-capped Warbler, one of the most common birds in the dry scrub forest here at Laguna de Apoyo. We're in the dry season, so the forest is a half-open mixture of greens and browns, with many bright yellow flowers in tree crowns. Walking the trails, you will occasionally see a Rufous-capped Warbler going about its business. It’s when you whistle the song of the Ferruginous Pygmy Owl that you discover just how abundant these warblers are around here. From patches of forest that seemed ‘dead’, suddenly several Rufous-capped Warblers appear, all busily looking for that owl. No matter where you do this, there are always Rufous-capped Warblers around to come and check you out. They’re not shy and will come close, but quickly lose interest when the ‘owl’ turns out to be just a birder.

Euphonias

These are euphonias of course, almost certainly Scrub Euphonias. Scrub Euphonias are common birds around Laguna de Apoyo. I hear ‘em all the time. When I took the photo, I just thought it was a great moment, an adult male feeding what I assumed was a young bird, or possibly a female.

Later on, looking at this photo on my computer, I started thinking. Wow, I thought, there’s an awful lot of yellow on the crown of that male euphonia… Scrub Euphonias have less yellow there than other, similar euphonias. The yellow on this bird extends to just a little beyond the eye, while the Scrub Euphonias I know – and the ones depicted in the guides – all have a yellow crown patch that ends just before the eye.

So I started wondering, which other euphonias are there to consider?

Well, there’s Spot-crowned Euphonia. It has a bit more yellow on the crown than Scrub – the spots are only visible from certain angles.

Here’s a photo of the same bird showing the crown really well. There are no crown spots visible, so I think we can rule out Spot-crowned. The female Spot-crowned, incidentally, has buff underparts and a buff crown spot, which the female/juvenile type bird in our photo doesn’t have. (I don’t know if a juvenile Spot-crowned would have the buffy coloration.) Spot-crowned is found in neighboring country Costa Rica, not in Nicaragua.

Orange-bellied Euphonia (which incidentally has a yellow belly) is from even further afield – South America – with records from Panama. It has more yellow on the crown, in fact a bit more than our bird. Altogether an even more unlikely candidate, one we probably don’t need to consider.

A bird that is found in Nicaragua is Yellow-crowned Euphonia. It has a lot more yellow on the crown than Scrub. As far the yellow on the crown is concerned, the bird in the photo is almost intermediate between Scrub and Yellow-crowned.

The birds I photographed are probably just Scrub Euphonias. There may be some regional variation in the amount of yellow on the crown that I wasn’t previously aware of. It has a fairly large range, all the way from Mexico to western Costa Rica. Two groups are known; one with a yellow vent and one with a white vent. This is the yellow-vented variety.

All in all, these birds provided an opportunity for me to study yellow euphonias with black throats a little bit more.

Postscript: Dana Gardner's illustration of the male Scrub Euphonia in the excellent Stiles & Skutch Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica actually shows exactly the same amount of yellow on the crown as the bird in my photos. This confirms the ID. Now I'm even more inclined to think that there is at least some clinal variation in the amount of yellow on the head, from less yellow on northern birds to more yellow on southern birds.

Butterflies from Nicaragua

Today some photos of butterflies I found around the Spanish school here in Laguna de Apoyo. I haven’t been out much, devoting all my time in the mornings to the study of Spanish, and most of my afternoon time to practicing what I’ve learned, and just hanging out, socializing with the other students. The Laguna de Apoyo has a pleasant, relaxing atmosphere.

This afternoon I went out for a walk on the hillside behind the house. I was joined by Simba, one of the dogs here, who cheerfully ran ahead whenever I stealthily tried to approach a butterfly. With my old Zeiss bins I was doubly disadvantaged: they’re great, but they don’t close focus. I should have brought the Nikon Monarchs instead. With those and without the dog, I probably would have identified more than the meager 10% of butterflies I saw this time. I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of species I encountered here, even though I haven't been able to identify the majority of them just yet.

The butterfly at the top is called a Four-spotted Sailor (Dynamine postverta). It’s a male; the females have brown with white stripes on the upperside.

This is the underside of the same butterfly. It landed on the porch of the school during our coffee break.

This is a Two-eyed Eighty-eight (Callicore pitheas), a beautiful species with red and black bands on the upperside. I saw a brilliant fresh specimen also, but only this tattered thing was willing to pose for a picture.

A familiar species throughout Central America, this Gray Cracker (Hamadryas februa) perched on a tree at breast level. An easy photo target.

This is some brown-skipper spp, but I don’t know which one. It’s quite worn obviously, but if anyone can help me identify it, I’d appreciate hearing from you!

Tomorrow, Aura (one of the language teachers here and also a field tech on the Golden-cheeked Warbler project) and myself will go out looking for more butterflies in these parts. I will take a short break from my language studies and focus a bit more on birds and butterflies. Next weekend, Jeffrey and I plan to help folks in El Salvador with shorebird counts, and then I will return for a last week of language studies here in Nicaragua.

Volcan Masaya

Yesterday afternoon, some of us students at the Laguna de Apoyo language school in Nicaragua went to Parque Nacional Volcan Masaya. This is an active volcanoe that had tourists running for cover as recently as 2001. The visit, though pleasant, was not without danger.

OK, so it didn’t happen to erupt during the 2 hours while we there, but even at rest, this volcano produces enough fumes to keep you from peering over the edge inside. We did this, very briefly, at the very end of our visit, wearing gas masks.

Visible in the depths through the smoke was a faint glow. I decided to keep my camera inside my backpack inside the minivan, and not get that photo. Figured it wasn’t worth risking damage to my optics.

After visiting the crater, we visited a couple of caves, one of which had a bunch of bats swirling around. We went inside the bigger of the two, where we were shown rock formations, one of which was supposed to resemble the face of the God of Darkness. Someone said it looked like Elvis, although I thought it looked really more like Gene Simmons, of Kiss. Everyone brings their own cultural references to these kinds of things, I guess. The bat cave was much narrower, so we only peered inside. Our guide asked us if anyone wanted to get photos, which he would take for this person from the best seat in the house. Sure, I said, I would appreciate that, and he proceeded to take a series of photos, including the one above. As will happen on such occasions, in the dark the camera accidentally got set to manual focus. This greatly reduced the possibility of me getting decent bat shots to those instances where the bat just happened to be flying in the fixed focal range.

Afterwards we went into town (Masaya) where every Thursday in the old market, dancers perform for tourists. The food was good and the dancing fairly entertaining, so all in all a nice afternoon and evening out.