Last Day

Hi everyone!

So today is my last day in Kenya.  In about two hours, we'll get in a car that will take us to Nairobi, for our flight to Amsterdam tonight.  All six of us who are leaving will stay together till Amsterdam, where we split up to go to our final destinations.

I've had an incredible time here.  I got a taste of what field research is, I've seen some amazing sights and animals, and I've met some awesome people.  I'm getting ready for the reverse culture shock that is going home, with which I will be questioning the lack of animals everywhere, the easy accessibility to pretty much everything, and the humidity.  Oh, and why it's still light out at 7pm.  Among other things.

I've still got a little packing to do, and I have to return my key to the gym, so I'm going to sign off now.  Hope everyone at home has a great day, and I can't wait to see you!

Last Field Day

I just got back to the center after my last day out in the field.  We were collecting data from all of the Barleria plants that we worked with this summer so that they can be monitored into the future.  Today we were just working in South, and I actually only went out in the afternoon.  This morning was work with the camera trap photos and starting to pack.  Very weird to be done with field work for the summer.  There's a sundowner planned for tonight, and then we leave tomorrow after lunch.  

It's morning back on the east coast, so have a good day everyone!

Team Barleria

Adventure Time!

We went on an adventure on Sunday! It was lots of fun.  

So we left after tea time, and drove over in three cars to Mukenya.  I posted a picture of it earlier this summer--it means "Little Mount Kenya," and it's basically a hill.  We parked at the bottom and hiked up.  

Parked at the bottom. 

The hike up only took roughly 12 minutes, but parts of it were pretty steep so it felt very intense.  The view from the top was awesome.  I also discovered while up there that while I am not necessarily afraid of heights, I certainly did not want to get too close to the edge.    

View from the top. 

There was also a cave sort of space if you walked part of the way down on the other side from where we went up.  The space there reminded me a lot of Scar's lair in The Lion King. 

The bottom of the rock we're all sitting on was the roof of the cave area. 

The hike up was certainly more intense, but the hike down was arguably harder.  Because there were some parts that were super steep, so you practically had to slide down them on the way down.  We left Mukenya and drove to an area called the Confluence.  It was a river with sandy banks, so it felt like we were at the beach.  When we arrived, there was a herd of cows there to greet us.    

Cows cows cows.

 We had lunch while sitting on the banks, and then just hung out for a while.  There were rocks out in the water that you could get to to sit/lie down on.  The only tricky part was getting there.  There were four different things about the river working against you if you tried to get anywhere.  One: the water was pretty opaque, so you couldn't see where you were stepping.  Two: the bottom was not even, there were a lot of rocks to step/trip on.  Three:  Not only were there rocks that made the bottom uneven, but you could be standing in one place and the water would be up to your ankles, and then two steps later it was up to your waist.  Four: although the current wasn't overly fast, it was moving.  But it was worth it when you got to the rocks.  They had been in the sun all day, so it felt like lying down on a heated bed--it was wonderful.      

The river. 

We left the Confluence in time to get to Lizard Rock for a sundowner.  Right when we got there, we got a text saying that another car had gotten stuck, so we went to go help.  This group had left early to get back to the center, and as they were driving a flash flood hit.  The roads became incredibly slippery/sticky/like quick sand, and they got stuck on the side.  As we were driving up to help them, we also almost got stuck.  The only thing that got us out was MBB's excellent driving.  Even walking on the roads was rough and your shoes would slip out from under you.  A little while after we got there, a car from the center arrived to help and they managed to pull the stuck car out, with a little help pushing from behind.

They were really stuck. 

 Sunday was an excellent adventure day, and then Monday was back out in the field.  We went up to North to collect the leaf/fruit samples we needed.

This is the fence that surrounds the LMH plots, the ones where all animals are excluded. 

 This morning we went out to central to collect leaves to do relative water content measurements, and then we went to the black cotton in the afternoon for more leaf collections.

One of the trees where we were working at central.
The birds build these incredible nests hanging from the trees.  It looks like the tree is wearing earrings to me. 

 On the way back to the center, we saw a puff adder in the middle of the road. That's a snake that can do some damage to you, but this guy wasn't doing well.  We couldn't figure out what had happened to him, but he was struggling to move.  Even when we got closer to him, he didn't really react.  It was really sad.  

The puff adder, with Tyler for size reference (Tyler's 6'6").

