The Field Course

Hello!!!!

I hope you're all well back at home!

Basically, the internet at the field centre hasn't quite gone as planned, as in there isn't any (yet)! But hopefully it might be sorted soon. I'm sat in an internet cafe in Sandakan, Sabah, having just dropped off half of the group at the airport. There are seven of us travelling around this area for a week before heading up to the capital to rejoin the others for another week of touristy-fun (can't be bad eh?)

The last two weeks have been amazing from start to finish. I know I can get quite easily excited about things, but I'm not sure I've ever had such a sustained 'wow-factor' going on!

The field centre is alongside a river which must be at least 500m wide. It's the colour of tea because the river bed's a sort of orangey brown colour. The forest is secondary rainforest (most of the tallest trees have previously been removed), and absolutely full of wildlife.

The field-trip started with a week of getting used to our new home, and a chance to have a go at working with trees, catching and ringing birds, small mammals, studying butterflies and conducting a primate survey along the river. Amazingly they let me continue on the monkey-lines for the second week of project work, and so I've spent the last week setting off on a boat at 0530 and again in the evening to survey the monkey-life along the river. MONKEYS!!!!

Mostly, the monkeys are long-tailed macaques - cheeky little things that like to steal small mammal traps and eat the fruit left out for the butterflies. However they also have a habit of strolling along the river bank in the evening before settling down for the night, making them easy to count and snap with the camera. It also helps that they seem completely fearless and not disturbed in the slightest by the boats on the river. Less so for the proboscis monkeys. They're the ones with the massive noses which you might have seen on t.v. if not in a book at some point. They don't look like they should be particularly agile, but as soon as a group of macaques decides to take roost in their tree, they're off flying through the air despite their pot-bellies and ridiculously un-aerodynamic design.

The other primate commonly seen in the area is the Silvered Langur. I wish I'd brought my pen-drive out this afternoon to show you a photo or two, but for the mean time try to imagine a punky-monkey. They have their hair 'brushed' into the middle to create a mohecan effect, and they like to sit, chilled out, in the tops of the trees! Their fur is a dark grey colour, but as a baby they're bright orange! These are rapidly taking the place of my 'favourite monkey', especially after seeing a white one!!!

Nothing, however can take the place of the great ape we were all hoping to track down at some point. It was well into the second week before anything more than a nest had been spotted, and typically it was the one day I'd felt a bit groggy and decided to take a mid-day nap. I could hear Helen shouting about a sighting, but naturally I assumed it was a wind-up. After all, we were still in the field centre - why would one come so close to humans?
I lay there for another five minutes, listening to what sounded like a heard of elephants stampeding by, before deciding to go and investigate. It's a jolly good job I did get up, because believe it or not there was an orang-utan ( a real, proper, wild one!!!) sat lazily munching on fruits just a few metres down the path! I can't possibly begin to describe how cool it was to see a wild orang-utan, but I can tell you that however nice the 'Monkey World' enclosure is, it just doesn't quite do this magnificent creature justice. This particular animal was an un-flanged adult male, but two days later along the river we saw a large male with full face flanges and a beard! I really will put up a photo when I remember to bring my photo-stick-thing with me to a computer!!!

On top of all that we've seen crocodiles, monitor lizards, elephants, hornbills, you name it!

I'll write more soon, otherwise I'll just ramble on about the animals forever!

Emails can be accessed ;)
Rach x