Gorbachev

And one more photo from earlier in the summer that I finally remembered to get from Nicole

Me and Gorbachev, the blind elephant (before they chased him out of camp)

Back in the U.S.

I am now safely back in the U.S. after a long day of travelling. We left Nairobi at 10:30pm on Tue, arrived in Amsterdam at 6am on Wed and spent a few hours walking around the city and visiting the zoo during our layover. Then we got back on a plane at 1pm Amsterdam time and arrived in Newark at 4pm East Coast time yesterday. I came home briefly to drop off stuff, then went to a dinner party in progress to say hi to all of the EEB friends I have been away from this summer.

I realize I didn't post anything my last week at Ol Pejeta, so here are a couple more photos from there.

It rained almost every day my last week, turning the roads to slick and mud. I got around most of the time, but did get stuck for about an hour 1 day. We slid sideways and ended up with the front tires in one rut and the back tires in another. We eventually were able to push out of these ruts and drive off road the rest of the way home.

Here are some cute frogs that were hanging out in the paper bags I was drying my grass samples in before mailing the grass to a lab for analysis. I took the frogs out first.

Goat Roast 2012

Goat Roast 2012 was perhaps even more epic than Goat Roast 2011. We had a lot of people, so we bought 2 goats. We had to take 3 cars full of white people to the community to pick up the goats. And the goats were slaughtered by Youngin (who cried) and Anders (who was scarily good at killing).

Here is an epic photo diary.
Searching for the goats and finding camels instead.

 Ahh, there are the goats...

 Selecting the goats

 He doesn't want to go :(

 Loading up the goats in the cars (there was one in my car also)

 Youngin excited about the goats (unfortunatley he bonded with them too much pre-slaughter)

 They were named Totes (totes my goats) and Charlie Sheen

 Preparing to slaughter

 Youngin crying while cutting its throat. He powered through and finished though

Anders, getting right to business. Perhaps the fastest slaughter ever

 Youngin saying goodbye to the goat he killed (while we skin it)

 And the results on the bbq. Great success

Wild dogs

The wild dogs have come back to Ol Pejeta recently. We saw them when we first arrived in June and then no one had seen them for close to 2 months. They probably went out of the conservancy for awhile (wild dogs need large areas to roam), and just reappeared a couple weeks ago. I saw them attempting to hunt one night, but the pictures are not great because of the light. Then we saw them again in the middle of the day the other day and I got some more photos.

There are two that I saw attempting to mate on both occassions.
"I got this..."

 "Ehh, maybe not, let's just be friends for now"

What are you looking at?

Nicole and I came across three male lions together the other night-- kind of an unusual sight. They were full grown, but seemed young, so maybe they are brothers who haven't taken over a pride of their own yet.

We came upon them sleeping in some thick bush, and at first they just looked at us. Then Nicole, who was standing out the top of my car, decided to put her sweater on and she scared the daylights out of them. I love the sequence of photos below because at first the one male just looks confused, like  "What are you looking at?" Then it turns to, "Ahh, scary, I don't like you!"

Fieldwork

To prove that I am doing fieldwork here in addition to just taking animal photos... here are some images captured by my camera traps of me, Youngin, and our guard Elijah measuring grass at one of my cage sites. I especially like that Elijah holds his gun in one hand and the wire pin I measure grass with in the other.

I also realized the other day that I have less than 2 weeks of fieldwork left (11 days now) and less than 3 weeks in Kenya (15 days!!! AHH). That is kind of scary because I feel there is so much I need to get done before I leave. It will also be sad to leave. It has been a pretty good summer so far...

Gorbachev the elephant

Gorbachev, the blind elephant, had been hanging out around the research center a lot lately. They have tried to relocate him to other parts of the conservanc several times, but he always comes back. I guess he feels safe here. Unfortunately he can be pretty destructive also. He was recently right in our camp and broke some water pipes, so they eventually had to chase him out with a car and rifle fired in the air.

Before he left though, we got some good close-up photos. Nicole also took one of me crouching right in front of him, but I haven't gotten the photo from her yet. So that one will have to wait til a future post. First photo below taken by Mike.

Lion kill

Here are some photos from yesterday of 3 subadult lions eating a warthog either they or their mom had killed and pulled under a shady tree. These cubs are between 1 and 2 years old now.
Funny side note: my guard and I were measuring grass about 100m from here.

More cute elephant baby

I am trying to catch up on blog posting, as I have quite a few good sightings as of late.

Here is another cute elephant baby sequence. This little guy looked drunk and kept falling over. At one point he was laying full on his side and looked like he was still trying to eat with his trunk from on the ground. I also have a video of the cuteness...

Marsh photos

Here are some photos I took in the marsh where the river runs through Ol Pejeta during our game drive yesterday evening. The river is pretty high right now and everything is very green.

 Elephant munching

 Cool tree (I don't know why this is sideways and can't figure out how to make it upright)

Male impala with some waterbuch in the background

Mount Kenya

Today, Blair's boyfriend Mike arrived for a month-long stay and Nicole, Youngin, and the 4 Oxford students left for a 4 day trip to Masai Mara. We met Blair and Mike at Trout Tree restaurant for lunch, where I saw the black and white colobus monkeys for the first time in my 4 trips to Trout Tree!

Back at Ol Pej, we took Mike on a game drive. He is apparently good luck, because we saw just about everything, including a pride of 8 lions. I also got some good photos on our game drive because the light was really nice. I will start with the ones of Mount Kenya, which was clear for the first time in weeks... just for Mike's arrival.

And some zebra in front of Mt. Kenya

Food fight

Yesterday I saw a jackal and a tawny eagle square off for some meat.

The jackal was eating what appeared to be a baby Thomson's gazelle head and the eagle was sitting nearby observing at first. Apparently the eagle got tired of waiting and decided to make a move.

An eagle would normally not be so aggressive in going after a jackal's meal, and this was an unsuccessful attempt. After a couple fly-overs, the eagle landed on a tree and just watched as the jackal finished. Then both took off into the distance.

Cute elephant babies

On my way to the field this morning, I came across a herd of elephant on the road. There were two cute babies in the group that proceeded to entertain me.

The first one found a stick that he liked to shake around.

Then he needed to scratch his head on the ground.

 Then his friend came over

 And they leaned on each other

 Finally, one of the mom's was like, "Let's go silly kids..."