There was also more camera trapping today and now I'm about to get ready for bed.  I only have two more nights here after tonight, which feels incredibly strange.  There are a lot of things that I miss a lot from home, so I'm very excited to get back to the states, but I'm also not quite ready to leave.  Oh well.  The day is fast approaching no matter what I do.  There are a lot of things that will be different when I get home.  Alex summed many of them up nicely in one of her last posts.  I'm preparing to ask myself all of those questions as well.

Hope everything's going well for everyone at home, and I'll see you soon!

Easter Egg Hunt! (kind of?)

OK, I don't think it actually counts as an Easter Egg Hunt, but today's field work certainly felt like one.  One in which there was no candy at the end, and the eggs were all super protected with lots of spines/thorns.  Or, even better, the eggs didn't actually exist.  All that's not to say I didn't enjoy myself, because finding these "eggs" was so much more satisfying than any egg filled with chocolate.  

We went out this morning to look for Solanum fruits.  I know I mentioned them before, but I'm not sure if I explained what they are.  They're a toxic invasive plant with green-grey kind of leathery leaves, and little bright yellow fruits (when they're ripe; when the fruits are unripe, they look like little watermelons).  Rob's been studying them for a while--see an article about his work here.  As you'll see in the article, most herbivores out here absolutely love the fruits of this plant.  Which means that finding them outside of the UHURU exclosure plots, where all herbivores have access to them, can be super difficult.  We ended up walking all the way around the perimeter of one block, looking for the fruits and we found none.  Then we drove around slowly for a bit, trying to see if there were any fruits along the road.  I spotted two different plants with some fruits on them, which we stopped to collect.  We'e still short a few fruits, so this hunt may continue...

There were even lilies for the egg hunt! The African version of the lily is so tiny.

We also found a super small tortoise while looking for Solanum fruits. 

Backing up a bit.  Thursday was a very lazy day at the center, with a sundowner in the evening.  It was at Wandering/Wondrous Point, which was beautiful.  

Friday morning I went out into the field again with Renata, and we collected the seeds we'd placed out on Wednesday to see how many had been taken.  We were also collecting seeds from trees, to be used in future experiments.    

The seeds always seem to be right out of reach.  And the shorter trees, that are more of a Katie-appropriate height, never have any seeds. 

This is my final weekend here, which feels very weird.  I believe that there is an adventure planned for tomorrow, so look for a post on that too. 

Finals should be about over by now, so congratulations to everyone who swam this morning! I'm sure you all did amazingly, and I can't wait to hear about it. 

Eles Eles Everywhere!

So in the same way that most people shorten "hippopotamus" to "hippo," and "rhinoceros" to "rhino," many people here shorten "elephant" to "ele."  And I saw a bunch of eles this week. And it's only Wednesday :)

On Monday, I went out with Renata.  As I think I've mentioned before, she's here doing senior thesis research under Rob.  She's looking at the effect of being on or off a termite mound and being on or off a glade on seed predation by rodents, among other things.  So in order to explain what a glade is, I need to first explain what a boma is.  A boma is an area of land that a cattle herder "fences" in with acacia trees to protect his livestock from predators at night.  With so many animals there and so much waste, the land becomes pretty nutrient rich.  When the cattle herder moves on and disassembles the boma (or I guess the trees might just kind of go back to the soil, I'm not sure), what's left is a super fertile area of land.  Which attracts lots of herbivores.  The land has pretty dense grass and few trees, and it stays that way for up to decades after it was last a boma.  When it's like that, the area is called a glade.  So Renata's looking at sites that are either on a glade or not, and within each of those, either on a termite mound or not.  It seems that there is a higher density of rodents on the glades and on the mounds than not, and that's part of what she's interested in.  Monday was mostly about gathering GPS points for the sites where she's going to collect data, and collecting acacia drepanolobium seeds for the experiment.  

Acacia drepanolobium

Black cotton soil (which is the soil type where we were working) gets really nasty to drive in when it rains.  You basically just get stuck--it sucks you in.  So as soon as we felt a few rain drops, we booked it back to the center.  By the time we returned, it was absolutely pouring.  The most substantial rainstorm since I've been here.  Enough so that our roof (which is thatched) leaked, but fortunately it missed all the beds and only got the middle of the floor wet.

So much rain

On Tuesday morning I went out with Sandy, a Kenyan researcher who's here studying elephants.  He's looking at the population dynamics of elephants around Mpala, and to do so, he needs to be able to individually recognize each animal.  He uses markings on their tusks and their ears to do that.  He looks at the behavior of the animals, and is interested in the differences between "resident" elephants (they've been recorded as being around Mpala for at least 6 months) and "migrant" elephants (they haven't).  He's also interested in the differences between families who have had experience with poachers (they tend to run away from a vehicle when you approach) and families who haven't (they tend to be calmer, or just skittish).

