Month: January 2019

At dinner Ciara introduced me to a woman who was doing research at Mpala through a grant at the University of Florida on a pretty little bird called a Vitelline Masked Weaver. Her name is Stephanie Wheeler and she has a smile that can light up a room. I was delighted when she asked me to watch her doing data collection and banding the next morning after breakfast. I promised to do my best to get photographs of her doing her research. As you might have guessed from looking at this website, I like to take pictures of birds and hope to continue to go bird watching with my former colleagues, Nolan, Mark, and Kurt, back in the eastern U.S., soon after I return from this adventure in a few months. 

The birds Stephanie was working with had the convenient habit of finding their way into the temporary storage place for food waste. This space was covered and surrounded by wire mesh that was intended to keep the monkeys out. The birds could make their way into the enclosure through a small space above the door. Stephanie learned to rush the enclosure and get inside with a butterfly net, quickly stuffing the space above the door with cloth so the birds could not escape; then she could take her time and catch only the birds she needed, as they flew back and forth within the makeshift cage. The skill with which she caught and handled the birds was impressive. She was able to catch, in this manner, dozens of birds and was able to take her time with the measurements and banding without unduly stressing what she called “her birds. ” Nearly every bird she caught that day was a repeat capture, and like many of the different species of birds around Mpala they had unique colored bands around their legs, so she could identify them from a distance without having to capture them. When she did catch a bird for the first time, Stephanie would collect a tiny bit of blood from the wing so that she could have genetic testing done for her research. 

Yes the bird is upside-down but the photo is not. Even though Stephanie was an expert at handling these guys, they never seemed to appreciate how gentle she was with them. Every chance they got they would give her a bite, sometimes to the point of drawing blood. It had to hurt.

Thank you Stephanie for sharing time with me. And those of you who are interested can see the pictures by clicking here.

After settling into my room, which had a great view from the porch and was big and comfortable, I went up to the building where everyone met for lunch.  I was welcomed by a group of Harvard Entomology postgraduate students and I had a seat. One of my favorite classes in college was entomology and Scott’s duties deal with helping manage a project where ants are an important part of the system. What luck! I was about to get an education. It could be a challenge keeping up with the best and the brightest. Fortunately for me, they were among the kindest too.

I sat across from Richard Childers, a student three years into his doctoral work on the ants that live on the Whistling Thorn Acacia. He is working in Naomi Pierce’s lab and I was fortunate to meet her and her artist friend, Isabella Kirkland. As I mentioned in my last post, Mpala is a little slice of heaven and getting to meet and speak with these people was a joy. Evan, Clayton, and Anoni were also students working with Dr. Pierce and I was invited to tag along to take photographs as they went to a potential study site within the boundaries of Mpala. The picture above is of Anoni just after she collected her first queen within a specialized structure that the acacia treas make to host the ants.

There are four native species of ants that live in the hollow structures called domatia that the trees produce to allow the ants to colonize and in return protect the tree from being eaten by creatures as big as the African Elephant. If a branch is disturbed, the ants quickly scurry to the disturbance and begin biting whatever they can and if it is the inside of an elephant’s trunk, or a giraffe’s tongue the big critters are discouraged from eating the tree. In biology, this kind of relationship is a type of symbiosis called mutualism. So by providing a place for the tiny ants to live, the Whistling Thorn Acacia tree benefits because some of the animals that might otherwise eat it are driven away.

However, there is another creature that is starting to cause major problems in this ecosystem. An ant, smaller than all four of the native species and not from Kenya, called the big-headed ant (BHA) has started to invade the trees and drive out the protector species. BHA form super-colonies and these ants are not giving anything to the plants in return. This invasive species, may eventually cause the downfall of the savanna ecosystem by upsetting the delicate balance between the plants and the herbivores. This is one of problems that scientists at the conservancy down the road at Ol Pejita are currently studying.

For more pictures taken while at Mpala with Dr. Pierce’s group click here.

After a few days of catching up with emails and other business, my nephew Scott was able to set me up with a three-day visit to Mpala Research Centre, the place where he did his undergraduate thesis on termites while at Princeton. He still has connections because some of his friends he graduated with are currently working as Princeton-in-Africa Fellows and he is currently serving as a project manager at another site an hour or so away and he comes to visit when he has time. I will talk more about his duties at Ol Pejeta in a future post. 

