Leaving Ol Pej

I haven't updated the blog in awhile because I have been busy finishing up my last week at Ol Pejeta... and probably my last PhD field season.  The rain stopped for a few days, long enough to measure grass one last time and collect all of my camera traps and GPS units from the field.  I said goodbye to all my herders and my cows and packaged up one last round of grass samples to send for nutrient analysis. Today I drove my green Suzuki field car back to Mpala, along with all the camera traps. The hallway at the research center is suddenly a lot more empty (or finally clear of junk, depending on how you look at it).

Now I am just working on packing up all of my personal belongings.  I leave Thursday for South Africa for a week! I will be vising my good friend Keri in Cape Town, where she is doing nursing aid work for a year. We plan to have a couple nights out in Cape Town, hike Table Mountain, the go to the beach and some wineries. Even though I have been coming to Kenya for nearly 4 years now, I have still not visited any other country in Africa. So I am excited to travel around a little more, have some time to relax, and of course see Keri.

To add some color to this post, here is a Brown Parrot (which is actually mostly green, with red eyes), that visited the tree next to the research center porch the other day to eat some berries. And Mt. Kenya again, but this time it looked like it was floating in the clouds. You could see the top clearly, but not the base. When I first looked up and saw it, it looked kind of surreal.

the real rains have come?

Remember when it rained for four days straight a few weeks ago and I was worried that the rainy season had come early? Well that turned out not to be true. That was just an odd, mid-dry-season spurt. Those rains did turn all the grass bright green, but since then it has been pretty much dry for 3 weeks (which was good for my research productivity)... until yesterday!

Yesterday it rained lightly during early afternoon, but stopped soon enough for me to make it to my cattle bomas and retrieve my gps units. Just as I got back for dinner, though, the rain began again and didn't stop all night long. I woke up several times in the night, and each time, I could hear it was still raining outside. This morning, things looked very soggy so I decided to stay in and do computer work and wait for the sun to come out and dry up the roads. Unfortunately, the sun never appeared. It drizzled again for an hour or so mid-morning. Then stopped... but the clouds in the distance looked ominous during lunch. And sure enough, as I sit here writing after lunch... the rain has begun again. And this time it is quite heavy.
So I think the rains may have really begun this time... I have less than 2 weeks left of my research now. So I really hope the rain slows down and holds off enough for me to finish my work. Because measuring grass in the rain is nearly impossible.

Other things of note at the research center: this week has been very quiet. Daryll, Tom, plus Dan and the students all left last Friday (a week ago today). And then Esther (from the Max Planck institute in Germany who studies chimpanzees) left on Wednesday.  So now it is just me, Mark & Jannine (the new housing estate managers that have been here since Nov)... and a somewhat awkward young German guy who is driving us a little nuts. When this place was full, I wished it was quieter. But now I am wishing some more people (non-awkward, nice people) would show up!
Also, for those who haven't seen them yet, I have been sharing some of my photos with Ol Pejeta's marketing person to use for promotional purposes.  So look for some of my photos already on the Ol Pejeta facebook page, and more to come!

After all that text, here are a few photos. These were taken during the early morning game drive with Tom and Daryll a couple weeks ago. I was so excited about the cheetah cub photos from that day, that I forgot all about the many other photos I took that morning as well. Here are a few

 This baby elephant decided to try to climb a fallen tree

 A misty marsh and Mount Kenya first thing in the morning

A baby Oryx! (left) next to the adult version (though this one is a male, so obviously not the baby's mother, but maybe his dad)

Canopy Walk

I took a day off on Saturday, and Sammy and I took a day trip we had been planning to do for awhile, but hadn't gotten around to yet. We drove to the Ngarendare Forest, northeast of Nanyuki toward Lewa Conservancy to do their Canopy Walk.  The canopy walk is a 150m+ long track suspended on wires through the forest canopy. You climb some steep stairs at the beginning, the walk along up in the air and through the trees, ending at a platform before coming back the same way.

The floor beneath your feet is just wire mesh, and the whole things does swing a bit as you walk... so definitely not for those afraid of heights. At one point there is even a tree growing right in the middle of the track that you have to shimmy around!  The other cool thing about the trip was the view of Mount Kenya from a different angle. Seeing it from the North instead of the West (and being even closer) gives a while different perspective.

 Climbing back down

Mount Kenya from the North

Lion cubs!

I am running a little behind on updating the blog again... but here are photos from last Tuesday, March 4. Again, these were already posted on facebook, but for those who haven't seen them:

Tom (who was here filming promo videos for Ol Pejeta) was scheduled to film lion tracking for the video on tourism, as one of the activities tourists can do here. He needed someone to play the part of the tourist, so I happily volunteered. The radio-tracking actually worked perfectly and we found a lioness with 3 cubs hidden deep in the bush taking a nap. They are used to cars and just sat there cuddling and playing while I got some amazing photos.