So we went out for about 3.5 hours, driving around looking for elephants.  When we found a group, we drove up to it really close to identify the individuals and record which families we saw.  The first thing Sandy taught me was how to correctly approach an elephant (in a car) : you need to approach them from the front, otherwise they will feel like you are chasing them and run away pretty quickly.  And you won't get to see their faces.  I got the closest I've ever been to an elephant yesterday, probably only 10 feet away.  It was so cool. Sandy also taught me how to tell the difference between male and female elephants: the females have a sharp angle from the top of their heads to the foreheads when seen in profile, and the same area on a male is much more rounded.

The elephant's reaction when we drove up really close to the family.
 It's in this position that Sandy is most easily able to identify individuals.

We got really close.

So I've been asked several times while here what my favorite African animal is.  Definitely up there are baby elephants.  I was pretty sure about that before yesterday, but our time out in the field solidified that.  Sandy was able to tell me the rough age of each individual we saw.  The youngest baby we saw was only about two months old. 

Such a little baby!

Second in from the right, the three eles there looked like Matryoshka dolls to me.
Sandy had no idea what I was talking about when I said that. 

One of the bigger families we saw. I counted 16 individuals. 

In the area where I took that last photo, I also watched an elephant completely knock over an acacia tree.  I've seen the damage from that, but I've never actually seen an elephant do it.  Granted, these trees were pretty small, but still.

Then yesterday evening there was a sundowner.  We went to Lookout Rock, which is a spot I hadn't been to yet.  It was a smaller location than some of the places we'd been to before, but just as nice.  We sat up on a rock and were surrounded by savanna.  There were too many clouds to see much of the sunset, but it was lovely just hanging around, eating popcorn and talking.

The bit of the sunset that we did see.

The group (the flash was super bright).

This morning I went out again with Renata.  We placed seeds out for the predation experiment.  We didn't go out again this afternoon because the black cotton roads are still too wet to be completely safe.  So it's just been an afternoon of getting stuff checked off my to-do list, with a nap in the very near future :)

Edit: There was indeed a nap this afternoon, which was glorious.  And then another sundowner, back to Eagle Scout Point (where we went on Saturday evening).  It was really nice.  Now I'm back at the center; we've finished dinner and I'm winding down for the night.  So good night everyone!

The view from Eagle Scout Point.

Also: good luck to all the Roxbury swimmers competing tomorrow in Trials! Swim fast, and I'll be cheering you guys on from here!

Animal Crossing

Hi!  Animal Crossing is totally a game, right?  It's also what happens whenever you drive anywhere here.  We usually don't stop, so I can never get any pictures, but I got a few this week. 

Elephant crossing the road on the way into Nanyuki.
(There were a whole bunch of other elephants just to the left out of view of this picture, including some adorable little ones)

Giraffes crossing behind us during the game drive on Saturday

This was another busy field week.  Monday and Tuesday, we finished the last Barleria treatment.  Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday, we worked on some termite mound stuff for Rob.  We couldn't do the next stuff we needed to do until we had envelopes, so Tyler and I went into Nanyuki on Thursday morning and then we were back in the field in the afternoon.  We're collecting leaves (from a few Acacia species, three Barleria species, and Solanum plants) and fruits (just from the Solanum) to be sent to a lab and analyzed.  That also kept us busy on Friday and Saturday morning.  The best thing about going out into the field on Saturday was that Alex was finally able to come out with us (she's wanted to for a while, but our schedules haven't worked out together yet).  So she got to experience the wonderful spines of Barleria for herself, and the fact that pretty much everything out in the field is trying to hurt you (with its spines, or thorns, or leaves...).  

Saturday afternoon was busy as well.  Jackson took us for a game drive (the last game drive for most people in the car).  We saw buffaloes, jackals and hyenas (with cubs!) all up close, which was awesome.  There were some young buffalo with the group that we saw, which meant that the males were not at all happy that we were there.  I've been told that buffaloes are the most dangerous animal you can encounter out here.  Which was interesting knowledge to have as Jackson kept driving closer and closer to the clearly agitated animals so that we could get a better look at the babies.  But we were totally fine, and it was really cool to be that close up in the safety of the car.  