The ride up to Mpala was made more pleasant because the local taxi driver that I was riding with was excited to tell me about his country when he heard it was my first visit to Kenya. I learned a lot as he told me what we were seeing all along the drive.  We saw all kinds of domestic animals and even a very large herd of camels. This is the dry season and the colors of the landscape were mostly in the range of dull brown, dull green, and golden yellow. The sky was bright blue and nearly free of clouds. As we approached the research station we saw plains zebras, a solo elephant, and a bunch of tiny antelope called dik-dik, and lots of beautiful birds. 

The first person I met was Ciara, one of the Princeton Fellows, who showed me to my room and along the way introduced me to Julius, who was one of the main people in charge of security. He was the first of many people I met that day who had nice things to say about Scott. This was part of what made me feel welcome, but there was a calmness about the place that made me feel like I had been introduced to a little slice of heaven. This was bound to be great.

To learn more about Mpala Research Centre, click on the link below.

http://www.mpala.org/

It was a great trip in Madagascar. Hope to travel with you and the rest of the Madagascar Frogging Adventure Group. Now it is on to Kenya for ten days

The coastal city of Toliara was our final destination of the trip. We stayed at a quirky hotel that was shaped like a cruise ship and just a few minutes’ walk from the beach. It was here that many in our group did their shopping for gifts to bring back home to loved ones. Some enjoyed the bargaining, but I was just walking the town for amusement. I have to travel light and I have many miles and quite a few countries to visit before I return home. I was looking forward to the fresh seafood that would be available. We went to a local beach restaurant outside of the main part of town and had a multi-course seafood feast where some of the food was so fresh it was still moving on our plates. 

The coastal vegetation around Toliara is adapted to a different climate that is much drier. The habitat is called the spiny forest and the plants are unique. We visited two locations where we saw some weird plants, but we also saw some new animals. Lizards, snakes, and even a frog made appearances.  

For photos of Toliara and the surrounding area click here

On the drive from Isalo to the west coast we passed through the sapphire mining town of Ilakaka; once a rather lawless and wild part of Madagascar, it has since calmed down. It still made for some colorful photo opportunities from the window of our bus. 

Next on the list was Zombitse-Vohibasia National Park which protects a fragment of dry forest that is popular with birders because of several locally endemic species, some of which we saw. In the park we also saw Standing’s day gecko, Phelsuma standingi. We saw an amazing little lemur (pictured above) that Devin said has only been photographed by a few people. What probably impressed him the most was a rare species of vine snake with a long nose.

This trip has delivered more than promised!

Check out the pictures here.

Isalo National Park is the most visited of Madagascar’s parks. The park protects the Isalo Massif, a long network of sandstone canyons that is a favorite of trekkers. Here we were able to see some beautiful scenery and, because of good fortune, we were able to get two people from the park to lead our group while we were there; the head of research for the park and a very knowledgeable local guide. We were told by Devin not to expect much in the way of amphibians because it had been very dry. So expecting to see Mantella expectata, a species which in some seasons has bright sky-blue legs, was likely unrealistic.

Scaphiophryne gottlebei, a slightly larger small frog was another on the list of unlikelies, and we set out first to find it in a large grotto that in times of rain, gets massive amounts of water dumped into it from above. The site itself was unusual and worth the short hike, even if we were not successful in finding our little frog buddy. On the way in we saw an endemic owl, which some in our group managed to photograph, but this time I was bringing up the rear, and the owl was spooked before I could get the right lens on the camera. The frog was there, inside one of the many small holes along the back wall. Without the head of research along, we probably would not have found it. He only found one (pictured above) and we took turns photographing it. The photo shoot took about an hour, and during that time no one else found another one. Lucky we were!

So now it was time to set out on the long uphill climb to where Mantella expectata might be found. We were all sweating profusely by the time we got to the first potential site, where there was a little stream of water coming down from the pinnacles above, forming many small pools. The little pools looked like a good place for a little frog to live, but the whole group did not find a single frog. We repeated the process two more times without success and we figured three strikes and we were out. I started photographing scenery and people. Our expert had one more place to look, and there too we had no luck…until Sean Betti started looking under rocks away from the stream. There it looked bone-dry, and the usual suspects—scorpions and geckos—were turning up. They were interesting, but not really what we were after. Then just as we were about to give up, Sean said, “I found one.”

For more pictures and a photo of the striking Mantella epectata click here. Try to see if you can find it. This specimen does not have sky-blue legs, but they are blue. The Frog Whisperer is holding it.

