Today’s blog has been written by Lorrayne Gaymer, an expedition member with GVI in Kenya. She is 27, from England, and has written about today’s highlights!
Today our team was in Shimoni east forest, attempting to finish the canopy surveys on transect 3. Firstly we checked the small mammal traps and found not to our surprise, Mrs Scarface (resident giant pouched rat), again! Seeing as we already have her measurements, we simply took some photos and let her go on her way.
Mrs. Scarface
We then managed to carry out over 30 minutes of primate behaviour on a troop of colobus, and finished all of the canopy cover surveys on transect 3 – a good feeling! After a nice lunch break looking out over the eastern peninsular, it was day over. The most exciting part of the day however, came on our way home when we were trudging back down the North-South spine, and our forest officer got the fright of his life as a very large forest cobra (over 1.5 metres) shot out of the bush right by his foot! It headed into the shrubs to our left, before crossing the path about 4 metres in front of us, allowing for an excellent view. It was SO long, really fat and lightning fast. Unfortunately we didn’t get enough time to wip our cameras out, so no photos. But to be honest, none of us really wanted to get that close for any length of time anyway! Still, an awesome and extremely exciting sighting!
GVI conducting primate behaviour surveys
More coming soon!
Regards
Matt
Donations made here are
Apr 29th Antonio C USD 55.00
3 Comments
Great post, nice photo – giant rats are among the most intelligent creatures on this planet – hope you let the handsome guy out quickly? You make primate research look so …um…laid back!
Sure beats the office job I have! I have to admit, Mrs Scarface is a cutie :>)
Dana – She is a beauty, we’re becoming rather fond of her!
Paula – Thanks! Thats really interesting about their intelligence, I assumed they were fairly intelligent because they can be domesticated and apparently can be trained to respond to names etc. Don’t worry, we let her out straight away as we already have her measurements.
That photo does make it look quite relaxing! Because we often spend up to 40 minutes observing the colobus (and you have to have binoculars trained on the individual 100% of the time), it is advised to get into a comfortable position!