He kind of looks like he has a mustache on top of his head, doesn't he? 

Jackal!

Spotted hyenas.  Such a cute little one.

We also saw a really cool huge bird, which we later had help identifying as a bateleur.  The adult is on the left, and a juvenile is on the right. 

Shake shake shake!

There was one point during the game drive that felt (especially) unreal.  There were plains zebras to the right, and Grevy's zebras to the left.  We were surrounded by giraffes, and there were impala off in the distance.  After we drove for another minute or so, we came across some more buffaloes and elephants.  

Notice the birds hanging out on the middle giraffe's neck

Plains zebras

 We also saw a baby hare, which was really cute.  Jackson asked if he could catch it, to which Alex replied, "Can you?"  While we were busy taking a selfie in the car, Jackson went off and did indeed catch it.  I didn't quite believe that he'd be able to.  He brought it to the car so we could see it closer for a few minutes, and then let it go.

 We ended our game drive by going to a sundowner at Eagle Scout Point, which we had some trouble finding.  But it was worth it when we got there.  It was a bunch of rocks that overlooked the savanna and the river, and you could see the ranch house below you.  It was beautiful.  As it was their last night here, Alex and Kathy and I laid out by the dining hall last night and just watched the stars for a while.  You can see so many more stars here than at home, and you can see the Milky Way really clearly.  We also saw several shooting stars.  It was incredible.

Ten people, including Alex, Kathy, Anchal and Annelies (all of whom have been staying at the center) headed home today.  Which was very sad.  But I'll see everyone again in the fall.  Which is happy :)

I believe that we'll be changing it up a little this week, and likely heading out into the field with Renata to help her with her work.  So we'll see. Hope everything's going well at home!

Kathy, me and Alex

The group

The Great Goat Roast

So this was an awesome weekend.  Last night there was a goat roast down at the river camp.  The river camp is about 10 minutes away from the center, and pretty much exactly what it sounds like—a camp with tents right by the river.  But the tents are more secure than what you think about with camping at home.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about going to the goat roast because I wasn’t sure how I felt about actually watching a goat roast.  But after talking to some people beforehand, I realized that it was very much like going to a barbecue at home, but instead of there being burgers and hot dogs on the grill, there were pieces of goat. 

Right when we got there, there was a giraffe off in the distance.  So the view was just a river with some yellow fever trees on its banks, and then hills off in the distance.  With a giraffe.  It was incredible. Kathy and I wandered around for a bit, and then much of the rest of the evening was just hanging out around this giant campfire.  Tyler and I had brought food over from the center to have in addition to the goat, which was really good.  “Paddy and the Dik-Diks” (a few of the researchers/grad students here, with 2 guitars and a harmonica) played throughout the evening.  It was very easy for me to avoid the actual goat roasting, which was great.  I had an excellent time.  It was pretty cloudy right when we got there, but when it cleared up the sky was amazing with stars.  There were even a few shooting stars near the end of the night.

The view right when we got there.  The giraffe is toward the back on the right. 

The sunset on the river.

The fire.  Matt used "magic" to make it turn pretty colors. 

Around the campfire. 

We went into Nanyuki this morning, and Alex and I tackled the curio shops together.  I am not a huge fan of bargain shopping, but we stayed together and it was fine.  We also got lunch in town at Dormans, which is a coffee shop that also has food and really delicious milkshakes.  All in all, a great weekend.  It’s dinner time now, and then another busy field week coming up.  

A few of the curio/bead shops that we went to

Dormans

Back to School

Hi everyone!

So it's been a little while since my last post.  This week was very busy with field work.  Monday and Tuesday, we were working with Barleria, adding a treatment to the experiment.  This treatment is another way of looking at the effects of shading and herbivory on the plant.  Also on Monday, we saw (and heard) a group of wild dogs by where we were working, which was really cool.  Wednesday and Thursday, we were out collecting data from an experiment that Tyler had set up last summer, looking at the effects of elephant damage (like the picture from one of my earlier posts) on understory plants.  Then Friday morning was spent camera trap photo-ing.  I finally saw an aardvark in one of the pictures, which was really cool. 

