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Published: April 26th 2008
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Inside Turkana Boma
In essence, a field of dung where I've spent about 15 hours trying to trap female Greater Blue-eared Glossy Starlings the past two days. Mike Rowe may not be impressed, but my job has been plenty dirty the past couple days. Allow me to elaborate, starting with a little background detail:
The second phase of the Brain Hormone Project is proving a bit more difficult than anticipated. So far, in almost three weeks, we’ve only managed to catch five adult female starlings - four Superbs, and one Greater Blue-eared Glossy (hereafter simply referred to as "Glossy"). Ideally, Dustin would like us to get six of each within a three- or four-week timeframe. Five specimens is okay, four is doable, and three is probably not going to cut it. So it’s not looking good - we’re down to the last week of this phase, and need to get, at a bare minimum, three more Glossy Starlings. What happens if we don’t? Well, I’m not exactly sure . . . although it seems to me that all the birds I’ve killed so far will have been for naught. This study depends on an adequate number of samples from each of three phases and if we don’t get the samples we need, then the study is a failure and the birds have been killed in vain. If
Rhinoceros dung beetle sp.
Playing in dung in Africa means I'm kept company by a number of dung beetles. This one is particularly awesome. worse comes to worse and we don’t get the birds we need, I can only hope that the samples from the specimens we’ve collected can be used as data for something, even if it’s not the original study Dustin had planned.
Why is it so much more difficult this time around? Blame it on the rains . . . as I mentioned a couple entries ago, there has been an explosion in the abundance of insects in synchrony with the onset of the long rains. Apparently, insects are a far superior and more favorable food source than papaya or
ugali, rendering the string-pull traps I used for the first phase all but completely useless. So, we’ve been relegated to using only mistnets, which is fine for Superb Starlings since they are breeding and building nests, and are therefore easy to target. The Glossies, on the other hand, won’t be breeding for a few more weeks and are thus much more difficult to seek out. Subsequently, it’s come down to making an educated guess as to the best placement of a mistnet to intercept Glossy traffic.
The rains, however, have been quite inconsistent and, until yesterday, we hadn’t felt
Dead dung beetle
The biggest dung beetle we found . . . unfortunately, dead a drop in at least a week. This has meant the profusion of insects has dwindled enough in recent days for the string-pull traps to again be somewhat effective (with
ugali as bait). It has also meant that birds are again flocking to bomas to search for insects, and Wilson and Godfrey recently discovered a couple dozen Glossies frequenting the nearby Turkana Boma (situated near Lookout Rock, about a 5-minute drive from the research center). Thinking that this was my big break, I’ve spent the last two days sitting in the middle of the boma, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the intolerable and relentless flies attracted by the hundreds of cow patties that have, throughout the years, formed one gigantic turd. Except for the fresh dung, this isn’t so bad (dry dung is pretty much just dirt, really), though my shoes are a mess. The six-legged terrorists, on the other hand, are beyond being a nuisance, gamboling on every inch of exposed skin. My face, in particular, seems to be a favored meeting place for these hell-borne vermin, and I’m constantly waving my hands about my head like an asylum escapee in fruitless attempts to drive them away.
In other
Shiny green . . .
Some dung beetles are very dull in hue, others are strikingly beautiful . . . considering their lifestyle, anyway words, my desperation to catch birds has reached new heights: I’ve been literally sitting in cow shit, trying to keep my sanity while battling the miniature winged spawn of Satan, for the past two days . . . without success. We’ve caught plenty of starlings, just no adult females. Now the conundrum is: do I stay and hope there are females to catch in and around the boma, or look elsewhere? Unfortunately, we just don’t have the resources and equipment to spread ourselves out and try at multiple sites simultaneously. While there are birds to be caught at Turkana Boma, it seems like the ones we want simply aren’t around, so I think we’ll end up trying elsewhere for the next few days. The flies definitely helped in making that decision.
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Robyn
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I am so enjoying all your stories and photos!! 9 weeks and i escape city life until september and can hopefully share some of my own stories of empty coastlines and mountain peaks and dusty sunsets... All the best with the rest of your research and i will see you guys in Kruger, insh'allah!