Back to baboons

We then had a great baboon group with both Vance and Clay joining us, it was nice to have some new folks after the four of us have been here since January. We collected a lot of data and had a lot of fun at the same time J

Research time:

 

Fun time:

And we weren't the only ones having fun:

Clay and I even managed to go on a date to a restaurant in Nanyuki: Trout tree. They have their own trout farm and the restaurant itself is in a tree. We ate delicious food being visited by black and white colobus monkeys and tree hyrax!

We also spent some quality time with our animals at camp. Clay quickly fell in love with miss Moo:

And our semi-habituated pet, Tortoisebert! Moo is quite competitive with her....

SORALO

Immediately after Clay arrived we went down to visit another site associated with the African Conservation Centre: South Rift Association Land Owners (or SORALO). The camp, La’alenok, is the home several conservation and community projects and also where Shirley’s son, Guy Western, is conducting his PhD research on lions. Paedar Brehony, a good friend of ours, is the coordinator of the Borderlands Conservation project aiming to protect areas that are key to the movements of wildlife – particularly elephants and lions (http://www.soralo.org/borderland-conservation/). Closer to Guy’s heart is his program focused on the lions in the area: Rebuilding the Pride. This program builds off of Guy’s own research on community ownership of the lions in order to protect them (http://www.soralo.org/rebuilding-pride/). Between them, Paedar and Guy showed us the ins and outs of the programs there. To learn more about all of the SORALO projects, visit www.soralo.org. It was a short trip, but we fit a lot in.

The facilities themselves are wonderful and, as you can see, the surrounding area is gorgeous! 

 

 

We instantly fell in love with their dogs – Monster and Trouble. 

 

The first morning there we accompanied Guy to see his lions. Before the crack of dawn we were loaded into the 4WD vehicle and heading out in search of any of his pride. With the help of Lily Maynard, a University of Florida graduate student, Guy used telemetry to locate his collared lions. 

On the way we saw bat-eared foxes, genets, gazelles, wildebeest and more, but it was too dark to take any photos. Then we found what we were looking for: lions! They were so relaxed, and sometimes curious, when we got near. We didn’t get to spend too much time with the big cats, they so easily disappear into long grasses without a trace. Nonetheless, it was a awesome experience and seeing them with a lion researcher just can’t be beat.

 

Guy had noticed (in his GPS data) that one of his collared lions stayed in one place for an extended period of time. So we went to see if it was a kill site. We did find a carcass, a cow. One of the things the SORALO lion project does is help to decrease human-lion conflict, so it would have been bad news if a lion had taken this cow. After some investigation, Guy was relieved to find out that it was a sick cow that had died while grazing and left for the wildlife to scavenge.

The next morning we went out to Walk with Baboons – the same program we have up at Twala Women’s Cultural Village.  Here tourists go out with Cisco, the SORALO baboon guide, to learn a little about their friendly neighborhood baboons. These baboons are the same species as we have up in Laikipia, but the area is so different it was neat to see how versatile they can be. The SORALO baboons have the lovely river to hang about, but that wonderful resource naturally leads to lots of competition. There are troops packed up and down the river from the study troop, leading to lots of intertroop encounters and amazing leopard alarm calls that run from troop to troop at night.

On the way home we stopped to take some photos of the bizarre landscape that is Lake Magadi – a salt lake that produces salt that is shipped all over Kenya. The flamingos didn't seem to mind though.

Finally....an Update!

So much has happened since I last posted, apologies for the long break, here’s an attempt at catching up:

Illness

We all (Megan, Sam, Laura, and I) had a run in with my good old friends giardia and amoebas. And I'm the only lucky one to also have had bilharzia. Tons of fun! It took us a while to get back into working condition, but after several trips to doctors and plenty of different meds we are in the clear (mostly, at least).

Vance

Vance Reeds, a CABS graduate student, came out for a 6 week field season. He was a great addition to our team, keeping us laughing throughout our sicknesses (even if we were not up for too much fun at the time). Vance’s baboon interests focus on males (at least right now), so he complements what I’m focusing on. He is planning on coming back for about a year of fieldwork beginning sometime next year, we can’t wait to have him back!

Does he look like a natural field biologist, or what?

Clay

My sweetheart came out for a visit, after almost 13 months apart it was great to see him (and about darn time)! We had a great visit and he got back into primate work for the first time since we left the gelada field site in 2010. Clay still had all his primate skills and fell seamlessly into helping out on the project. Of course, his camera was never far away and he took many gorgeous photos here at camp and on vacation. Speaking of which….

Our first time together in over a year, couldn't be happier!

Vacation!!

Megan Cole’s parents and my family came out about 3 weeks after Clay got here for what turned out to be an epic Kenya vacation. We had a blast the whole 3 weeks, thanks to the planning guidance of Shirley! It was great to see our families and more of Kenya at the same time!

So, I’m going to post things separately for a lot of these updates, mostly to space out the pictures. I apologize for posting so much all at once, I'll try to get through it all, but we'll see!