About 10 days ago I finally returned to baboon work and it
has been even better than expected!
The babs were incredibly nice on my first day out. Kate, Leah and I went out with Enkai, the smaller of our focus troops. Recently, Enkai has been mixing and ranging with the larger Pumphouse troop, but were kind enough to keep things simple and leave them be that day. Here are some of the photos I got while reacquainting myself with my furry family:
As is it is the super dry season, the baboons have also been traveling quite far from their sleeping sites to find quantities and diversity in foods that are no longer available close to home. Again, I was lucky, because that day they settled for focusing on fresh opuntia fruit and opuntia seeds that they harvested from dry elephant dung:
I had a fantastic first day out, I even recognized about half of the baboons without having to check in with the experts (Kate, Leah, and Jeremiah the Enkai Observer).
The next few field days were spent with the Pumphouse Gang (and Enkai, because by that time the babs were apparently done treating me with kid gloves). As Kate went off on an epic vacation with her fam, Leah and I were on our own for a while. Almost each day started with a nice climb up the MMR ridge rocks followed by decent hikes after the babs. Again, I was pleasantly surprised that I recognized most of my babs :)
The big excitement for the day was that a subadult female caught what I think was a Crested Francolin (a little quail-like bird). She held out through about 10 minutes of chasing and harassment by 2 adult males before dropping the feast into her pursuers hands.
The next few field days were spent with the Pumphouse Gang (and Enkai, because by that time the babs were apparently done treating me with kid gloves). As Kate went off on an epic vacation with her fam, Leah and I were on our own for a while. Almost each day started with a nice climb up the MMR ridge rocks followed by decent hikes after the babs. Again, I was pleasantly surprised that I recognized most of my babs :)
Next up was a visit to OG's troop, which is the product of a Pumphouse fission in 2013. It was really neat to go out and see these sisters, brothers, and cousins of our troops - the family resemblances were everywhere we looked! On top of that, OG's troop has been ranging far to the north away from the main road and the landscape is spectacular:
We had fantastic guides in both James and Samuel:
It was fantastic to get back on my field feet, I'm so excited to be back!!
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