I’m about a month into my internship with STE now, and this is the first time in my life I’ve ever enjoyed a routine. Waking up when the vervet monkeys decide it’s time to play outside my tent is much preferable to the sounds of my mobile phone alarm at home. The hornbills, mongoose and squirrels usually come out to greet us in the mornings while we have our breakfast. And then at the very civilized hour of 10:30am Lucy, Joseph and I go out in search of elephants to play vocalization experiments too.
Yesterday was one of my favourite days since I arrived. Not long after setting off on the Buffalo Springs side of the reserve, we came across 5 lions. One larger female and her cubs. We assume they are the same lions we saw happily resting by Resilience’s carcass a couple of weeks ago, looking very full and satisfied, although there were 6 in the pride that day. I always l thought I wasn’t so impressed by lions. Elephants, hippos, crocodiles, even warthogs – definitely. But the big cats always seem like a lot of effort for little reward. I take those thoughts back. It was an incredible treat to see these lions within meters of our car.
We also completed the final of our 30 field trials yesterday, so Lucy and Joseph now have a full data set of various sound trials to work with. In the last couple of days there seem to be a lot of elephants moving through the park; traveling down to the river in search of water, or happily playing in muddy holes by the road. However we had not come across so many resting, which is what we need to set up the trials. Two days ago we spent ages trailing the Mountain Ranges, as they meandered from tree to tree, looking as though they were going to rest just long enough for us to feel hopeful before moving on. The Artists II family decided to cooperate perfectly with us yesterday, resting under a beautiful big tree, reacting the way we expected (hoped) they would, and even stayed long enough for us to have a bit of a photo shoot afterwards. It has been so much fun learning to identify different behaviors of elephants, and getting to know the personalities in some of the families. I’m in the process of analyzing video footage of trials from previous years for calf responses to sound trials, so it’s been a definite advantage participating in this year’s actual field work.
We celebrated last night with sundowners on the hill overlooking the (now dry again) river bed, enjoying some relatively chilled wine and the sweeping views of Samburu. This was followed by nyama choma, deliciously cooked on the open fire, with rice, ugali and veggies.
Someone asked me the other day if I miss anything about Australia. I can honestly say ‘no’!