Back to the jungle

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Hello. Well since my last entry I am now fully back to jungle life. For the first few days of my return the friaje continued and it was extremely cold, but that did have its upsides. Alex the baby howler monkey got a cold, and the best way to keep him warm was to have him snuggled up your jumper. So I spent a lot of time with a baby howler monkey up my top. He is very cute and snuggly, but unfortunately he is now getting a bit clingy with humans, so no more cuddling is allowed.

Hmm... I´m trying to think is there is any exciting news from the past few weeks... Mostly it has been fairly quiet however, with all the usual activities.

One thing that is new is mist netting. This is a project that I think have been running at Taricaya for about two years now. It involves stringing up a very fine net between poles in a small section of cleared forest and then waiting for birds to fly into it and get tangled. You check every hour or so to see what´s there. When they have done this in the past, they have put small rings onto the legs of the birds so that they would be able to identify them in the future. The point of this time was to try and recapture these birds to give us an idea of the way in which they move around the reserve.

I got to do mist netting on Thursday. This involved a very early start - we left at 5.30. After setting up the mist nets we went back to the tent that would be our camp for the day. In between checking the nets we sat in the tent. Most of the others slept... I entertained myself by reading and drawing pretty pictures in my notebook. We found one bird in our first sweep - a chestnut tailed antbird (small and brown). In fact we had fairly poor luck througout the day, finding only five bids in total. We did, however, find a violaceous quail dove (a brown and white bird with an iridescent sheen on its feathers) which we have never found before at Taricaya and can now add to our species list. (Stuart is hoping that in a few years time we will break the world record for the most species of bird found in one area).

Also recently new is "monkey training". We have a group of five spider monkeys at Taricaya, and there is currently a French university student studying their behaviour. So for the last few weeks she has been giving them little tests every day. One of these involved putting a tarantula in a cage with some fruit to see how the monkeys reacted. On the morning that I did monkey training, only one monkey dared to each in to get the fruit. A few of the others tried to steal her fruit, but wouldn´t go near the cage itself. Another test involved dangling containers of fruit with various sized holes around the cage, some of which it was possible to get the fruit out of and some of which it wasn´t . Atilla, the same monkey as previously, eventually worked out that if she broke the containers, she would be able to get all the fruit. She is a very clever monkey.

The most exciting other activity that I did this week was clearing animal enclosures, which is evidence of a rather slow week. The monkeys were cute and jumped all over me whilst we cleaned. The blue and yellow macaws were not so cute... they chewed the end off my rake, tried to get the keys out of the door, and at every possible moment tried to escape... they also have a very intimidating stare. Eventually I had to stand there waving brazil nuts at them to keep them away from the door whilst my partner shoveled sawdust out of the cage. I think we made a rather bad impression on the tourists who were passing through at the time...

On friday evening, Eugenio, one of the staff, produced some hiuto fruits. It was finally our turn to get everyone with the same practical joke that was played on us when we arrived. There were only five volunteers remaining who knew the secret of the huito fruit, so we managed to get everyone else. It´s a natural insect repellent that lasts for a few days, and it´s very rare, we told them. And then covered them in the stuff. We placed bets on what time the first scream would come in the morning. My bet was 6.20, but in fact it came at 5.45, when one of the girls woke up to find that her face was almost completely blue. We watched everyone file into the breakfast room with glee, with various patterns to varying degrees all over their legs, arms, faces, and other parts of their bodies. Mwahahaha. I can´t say I felt much guilt, after wondering around with blue facial hair for a number of days.

The sun is back - yay! So I have spent the weekend sunbathing and eating ice cream.

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Comments

[Martina]

Hello
Great to hear your news. Told Serena that you'd had a monkey up your jumper at breakfast today and she looked at me as if I (as opposed to you) was mad. Can't believe what you're getting up to. Then I suddenly remembered that you wanted to be a vet at one point and loved animals - other than those poor pet guinea pigs. We're all well. Daddy retired on 30 April. Then flew to Qatar on 1 May for the week. Spent the next week in Bangkok and the followingone in Qatar again. Worse than when he was working. He got so fed up with the Qataris that he told them he couldn't commit to them any longer. He hadn't heard a thing until this morning. Chaotic message that he thinks means that he's off to Doha tomorrow. They really are the limit! Have spent the last few weekends at Pigeon. Serena seems to love swimming as much as you did. Hugh much lazier in the pool. Not keen on kicking or using his arms! Victoria Wyer is spending the week at Herbert Smith this week. Much love Martina x