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..."

Random photos- gazelle birth

 Two impala males fightings

I got to see a Thomson's gazelle give birth yesterday. The baby was so cute. They are really small when born. I also took down data on the event for Blair, since this is what she is studying. The mom hides the baby in the grass shortly after birth. The baby stays hidden most of the time for the first 2 months of life until it is big enough to follow the herd around. The mom comes to nurse it a couple of times a day, but otherwise it hides motionless to try to avoid being found and eaten by a jackal or cheetah.

Storm clouds

A few days ago, we had another heavy rain. It hadn't rained in a week or more, but it has been pretty wet for this time of year again this year. The grass is tall everywhere. I was actually out measuring grass when the storm started to roll in. It suddenly became cold and windy and we looked up to a pretty ominous sky.

It was clear in one direction and you could see a clear wall of dark clouds as the storm rolled in.

As we drove to the next site where we needed to measure grass, it started to rain. I asked our guard if he thought we could try to still continue and he just responded with, "Turn around". So we weren't able to finish work that day, but got home just as the heavy rain opened up.

Epic lion hunt

Dan came to visit again yesterday, which normally means I get no work done in the afternoon. And I didn't..... but while we were out with him, we saw an amazing National Geographic type series of events.

We were watching a group of gazelle and had noticed a large group of giraffe hanging out in the distance. Our attention was then attracted again when this group of giraffe started running out across the plain and we soon saw why... a single female lion running toward them. We looked in the direction the giraffe were running and saw a mother giraffe with a tiny baby and realized the lion had spotted it too and was going after it. The mom and baby took off running and we quickly turned on the car to follow. As we cauight up to the group, they had stopped running and the lioness was having a standoff with the mother giraffe, who had the baby tucked between her legs.

We then realized why the giraffe had stopped running... (Warning: graphic content)... the baby had snapped one of its back legs and the limb was hanging there at a 90 degree angle and flopping around when the baby moved. We did not see the baby break it's leg, so we don't know if it tripped in a hole, or if perhaps the mother accidentally stepped on while running also.

We then watched for about 15 minutes as the mother giraffe literally grunted and snarled at the lioness, and the lioness made several unsuccessful charges at the baby. An adult giraffe can break a lion's face with one kick, so the lion was naturally being cautious. I don't have many photos, because I was mostly filming a video of the event. Blair's video is better. But here is a photo. The lioness is to the right and the baby is between its mothers front legs, behind the tree.

Eventually the mother somehow managed to nudge the baby into running on 3 legs and they ran away from the lion. Probably exhausted, the lioness did not follow. She instead surveyed the rest of the giraffe that were around and decided they were too big to go after. She then hunched down behind a clump of tall grass just as some warthog were walking by. We watched her jump out circle around once and quickly grab a young warthog in one bite. It squealed as its mom ran away and the lion walked off with a snack. A baby giraffe would have made a much larger meal though...

Since the baby giraffe had broken its leg, we knew it wasn't going to survive long. We tried to find it again after the lion got the warthog, but couldn't locate it.
We told George, the veterinarian about the giraffe and he went looking for it today and found it still alive. The baby had survived the night, but was in bad shape, so George made the decision to put it down. The mom defended it to the very end.

This was an amazing thing to see and (as cliche as it sounds) reminds you of how short life can be and how harsh nature really is.

Not much new to report

Not too much new to report this week... and I don't have many new photos.

Our adventure the other day was in going to town to run errands (I drove... avoiding pedestrians in Nanyuki is sometimes terrifying)... and then visiting the home of our cook Eric and his family.
Eric's mom, dad, and a lot of extended family live just outside Nanyuki and he had been begging us to come visit. So we finally made it out there and it was really nice. His family grows pretty much all of their own food. They have several large gardens, 2 cows for milk, some goats, chicken and rabbits for meat. We had tea, lunch, more tea, and went for a long walk with his 2 sisters making for a 6 hour visit...

Eric's parents told us over and over we are welcome any time, even when Eric is not there. His mom says we should think of her as our Kenyan mom. We also met Eric's grandma who is about to turn 100 years old and still works in her garden every day! She looked amazing for 100 years old. I sadly did not have my camera because I didn't want to risk it being stolen in town, so I did not get any photos.

In other news, I entered a camera trap photo contest for BBC Discover Wildlife magazine. I'm sure they get some awesome submissions, so I probably don't have a shot... but you can't win if you don't try, right. Each person is allowed to submit 12 photos. I entered several of the lion pics, as well as some other animals. The two below are actually my favorites-- entered into the animal portraits category.

fieldwork

Fieldwork is continuing. Not too much new to report. The 4 Oxford students have left for a few days to go visit another conservancy. The exciting new is that Nicole is here! She is a UC Davis PhD student studying the chimps that was here with us last year. And she is a lot of fun. She arrived on Friday and things are already cheerier.

Here are a couple more random photos from a few days ago. A herd of impala, and a male elephant... hanging out. Look closely, that is not a 5th leg.

Chimps

I know I have been lax on posting recently. I have been busy with fieldwork, but will try to start up regular posts again.

I haven't mentioned on here yet, but 4 Oxford MBA students arrived at the research center about a week ago and are staying for 2 months. They are doing a project on land use and evaluating a business model for several conservancies in the area. They are really nice, but know nothing about wildlife. So we are trying to help them learn all of the animals, etc. The funniest part is that one of them is a W&L alum! Small world, meeting in Kenya.

They had a visit to the chimpanzee center the other day, so I tagged along and got some funny chimp photos. Here is a 3 year old chimp doing some kartwheels, investigating her nose, and playing with an older chimp

This male Poco was in a small cage for the first 9 years of his life, so now he likes to stand and walk around on 2 legs... which looks pretty funny. The Oxford people were joking that it doesn't look real, but like a guy in a chimp suit

Frustrated lion

More amazing camera trap photos this round.
I have been thinking that I need to try to get some of these published. Last year, Blair put all of her camera trap photos on a website and some guy who works for a media company in the UK found them and bought some of them. They then showed up in a whole bunch of British newspapers. I was talking to a UK guy this morning who saw Blair's photos in the papers. He said the UK papers would love some of my pics and I should definitely try to get them published. Maybe Blair can give me the contact info for the guy who bought her photos.  So please no one steal them before I get a chance!!!

Here a male lion discovered one of my camera traps and seemed to get frustrated with it. He roared at it, then found the end of the python lock used to secure the camera and proceeded to chew on it for 5 minutes until finally giving up...

Leopard!

The latest round of camera trap photos had some awesome suprises...

First, a leopard!!! I wish the photo had included it's head, but oh well. The other interesting thing: this camera is only 200m or so from the cattle boma.

Then there was this awesome male lion who thoroughly investgated 2 different camera traps on this plain.