Camera Trap Fun

On Saturday I picked up my first round of camera trap photos. I haven't gone through them all yet (already behind), but I've already got a few good ones:

Typical curious tommy photo

The first time I've gotten a giraffe face close up. Usually I just get knees.

A successful photobomb by Jennifer

While moving traps around, I disturbed this frog that had made its home in one of the steel casings. Safe place, I guess, until I come and mess it up.


I also caught this hyena taking a photo of himself:


Unfortunately, he is not as good as Jennifer at taking photos of himself, and the camera only caught the very side of him. Still, it was cool to see an animal interacting with the camera first hand.

I'll be posting more photos here of course, but check out this link for more camera trap photos and this link for more regular photos between blog posts.

Movin' on up!

New room

No more tent! On Monday I moved into a room in the main building. Usually I prefer the rooms in the bandas because of their superior temperature modulation and better internet and phone reception, but I am not in a position to be picky. Also, I have far too much stuff to fit in a small banda room and the large banda rooms (where I have spent most of my time) have to be available for couples. So I actually could have moved into my usual banda, but would probably have had to move out in a couple weeks. Moving took a long time, so I would like to do that as few times as possible. Plus, I found a spot where I get internet reception, so I don't have to go outside to send e-mail or update my blog.

The new management put down comforters on all the beds (except the temporary one in my tent), and while I think there are probably more urgent problems (leaking roofs) that should have been addressed first, I have to admit the comforter is very nice.

Jennifer (a second-year student in my lab who works on cattle-wildlife interactions) and Sophie (an undergraduate volunteering for Kim) left yesterday. We had a goat roast this weekend in their honor. We did everything from start to finish, starting with picking and catching our goat from the herd to picking the meat out of our teeth. It was a nice party, although I did not take the loss of sleeping time well, especially on top of the typically poor nights of sleep I got in the tent. I got out to the field reasonably early on Sunday morning, but faded fast. Apologies to my family for being a near zombie on the phone when you called Sunday night.

Nicole in hot pursuit of dinner

We didn't end up buying this goat, but a nice group shot of Nicole, Sophie, Kim & Jennifer

The student group that was here when I arrived left on Saturday morning, but yesterday an Earthwatch group took their place. This group is more than half Chinese, and apparently there are several extremely prominent (wealthy) members of Chinese society in our midst. The leader is the CEO of the Chinese version of North Face, so he brought full outfits for everyone in Earthwatch, including pants, matching shirts, headlamps, and nice windbreakers. I have noticed he has some extra jackets, so I am hoping to luck into one. My charm: turned on.

The Chinese have some very interesting viewpoints. They are thoroughly impressed that I go to Princeton (the university of Albert Einstein, as they have reminded me multiple times). They were also shocked to hear that I have a boyfriend. Apparently, in China, "Girl PhD, no chance for boyfriend." Apparently men without PhDs do not want PhD girlfriends to show them up. Men that do have PhDs are obviously very smart and important, so they can get any girl they want. So why would they want to have a PhD girlfriend when they could have a pretty girlfriend? My attempts to point out that "pretty" and "PhD" are not mutually exclusive were met with the same sort of response that I would expect if I had said something dubious about giant squid: "Sure, I hear they exist, but have you ever actually seen one?" Ahem! Their charm: not as turned on.

Anyway, research has started in earnest, but things are going a bit slowly due to car trouble, moving rooms, the glutting of the research center with so many people, etc. I think things should level out this week though, and I am looking forward to getting a routine going.

Back in Kenya

After a long trip by way of Atlanta, Amsterdam, Nairobi and Mpala, I am back at Ol Pejeta. Things are a bit crowded at the research center, so for the time being I am living in a tent set up next to the permanent buildings. It's spacious, which is nice, but it gets pretty chilly at night and is pretty dark even in the middle of the day. Obviously no electricity, so I have been charging my electronics and dozens of camera trap batteries in other researchers' rooms. I will hopefully only be in the tent until Friday when the current student group leaves.

The research center has undergone a facelift under new management. New coat of paint, an expanded kitchen and staff dining room tacked on the end. There is also a new house built by Max Planck for researchers coming to work on the chimps. There have been other changes with the new management, but I won't get into those.

Enough about the research center, on to the animals. The game viewing has been mind-bogglingly good since I got here. In six days, I have had four lion sightings, five cheetah sightings, and a leopard sighting (!!). Other sightings of note include a two-week old white rhino, a newborn baby zebra that could barely walk, and many exciting birds, including my first long-crested eagle.

The leopard sighting was the coolest so far, simply because I never see leopards. The two sightings I've had have both been seconds long, just long enough to register, "Hey, that was a leopard". This one was different: the leopard was camped out in a tree right by the road. The lighting was not so great, so my photos right now look like vaguely leopard-shaped blobs among branches, but rest assured they will be up after some adjustments. I watched the leopard for a long time while he picked the perfect spot in the tree and left once he settled in for a morning nap.

Fieldwork-wise, things are getting going. I have all my camera traps out now after a few delays. First I had to get the equipment back in working order, which involved filing down the poles and the pole attachments on the camera casings. Then yesterday I had a leopard-related delay and then lost steering on my car. Getting the steering fixed didn't take nearly as long as I feared, but still kept me from putting all the traps out. I finished up today so tomorrow I am ready to start observations.

I am having some technical difficulties with uploading photos to the blog, so please check out some photos here,