Jun 18 2008
Face Time with the Primates
(Tom here:) Dear friends, thank you for all of your comments, it has been nice to stay connected these first couple of weeks. The Colobus Trust has been really good to us, with friendly staff and volunteers, very comfortable accommodations, great food, and best of all, really amazing nature literally at your doorstep. Yesterday a school class came, and we helped Hamisi teach about the monkeys and the local ecosystem, which was good fun, followed by soccer on the beach. And Claire has been a big help around the vet clinic, cleaning the place up, collecting flowers and fruits for the Vervet monkeys they are preparing for release, and working with John on their care.
But by far my favorite activity is just to watch the monkeys. There is a troop of nine Colobus monkeys here, the house is smack in the center of their relatively small territory. Yesterday I watched them for much of the morning, and again today all three of us started watching them in the trees right outside our door, and over an hour or two, followed them gradually across the property to the beach road. Colobus all look really similar so we have been working hard to do an accurate census of the troop, confirming the sex of the eight mature monkeys (done by seeing if there is a small stripe under their tail), looking for any marks or features that will help tell them apart, and most especially, watching the baby.
Baby Tumaini (means “Hope”) was born in early April. Colobus babies are all white when they are born, but at two and a half months old, he’s growing up and changing color gradually. After a lot of observation we are pretty sure he is a he, but it is hard to tell because he spends most of his time in his mothers’ arms, peeking around. It’s quite a sight to see mom leap from branch to branch just above your head with her baby hanging onto her belly!
We’re making slow progress with the identification, we have noted a mole under the left eye of one subadult male which makes him somewhat easier to identify. We’re hoping to get in at least another day of watching them, if they are close by. The assistant manager here, Gwili, has been kind enough to lend me his Nikon so I can take better photos since all I have with me (unfortunately) is a (really nice) point and shoot.
And then there are the bushbabies. Last night I went with Helen up the road and we spent hours sitting in the forest, rich with night sounds, and illuminated by the full moon. Given the choice between going to a bar to watch a European soccer match, and going into the woods at night to sit quietly and wait for bushbabies, I have to confess it was not a difficult decision.
So there we sat, in the middle of the kilometer-wide strip of precious and fast-disappearing coral rag forest, between the coastal road and the sea. The sun set, you could hear the surf in the distance, twilight brought a little wind swishing through the canopy, the fruit bats came out and flitted in silhouette, and the insects chirped all around. A family of Hadada ibis settled for the night in a nearby tree with a giant cacophony of squawks and honks. Bushbabies made their weird call to each other, getting responses in the distance.
Sitting quietly, every so often we would scan the trees with flashlights, looking for the characteristic eye shine of the bushbabies who might be tempted down by the banana we had put out. They are VERY shy and elusive. Eventually we found one far above us, and watched him for a while by flashlight, tracking him as he sprang through the dark trees, until we lost him in the leaves. But we were unable to get a good photo, which is the focus of Helen’s research. Tonight we’ll try again, especially in search of the tiny little, very shy coastal species, which is about the size of a hamster, but an extremely shy tree hamster that, when you get it in your flashlight beam, suddenly springs through the dark to another branch, jumping with surprising strength, speed and accuracy, and is gone. In the moonlight, sometimes you can see its dark shadow scampering up the branch before it disappears. Wish us luck tonight, and I’ll post any photos we manage to snap of this rare and secretive creature!
Tom! My gracias man! Are you sure that it is safe!!!
When you write: Last night I went with Helen up the road and we spent hours sitting in the forest, rich with night sounds, and illuminated by the full moon. Given the choice between going to a bar to watch a European soccer match, and going into the woods at night to sit quietly and wait for bushbabies, I have to confess it was not a difficult decision.
That sounds dangerous–the jungle at night, teeming with gosh knows what. Give me a safe bar scene anytime! But then, I am glad that I can read your first-hand experiences out in the wild. I’ll go to the bar and write you about them, from the safety of my stool….
Never a dull moment on the east coast of Africa, huh Tom? The girls and I have been trying to figure out exactly where the Colobus Trust is located using Google Earth and we’d like to register a guess of 4° 19.680′S, 39° 34.295′E (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=4%C2%B0+19.680′S+39%C2%B0+34.295′E&ie=UTF8&ll=-4.328,39.571584&spn=0.006836,0.007167&t=h&z=17). Are we close? We’re a little worried that we’re not on target as the google map show no cool photos of the monkeys or bush babies or primate researchers. Maybe that’s your next challenge, Mr Furtwangler; figure out how to get some of your best photos onto maps.google so that everyone knows “here be primates”.
Thanks so much for taking the time to post your adventures. It really does stir the imagination and teach us all that there is a great big world beyond our own continent. Stay safe and enjoy the journey.