Sengi | GVI Kenya

Taming of the Shrew

Category: Coastal Forest, Elephant Shrew, Shimoni Forest, Shrews, Small mammals | Date: Nov 17 2009 | By: gvikenya

For about a year now we’ve been experimenting with a method of trapping the elusive and shy Zanj elephant shrew. This particular shrew is technically a sengi, and is a species that is not only endemic to the east African coast, but is also listed as ‘rare’ and ‘data deficient’ by the IUCN.

Shimoni forest boasts a significant population of this small mammal, and sightings of it by our forest teams are fairly regular (especially at this time of year when visibility is good). So we did some research and decided to procure ourselves a 50m long, very finely threaded fishing net with which to catch them with!

One of the cleared patches that mark the habitual pathway

We set the net up in a large semi circle, and either ‘beat the bush’ towards the net hoping to drive a shrew into it, or we sit nice and quietly and wait for one to wander in. This method works because the Zanj elephant shrew uses habitual pathways, which it will travel along each day clearing them of obstacles. So if one was to encounter the net, it would most likely attempt to get through or over the net, causing it to get entangled. Once caught we would take its measurements, weight, and then clip a small patch of fur on a designated spot on its body for mark-recapture purposes.

Some zanj elephant shrew droppings that are found around the paths

Unfortunately we haven’t caught one yet, but I do not doubt the method itself. Due to the amount of time needed to complete all of our regular surveys, we only get a chance to do this survey perhaps once or twice every three months. This is obviously not even remotely enough to stand a chance of catching a shrew. Especially because until recently we did not know what their trails looked like and therefore could not strategically place our net.

But a couple of weeks ago we saw one of the little chaps running away from us, and so we had a closer look at the exact route it took through the undergrowth. To our surprise, the path was quite obviously marked. Approximately every 30cm, there is a cleared area of dirt. A patch where all the leaf litter and twigs and other debris is cleared, leaving a bare area of dirt approximately 10cm long. And these cleared patches headed off into the undergrowth!

Several of the patches leading off into the undergrowth

Now we know what to look for, we have been spotting the shrew trails all over the forest! This has given us motivation to get back into shrew netting, and allowed us to strategically place our net across these trails, greatly increasing our chance of catching one!

We’ll keep you posted!

Tags: , beat the bush, data deficient, debris, droppings, East African Coast, elusive, endemic, entangled, fishing net, good visibility, habitual pathways, IUCN, leaf litter, mark-recapture, measurments, method of trapping, obstacles, rare, regular surveys, research, sengi, Shimoni Forest, shrew netting, shy, significant population, small mammal, strategically, trails, twigs, undergrowth, weight, zanj elephant shrew

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Biodiversity in the Forest, Bush Babies in the Kitchen & Bush Pigs at the Bar!

Category: Birds, Coastal Forest, Colobus, Elephant Shrew, Shimoni Forest, Small mammals, Uncategorized, bush baby, chameleon | Date: Jan 21 2009 | By: gvikenya

It was only a matter of days after the arrival of our expedition members, before we were back in Shimoni’s coastal forest and underway with our research programme. The beginning of 2009 did not disappoint… within just the first week it felt like we’d seen an expedition’s worth of biodiversity. Heading out at 5.30am on bird surveys was made more than worthwhile with groups of colobus seemingly in every tree above. With the onset of the dry season, the leaves are falling and we were treated to clear views of colobus crashing through the branches and Syke’s monkeys scampering below.

The bird surveys delivered a hatrick of hornbills - crowned, silvery-cheeked and trumpeter. Elephant shrews were in evidence every day, hurtling over the leaf litter as were the small suni antelope. The night walk provided everyone with a clear view of a suni as it stood in our torchlight for a minute before disappearing in to the bush and bush babies too, their bright orange reflective eyes giving them away. However the most exciting ‘cameo’ of the week was a little chap that we hadn’t recorded since our first sighting nearly three years ago… an impressively cryptic species in the dry leaf litter, it seems remarkable that we should see it at all, and very satisfying to have a short-tailed (or bearded) pygmy chameleon make a reappearance on our casual observations database.

However, it seems that we didn’t need to go to all the effort of 5.30am departures and hot sweaty treks to the furthest reaches of our transects to enjoy Shimoni’s rich wildlife… we didn’t even need to leave the kitchen. Having quietly cursed rats for leaving half chewed bananas on the kitchen floor, I was proven wrong when two brown bundles of fur climbed through the window. The short-eared bush babies have returned every night since, and I can happily report that mangoes make for a suitable alternative to bananas for our uninvited dinner guests. And just when we thought our forest week was over, and we could relax with a cold beer at Smugglers, the biggest surprise of them all dropped by… a bush pig behind the bar!