Yesterday (Friday) afternoon I went to the Mpala School with Alex.  Her internship is working with the Northern Kenya Conservation Clubs, so she (and a few other students, some of whom have already gone home) goes to the various schools throughout the week and teaches them lessons.  Yesterday's first lesson was a computer lesson (so not strictly conservation).  We worked with the kids on their Excel skills.  The school has four laptops and a desktop computer, so the kids worked in groups and Alex taught them how to make graphs in Excel.  I am so used to using computers in general and Excel specifically in my everyday life (especially now with camera trap photos--we enter all the data into one giant spreadsheet), so it was different for me to think about kids who aren't used to that.  I feel like even little ones at home are growing up now using their parents' (or their) iPhones and computers.  There was also the language barrier to overcome.  Their English was infinitely better than my Swahili, but it was still kind of hard to get some of the concepts across to them.  A really cool lesson to be a part of, but certainly challenging. 

After the computer lesson, we had the club activity for the week.  We were broadly looking at evolution, and specifically looking at bird beak adaptations.  Alex started off with a powerpoint, in which she introduced Charles Darwin and his ideas, and then asked the kids to give her four examples of birds they were familiar with.  She asked them several questions about those birds: color, diet, relative size, does it fly?, is its nest on the ground or in a tree?, and then if they knew anything else about the bird.  She then asked them to think about why some of those features are the way they are.  For example, why are ostriches the only birds we thought about that don't fly?  Their answer: because they're too heavy.  Why are they also the only birds whose nests are on the ground? Because they don't fly.  Why do vultures have no neck or head feathers? Because they would get dirty when they eat.  It was cool to watch the kids thinking about these questions.

Then it was time for a game: Birdie Breakfast.  Alex finished up the powerpoint with pictures of different birds and their beaks, and asked the kids what the birds eat and why their beaks might be shaped in a certain way.  She had also brought "beaks" with her.  For example, a secretary bird that eats snakes has a strong beak that can grab the snakes.  That "beak" was a pair of metal tongs.  Birds that eat nectar need to be able to get their beaks into long skinny flowers and suck up the nectar, so she had an eye dropper for that.  For the game, the kids split up into two teams (boys vs. girls, of course).  They were all playing the part of birds, and Alex presented their "breakfast" at each round.  The kids had to decide which "beak" was best to use to eat the food, and send one person from their team to go up and use that beak to grab as many pieces of food as they could.  The team with the most food at the end of the round won.  One breakfast item she had was a water bottle with water ("nectar") in it that the kids needed to use the eye dropper for.  Another was a bunch of small rocks ("beetles") that the pair of pliers was the best option for.    The kids got really into the game, and had a lot of fun with it. 

On their way to use eye droppers to get "nectar" (water)

The kids using pliers to grab "worms" (dry spaghetti)

The boys (and their teacher) watching intently

Not from the game, but a drawing of a jackal one of the kids had done.  Notice what it says: "It looks better in real life"

We got to take the school bus back, which was a lot of fun.  I sat next to two little ones.

                             

                             

  They seemed pretty happy to be sitting next to me: they liked to poke my arm and press the buttons on my watch.  Then one of them (the one in the green sweater) noticed that I had my camera with me.  He wanted me to take a picture of him, and so did the other little one.  He then spent the rest of the ride with his hands on my camera, pointing it in the direction he wanted to take a picture.  I kept my hand on the camera as well, and just pressed the button when he decided what he wanted to photograph.  We ended up with some interesting pictures.   

                                       

Like this one

And this one

I'm pretty sure I took the camera for this one     

Last night Alex and I went on a game drive with a group that's here from Scotland.  We saw a few hyenas and a whole group of buffalo.  We also saw something that none of us could definitively identify, but my guess was a was a white tailed mongoose.  This morning we went back out into the field to finish up the Barleria treatment we'd started.  

Other notes about this week: 

Although it has been mostly very dry here, this week we had several rainstorms, or almost rainstorms (when we saw and heard the storm, but it didn't rain over the center).  On Sunday when I was doing my laundry, I looked up and saw this:

View from our porch area

I pretty much just stopped what I was doing and grabbed my camera to get a picture.  Then on Monday when we'd finished for the day, I looked up and saw this:

                               

...and also grabbed my camera for a picture. 

On Sunday night at dinner, Alex and I made ugali truffles.  We took the ugali ("maize flour cooked with water to a porridge- or dough-like consistency") and mixed it with peanut butter in about a one to one ratio.  We rolled that mixture into little balls and then took some of the chocolate chips I'd brought (thanks, Mom!) and stuck them in.  Then we rolled the whole thing in the Cadbury drinking chocolate powder (basically hot chocolate powder).  They were surprisingly really good--kind of like a mix between cookie dough and the inside of a Reese's.

Ugali truffles--nom nom nom