Giardia x2

The mystery of my massive weight loss seems to have been at least partially solved with my diagnosis of Giardia. Now unfortunately, it looks like Okan also has it and his host of symptoms are pretty unpleasant. But at least we know what it is and he has started medicine and is already feeling better just one day after starting the medicine.

We started in the field last week. After getting up to Kitabi we hired a bunch of porters who helped us deploy our traps up the mountain. It was a pretty big ordeal getting both the traps (huge) and many porters to the trail site. Once we got to the trail the porters were practically running up the mountain with their traps. I was following behind baiting the traps and putting them together and in good spots where they would be hidden. Okan and the porters made it up the 5km uphill trail in only an hour and a half, but it took me much longer to catch up and finally finish all the trap positioning etc. It didn't rain and it was a nice day so that was helpful. I am currently pre-baiting. This involves putting yummy treats into the trap, but the trap is wired open so the animal can come and go as they please. The idea is that they get used to the trap and the treats (raw or cooked eggs) and come back. We will hopefully be going "live" with the traps (ie taking out the wire that keeps them open and setting them for real on Monday.

Two of my students are also coming up with us. One is doing his memoir on the foraging ecology of the animals I capture, and the other is studying small mammal community dynamics. I find it really overwhelming to have them both up there while I am just starting my trapping. I want to spend more time training them and getting them set up but just getting my project up and running is a lot of time and energy. The hike up the trail from 2500-2800 m where my live traps are is 10km round trip and so when we are done, I hardly have any energy to go on another hike to help my students on their trails. But I am just going to have to bite the bullet and do it this week and hope they will get trained quickly so that I won't have to do field work from dawn to dusk every day. The work isn't so hard as the hiking. I pulled my achilles on the first day in Nyungwe this week and so you can imagine how fun it is to hike when your achilles hurts! Plus, I am still not used to the altitude and the very steep inclines. Okan can get to the top of the trail in 1 hour (even with Giardia!) and it takes me 1hr 30 minutes of panting to get to the top. Luckily, sometimes Okan can come back down and meet me as I am coming up to tell me if the traps need rebaiting or not. Or like on Thursday, I went on a hike with my student to find a good field site while Okan and another friend went and checked the traps on a different trail. Okan has been the best field partner in the world. I lost my phone one day in the field and thought it was gone for good, but Okan found it at trap #13 the following day.

Here are some baboons that frequent the road to our field site. We see troops with 50 individuals just meandering down the road. Some sit in the middle of the road and get groomed by another baboon as they enjoy the heat from the asphalt. Hopefully I will have more exciting photos to post sometime soon once live trapping begins!

False Start

We had a bit of a false start in the field last week. We started out by putting out lots of new camera traps on a rainy afternoon after we had moved all our equipment up to the field station from our old house in Butare. I wasn't feeling great all day and by the next morning had a nasty case of the flu. So we drove back to Butare and Okan nursed me back to health. Of course 2 days later just as I was feeling better, poor Okan caught the same flu and he has been pretty sick the last few days. We're both on the mend now but it put a crimp in our week. Hopefully back to the field this week!

Let the Field Work Commence!

We finally have started in the field. Our first five camera traps yielded lots of fun pictures (below). We have deployed many more cameras and now today we are actually making the move to Kitabi full time. We'll deploy more cameras today. Then tomorrow hike some trails to find suitable places to put my live traps on Wed. or Thursday.

The last two weeks has been exhausting. We have been to Kigali and Nyungwe and also trying to catch up on other work. Okan finally made the bike ride from Butare (where we live) up the many, many, many hills to Kitabi (edge of Nyungwe). It looks, from a non-cyclist perspective, like it would be a brutal bike ride as it's mostly up hill. But Okan enjoyed it and made it in 2.5 hours (it takes me 1 hr to drive!). He said that mostly people just stare but some of the kids run with him and try to grab onto him as he bikes by, which is dangerous and annoying. But otherwise he really enjoyed it. And then after the bike ride, we proceeded to hike the trails with 40lbs of camera equipment in each of our backpacks up the mountain for another 3.5- 4 hours. I was, like last time, huffing and puffing and really feeling the altitude. Since Okan had biked up to Nyungwe that morning, instead of skipping up the mountain like he usually does, he actually walked, albeit much faster than I. If only I could swim up the mountain! Hoping I will get used to the hike after a week of doing it every day. Really looking forward to capturing animals in the live traps soon. First a week of pre-baiting (where the trap won't actually capture any animals but they can enter it and get the bait and leave). Then I'll activate the traps for real. Keeping my fingers crossed! Still quite rainy here and hoping a quick end to the rainy season now that we are starting full time field work! Here are some of the first camera trap images we got from the first month of trapping with only 5 cameras. We are just finishing up deploying the other 15 today.

 The first picture is of a genet and the second picture is of a duiker.

 We saw a number of people on our camera traps, mostly farmers. Oddly, there are several frames of this woman burying some seeds and then hoeing the soil. Note this is near the summit of the mountain and probably takes close to 1.5 hrs to hike up so it's a little odd to see someone planting something along a trail!

 This picture is of a side striped jackal. The main culprit for leaving all the scats I keep finding near this camera trap. I can't wait to trap him!

 This is an over exposed picture of either the same jackal or a different jackal marking his territory right in front of my camera trap! Maybe he wants us to know HE owns this trail!

The first is a blurry photo of a chimpanzee! So excited to see them on this side of the forest and walking along the trail! The second picture is quite a large serval. Too bad the camera's trigger time appears too slow! But at least I know they are there. I can analyze the spot pattern on his fur to identify different individuals. In the picture below, first you see three tiny piglets. Then the next picture mama comes into the frame! It is a wild boar.

 Another duiker

I like this picture of another side stripped jackal because he looks like he is hunting! The picture below is of a blue monkey

 Well, that's all for now. We're off to Kitabi now!