Cheetah cub

I posted these photos on facebook a few days ago... but for those who don't have facebook

Mother cheetah with her cub. At first they were resting, but then he decided it was time to play

Dogs and Frogs

Sometimes, when I go to check my camera traps, there are small animals hanging out on them. There have been several small lizards recently, and this cute frog on one camera trap.

I also spent some time with the anti-poaching dogs recently. Ol Pejeta started out with just two bloodhounds to use as tracker dogs to sniff out poachers, ammo, and carcasses. Then they got one Belgian Malinois as an attack dog whose job it is to run down and attack poackers running away. Last year, they brought in a British guy named Daryll who used to train army search dogs to work with the attack dog Tarzan. Pretty soon, the plan became to get 11 new Malinois puppies and train them up from scratch as attach, tracker, and patrol dogs. So now there is a whole dog unit dedicated to anti-poaching here! It is already beginning to have a big effect and other Conservancies are looking to establish dog units of their own. Here is one of the original bloodhounds, Lux, with his handler.

 And here is Tom (who is here for a few weeks filming promo videos for Ol Pej) filming Lux after a tracking demo.

semi-tame bushbuck

There is a semi-tame, young male bushbuck who sometimes hangs out around the research center for a day. He comes once every few months.... and was back the other day. I have seen him three times now. We think he normally lives near Ol Pejeta house. But I don't know why he decides to wander over to Research every so often.  He seems to have little fear of humans, barely noticing when people walk by. He will even look at you from only a meter away over the half-wall of the porch, or lay down next to a banda door to take a nap. I haven't really tried to see how close I can get without the porch wall in between us. I don't think you could touch him, but could maybe get close.

I espcially like the photo of him eating grass in front of the "Beware of Wild Animals" sign. Now all he needs is a name. Thoughts?

Life and Death in the bush

We know that herbivores get eaten by predators. But sometimes, rarely, animals die without any obvious cause of death. While measuring grass one day, my guard Barnaba and I found this dead male Grant's gazelle. Only a small part of its abdomen had been opened up (seemingly by a bird, as there were no bite marks like from a jackal or other mammal) and the rest was still untouched. We couldn't find any visible wounds like from a fight with another male Grant's. Sometimes they do stab each other with their horns, and this can be fatal-- but there were no apparent stab marks. So we left it be. The next night I went back and this time only the skeleton was left. Most of the meat had been eaten by scavengers and there was a jackal just chewing on the last of the scraps.

A few days later, near that same spot, I also found two male cheetahs. For some reason, predator sightings have been very scarce this trip. This is only my second sighting of cheetahs in over 6 weeks. And I think these are the same two males I saw the first time. I watched them cross the road through the bush, then eventually settle down under a tree for a nap. Their bellies looked full-- like they had already eaten sometime last night or that morning-- so they weren't too interested in chasing anything. But the zebra and gazelle nearby sure took notice of their presence and moved away. So I had to move on too, to find a different group of grazers to do a focal sample on.

And a final sighting for this post-- this big black rhino hanging around one of my study sites with a second horn bigger than his first! Poaching is still a major problem-- there was even an attempt just the other night. So this guy better keep hidden. Some people would love to have his horns. But I think they look better on a live animal than ground up as fake medecine...

More Sunsets

First, the bad news... it has been raining here for the last 3 or 4 days straight! This is supposed to be the long dry season. Rains aren't supposed to start for another month. But apparently things are becoming more and more unpredictable in recent years. Climate change in action.  And while rains are good for the grass and the animals, it is bad for the roads. One of the all black cotton soil tracks between two of my bomas was already pretty hairy yesterday. I had to drive in 4WD, 1st gear for awhile to get up the incline out of a valley.  And it just finished raining heavily here today, so the roads will only be worse now.

But back to some lighter fare-- here are some photos taken before the rains started of some more lovely sunsets. One night the sun was SO pink you had to see it to believe it. Unfortunately I only had my small camera with me, not the good Canon one and was not really able to capture it fully. But these photos (of several different sunsets) should fill in ok.

The clouds over the research center one evening were amazing. And the pink light was perfect... but for only 10 minutes, then it faded away. Good thing I decided to go outside during those 10 minutes.

 Then, driving back from the bomas one night, I looked behind me and saw this.  Again, it was perfect for 10 minutes, then the pink disappeared and everything began to turn to gray.

Odds and ends

Not too much to report this week. Work is continuing. It did rain here a few days ago, and not a light rain either. There was standing water in the morning. Lukcily it had been so dry that most of the water just soaked in and didn't make the roads too bad. But it is supposed to be the dry season. And that is what I want for my research this trip. So if that was a one-off rain event, no problem. Plus side: It has kept down the dust that had gotten so bad. But I hope this doesn't mean the rains have come early. They are not supposed to start for another month or so.

Meanwhile, here are a few random photos from last week.  Three white rhinos napping, and thinking about getting up.  They really are like big dogs sometimes.

Also, sometimes a photo like this reminds me how much bigger hybrid zebras are than their plains zebra counterparts. This male hybrid (on the Left) makes the plains males next to him look like small ponies.