Further batty goings on in Malawi!

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My third week with African Bat Conservation started pretty sedately with Monday mostly spent updating my blog, sorting photos, identifying butterflies from an ID book discovered in the office & doing a draft of my article for the monthly newsletter. I also spent some time identifying the butterflies I had seen around camp. That evening we returned to one of the private gardens in an attempt to catch more dark-winged lesser house bats (Scotoecus hirundo) to include in Lena’s project. Sadly we didn’t get quite as many as last time with only five being caught in the mist nets, but this was enough for Lena to include. We also caught 3 Epomophorus labiatus fruit bats & a 3 yellow-bellied house bats (Scotophilus dinganii), the latter of which we released at the nets. I was excited as I got to remove my first fruit bat from a mist net!

Tuesday started with meetings to check everything was on track then Tom ran a training session on roost inspections. Before lunch we went over the theory & after lunch we went to visit a couple of known roosts on site. The first we were looking only at external features – potential access points, used access points with staining, droppings, smells & social calls. The second was the Hipposideros roost we had trapped at previously – the bats roost in some old tunnels when we quietly entered using red torches to minimise disturbance. It was amazing to see stand and watch the flying so accurately in the dark. We were joined during most of the training by Boyce – a local dog who’s friends with Mara (our camp dog).

That evening we had planned to catch more dark-winged lesser house bats (Scotoecus hirundo) for Lena’s project, but when we got to the house to set up it started raining. So after some good discussions with the owner we headed back home & I played a few rounds of bao with Dom & Remi.

Wednesday started with the team meeting after which we headed into the city for lunch at Flavours. Delicious food for good prices all made fresh that morning. I spent the afternoon patching up one of the trap bags and luckily just finished in time to load up the cars for the evening trapping session. We returned to the Hipposideros roost to gather more information on the bats there, especially the orange ones which we think may be H. ruber, although H.caffer can be orangey their wing morphology looks distinctly different. We set up the harp traps as before and in spite of many bats avoiding or flying straight through the trap we caught 20 Hipposideros, only one of which had been caught during the previous session (all individuals caught had been fur-clipped so we could identify them). We also caught another Rhinolophus fumigatus there.

The box check on Thursday got postponed so I spent most of the day finishing off my article for the ABC newsletter & working on some interpretation updates. That evening Lena & I joined the carnivore team (Brennan & Patrick) radio-tracking a female side-striped jackal. Whilst we got very, very close to her we failed to see her as the vegetation was too tall. We did see lots of bush-babies though – their eyes reflected orange in our torch lights making it seem like we were surrounded by Jawas!

Friday morning was the weekly straw-coloured fruit bats Eidolon helvum count; the numbers were greatly reduced from last week with fewer than 300 bats being present still. It seems likely they’ll have moved on completely by next week. They are fascinating – the Eidolon migration across Africa, following the rains & the ripening fruits, is the largest mammal migration with up to ten million bats coming together in Zambia’s Kasanka National Park each year!

On our way back we detoured to several places to put up the new ABC posters, with a brief stop for Mandazi too! Unfortunately we got back too late for me & Remi to watch how Esther cooked her nsema, but hopefully she can teach us next time. It was my turn to cook the evening meal so I spent my afternoon slaving away in the hot kitchen finishing just in time to head out for a roost inspection followed by an emergence survey at a different house which was luckily just around the corner. There were two adorable dogs here called Lumos & Nox - Such great names!

Angelena, Tom, Remi & I were up early on Saturday morning to go & set up a stand at the Farmer’s Market at Woodlands. Esther joined us there & it was a really productive morning where we got to talk to lots of people about how cool bats are and made some really good contacts for ABC. I managed to be good & not buy anything except food there – although I nearly bought a beautiful chichenje skirt, but it was too small for me!

When we got back I went straight into cooking lunch and was very grateful That I had prepped all the veggies the night before! As Lena is going tomorrow we spent the afternoon doing a photo exchange then Lena, Dom, Patrick, Remi & I went for sundowners* - although we had to leave before the sun actually set as we had to get Angelena & Tom before heading out for pizza night!

Although the food took ages (mostly because they only had one pizza oven!) it as delicious! The long day, heat & loud music at the pizza place combined to give me the start of a headache so I opted for an early night once we got back to camp instead of joining the others for cocktails.

Sunday morning Lena & I went for a decent walk spending two & half hours wandering the tracks around Kumbali. We saw lots of cool wildlife including Speke's hinge-back tortoise tortoise, a dead puff adder, cool orthoptera, an ant highway, lots of butterflies, a yellow & back bishop bird, hornbills, herons, and lots of other birds. We also passed the cultural village – built back when Kumbali was open to the public. As it was getting very hot we then looped back round to the stables & home. After second breakfast(!) I had a shower & chilled until it was time for us to go out for an emergence survey then on to Jazz Night! Returning in time for Lena to get her taxi to the airport for her overnight flight.

Thanks again to Remi for some of the photos!



(*drinks whilst watching the sun set at a beautiful local spot)

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