Camping among the baobabs and baboons
Today marks the final count down. In exactly a month from now (to the hour actually) I'll be boarding a plane and starting my final journey... home.
It hit me today as we were trampling through the forest. I was holding the casual observations clip board, where we scribe all birds, monkeys, lizards and snakes we see as we are out and about. I saw the date at the top of the page and yelped. One month and this chapter of my life comes to an end. It was a sobering moment.
But within seconds I had forgotten, as I stood peering through my binoculars at a woodpecker I'd spotted (a Cardinal Woodpecker, less common in these parts- queue high five!).
This last week has been great. The "Forest Fairies" united to complete a hard transect in the East Shimoni forest, meandering through the rough vegetation accessing canopy. Another day we spent hacking back vegetation, marking a different transect anew. All in all a week of monkeys, bird spotting and forest fun.
And we went camping. Last Wednesday we headed to the forest at sunset. Dusk enveloped us as we set up our mosquito nets and sleeping bags. We ate a pre-cooked dinner by the campfire, listening to scary Kenyan tales of giants and forests. Tegan and I fell asleep, protected from the forest bugs and mosquitoes by a thin layer of mosquito net and woke to the chirp of birds and soft sunshine as it penetrated the trees to warm our faces. It was magical, to wake completely surrounded by nature, on the soft red earth hugged by the smells and sounds of the forest.
Meanwhile, my enthusiasm for birds and photography have been put to the test as Lucy, the lovely British forest coordinator, asked me to help create a database of photos of shore birds. And like all jobs, I've taken it very seriously. Today a group of us wandered down to the shelf, which is essentially a coral ledge that sits just above the crashing waves at low tide. At high tide it is inundated as fish and crab thrive in the sponges and sea grass. It fringes mangroves, buffering it from the harsh turbulent seas on the edge of the peninsula. Its beautiful. We arrived as the tide was coming in, the sky was blue and the horizon was lined with huge soft looking cumulonimbus clouds.
We waded out, stepping delicately over sea grass and dodging urchins. I pointed my camera here and there as little sandpipers fluttered this way and that. Dimorphic egrets stalked fish as yellow billed storks cut across the sky. I was in my element, so much to learn, so much to photograph.
On the way home we spotted more Anglo Black and White Colobus monkeys, counting them as they cumbersomely navigate through the trees. 2, 3 no 7! We shout as the flashes of black and white disappear into the forest green. I have a new fascination and appreciation for their numbers. At the beginning of this week Tegan and I were enlisted to be data monkeys. For a day we went through 6 years of Primate Community data. This is the data we collect every time we see a group of colobus monkeys about the make up of the group: the number of males, females, adults, juveniles, etc.
Zeno, the brainy Dutch base manager, needs to send International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) detailed, accurate numbers of the colobus here in the Shimoni forest. IUCN is seen as the most "comprehensive, objective global approach for evualating the conservation status of plant and animal species." (http://www.iucnredlist.org/about/red-list-overview) The colobus monkey in this area has only recently been rediscovered as a separate species, endemic to these coastal forests, and a new status needs to be declared on exactly how endangered it is.
And Tegan and I helped crunch data so Zeno could put the final numbers together. As we sat in the GVI cottage staring at the data it became scarily clear to me how much this forest is suffering. In the 2007/08 political unrest here in Kenya the forest suffered hugely, and upon investigation this is common worldwide. Political unrest leads to forest degradation, and vice versa: deforestation leads to political unrest, a scary positive feedback loop. And since then, despite the political calm and recovery of tourism, the forest is still being pillaged, as if the unrest set in motion a trend that cannot be stopped.
I found out the road I so happily run on each morning didn't exist 4 years ago. Its hard to imagine that was all dense forest, home to monkeys and suni, where you could only run if you was a squirrel or skink.
And so my time in the forest is filled with emotional highs and lows. Today I looked at the date and realised my time among the baobabs is limited, and yesterday I looked at a spreadsheet and realised the time of the baobabs is limited. But in the same day I'll spot a rare bird, or I'll identify a full, healthy troop of colobus monkeys.
I guess its like everything else I've learnt this year: the world is not black and white (like the Anglo Black and White Colobus), but many, many shades of grey, (like the Southern Banded Snake-Eagle- which I photographed on my first day here, its "Near Threatened" on the IUCN redlist, which is polite way of saying "its pretty screwed, but not as screwed as the panda").