Anja Park was a short diversion on our way to Isalo National Park. It is a community-managed reserve protecting a small fragment of dry forest at the base of several large granite domes. Although I had seen ring-tailed lemurs that had been rescued at a park outside Antananarivo, the rest of the group had not.  Here they were habituated, but still wild, and free to roam as they pleased. We also saw snakes, and once again it was Sean Betti who captured it for all to see. We saw some of the smallest of chameleons as well as some of the largest. It was here that our veterinarian, Brad, noticed that one had a mouth infection and he did his best to help him out.

For more photographs of Anjo Park click here

Ranomafana National Park consists of over 100,000 beautiful acres of mid-rainforest. It is one of the most visited of the national parks in Madagascar. It is a magical place especially when you see the mist rising through the forest from the raging river in the valley. It is known for its lemurs, and we saw several species. This is one of the places where we were not allowed into the park at night so we did our night hike along the road. It was raining pretty much when we left so I left my good camera at the lodge for the first night hike and I opted out of the second night hike (which turned out to be a mistake because it was even more productive than the first), so I am hoping one of my companions will upload some photos that I can use. I did get some photos of lemurs that are posted in the photos of current adventures.

I am going to have to shorten some of my posts and hope that others will add some detail, because I am sitting in Kenya now trying to catch up.

For more Ranomafana pictures click here.

The photo has nothing to do with the next story, except maybe you can imagine a man contemplating his situation in life. It was taken at the Cowani Site and I will try to tie something together in my typical random thought way.

Stories don’t always have happy endings. Sometimes they start out looking like it is going to end in tragedy and things turn out OK. Take the time, many years ago, my future wife was riding to school on her bike, hurrying to get to an 8 a.m. class. A city bus began to pass her while at the same time they both hit a patch of icy road. Her bike slid out from under her and away from the bus. She went towards the bus, hit the ground; slid under the moving bus, behind the front wheels. The driver never saw what happened and continued on his way. She remembered everything like it was in slow motion, as the right rear tires passed within inches of her head; the left rear tires just missed her feet. The construction workers that saw it happen, rushed to help her expecting to find much worse. She picked herself up, took a few deep breaths, walked over to her bike, and found it to be in working order and continued to class. She called me after class (as I went to a different university), still obviously shaken. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I find my fingers shaking typing this as I recall the conversation. Life would have been different. Sometimes important things are a matter of inches or of seconds. 

Remember the early morning start time in the last post? Well I think a new family story and a new word phrase has been placed into use. You can say Whack whack whack, or the ice cream story, or the parrot fish story, and the appropriate family member will be embarrassed or the moral of the story will be conveyed without saying anything more at our family gatherings. It will go something like this, You Tenrecked it. The phrase will be used when you try to do something good and it comes out horrible. No happy ending here. 

Here is the story. Maybe by telling it first, and hiding it between much more serious events, I will avoid repeated embarrassment, but I doubt it. My nephew Scott (the only person on the tour who has not successfully bred exotic frogs, and more of a mammal enthusiast) and I were hurrying to the dining room of the lodge. He spotted a tiny little mammal scurrying around the foundation of the next bungalow. I could see that it was black and white and looked a little like a hedgehog. He said in an extremely excited whisper, “It’s a spiny tenrec.” (If you don’t know what one looks like, you will have to google it, because I didn’t take a picture.) It was about to make its way into the brush in an attempt to escape our notice. Scott, again in an excited whisper, said something like, “Don’t let it get to the bushes, I want to get a picture.” Well, in an attempt to comply, so that Scott could do his part to try2seeitall, I stepped in front of it with the same left foot that in a few hours would wind up in the rice paddy, and slipped. Since you know this is not going to be a happy story you can guess the rest. I tenrecked it. Both our eyes got big and we knew the potential this story had for future family gatherings. The guy who helped worms get across the sidewalk when he was a boy as the sun would come out and the guy on the tour who would be least likely to manipulate an animal to get a better photograph gets stuck with coining a new phrase.

On a much more serious note, Scott’s “day at the office” did not go well. He called me when I was working on this post in his apartment a few hours north of Nairobi (where we flew into a couple of days ago) to tell me that one of his bosses was in the hotel that is probably making national news back home as I am writing this today. He is alright, but not everyone was and the death toll topped 20 with details still emerging. He had to hide in a hotel closet for many hours and he is going back to the States as soon as he is able. I don’t want to give any more details than that, but if you are interested you can Google: The 2019 DusitD2 complex attack . As in life, when you travel, it’s not all good.