It hit me today as we were trampling through the forest. I was holding the casual observations clip board, where we scribe all birds, monkeys, lizards and snakes we see as we are out and about. I saw the date at the top of the page and yelped. One month and this chapter of my life comes to an end. It was a sobering moment.
But within seconds I had forgotten, as I stood peering through my binoculars at a woodpecker I'd spotted (a Cardinal Woodpecker, less common in these parts- queue high five!).
This last week has been great. The "Forest Fairies" united to complete a hard transect in the East Shimoni forest, meandering through the rough vegetation accessing canopy. Another day we spent hacking back vegetation, marking a different transect anew. All in all a week of monkeys, bird spotting and forest fun.
And we went camping. Last Wednesday we headed to the forest at sunset. Dusk enveloped us as we set up our mosquito nets and sleeping bags. We ate a pre-cooked dinner by the campfire, listening to scary Kenyan tales of giants and forests. Tegan and I fell asleep, protected from the forest bugs and mosquitoes by a thin layer of mosquito net and woke to the chirp of birds and soft sunshine as it penetrated the trees to warm our faces. It was magical, to wake completely surrounded by nature, on the soft red earth hugged by the smells and sounds of the forest.
Meanwhile, my enthusiasm for birds and photography have been put to the test as Lucy, the lovely British forest coordinator, asked me to help create a database of photos of shore birds. And like all jobs, I've taken it very seriously. Today a group of us wandered down to the shelf, which is essentially a coral ledge that sits just above the crashing waves at low tide. At high tide it is inundated as fish and crab thrive in the sponges and sea grass. It fringes mangroves, buffering it from the harsh turbulent seas on the edge of the peninsula. Its beautiful. We arrived as the tide was coming in, the sky was blue and the horizon was lined with huge soft looking cumulonimbus clouds.
We waded out, stepping delicately over sea grass and dodging urchins. I pointed my camera here and there as little sandpipers fluttered this way and that. Dimorphic egrets stalked fish as yellow billed storks cut across the sky. I was in my element, so much to learn, so much to photograph.
On the way home we spotted more Anglo Black and White Colobus monkeys, counting them as they cumbersomely navigate through the trees. 2, 3 no 7! We shout as the flashes of black and white disappear into the forest green. I have a new fascination and appreciation for their numbers. At the beginning of this week Tegan and I were enlisted to be data monkeys. For a day we went through 6 years of Primate Community data. This is the data we collect every time we see a group of colobus monkeys about the make up of the group: the number of males, females, adults, juveniles, etc.
Zeno, the brainy Dutch base manager, needs to send International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) detailed, accurate numbers of the colobus here in the Shimoni forest. IUCN is seen as the most "comprehensive, objective global approach for evualating the conservation status of plant and animal species." (http://www.iucnredlist.org/about/red-list-overview) The colobus monkey in this area has only recently been rediscovered as a separate species, endemic to these coastal forests, and a new status needs to be declared on exactly how endangered it is.
And Tegan and I helped crunch data so Zeno could put the final numbers together. As we sat in the GVI cottage staring at the data it became scarily clear to me how much this forest is suffering. In the 2007/08 political unrest here in Kenya the forest suffered hugely, and upon investigation this is common worldwide. Political unrest leads to forest degradation, and vice versa: deforestation leads to political unrest, a scary positive feedback loop. And since then, despite the political calm and recovery of tourism, the forest is still being pillaged, as if the unrest set in motion a trend that cannot be stopped.
I found out the road I so happily run on each morning didn't exist 4 years ago. Its hard to imagine that was all dense forest, home to monkeys and suni, where you could only run if you was a squirrel or skink.
And so my time in the forest is filled with emotional highs and lows. Today I looked at the date and realised my time among the baobabs is limited, and yesterday I looked at a spreadsheet and realised the time of the baobabs is limited. But in the same day I'll spot a rare bird, or I'll identify a full, healthy troop of colobus monkeys.
I guess its like everything else I've learnt this year: the world is not black and white (like the Anglo Black and White Colobus), but many, many shades of grey, (like the Southern Banded Snake-Eagle- which I photographed on my first day here, its "Near Threatened" on the IUCN redlist, which is polite way of saying "its pretty screwed, but not as screwed as the panda").
(This is the photo I took of it, isn't it beautiful! Note the four black lines on the tail feathers, a distinctive feature of the Southern Banded Snake-Eagle)
Many delicate and intricate shades of grey...
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