Project Malas (22-29 July)

One week left in Sulawesi, I can’t believe that my time here is almost over!
This last week I have been taking it quite easy. I was wiped after La Pago and so have decided to take a few days out of the monkey world to see what else is out there, as well as helping the students with their stats and data entry every night. I joined up with a few other projects for a day at a time this week to see more – Bat harp-trapping, Small Mammals trapping and a bird walk. The night of bats was really great-although it had rained (again) in the evening, and although there were only 2 bats trapped, they were both quite rare and really interesting! They were both insect bats, the first was called the big eared horse shoe bat, and the second was the leaf-nose bat (the second largest insect bat). They were amazing! I got to help with the processing of it (well mostly writing down the measurements) but got to help in holding the wings down for tissue samples to be taken, and then I got to “pet” them! And if they weren’t nasty biting bats, I imagine a bat would be so wonderful to cuddle. The first bird walk I did was short and sweet, as I needed to get back early for another project, but my list of birds I’ve seen rose from 7 to about 15 in 45 minutes (including a couple of birds that I have been wanting to see this whole time but hadn’t yet!)! It was just me and one of the bird scientists, so he was TRYING to teach me the bird calls to indentify, but I obviously was failing at that because I kept asking him what one certain call was and it always ended up being squirrels! The second bird walk the next day lasted for 3 hours and a part from a student who joined who thought he knew everything about birds, it was still a lovely walk. It was so sunny in the morning (rained the rest of the day though!) and I was able to identify birds that I had learned the day before and saw many many more species of birds and my first boars of the season! And I also joined the small mammal project for a day. My roommate here, Helene, is the scientist for it, and so I went with her to check her traps – she has 100 traps set up throughout the forest in the hopes of catching rats, mice, shrews, etc (sometimes civets!). She then takes morphological measurements and tries to identify the species. But again, it was heavy rain last night (doesn’t sound much like the dry season to me), so nothing was in her traps today which was sad – first time in a month that she hasn’t caught anything and of course it’s on the one day I can go out!

Oh! And my quarter of a century birthday was great! It happened to follow on our day off, which was great! So I went climbing with the canopy access team – Vicky, James and Gordon – climbed a huge strangler fig and got to lay in a hammock 30-35 m up, which was amazingly relaxing, and if it hadn’t rained earlier (again) and the hammock wasn’t soaking, it would’ve made it definitely nap worthy! My dissertation students also gave me a cute card that they made with funny monkey drawings all over it and chocolate! And I received more cute handmade cards and absolutely lovely sarongs from my boss and one from Becca, who is doing her PhD on the macaques here. And more chocolate from others which has been serving a very important role the last few days of helping me get through the in between meal period! And at dinner, the staff came out with a beautiful cake for me that was delicious! But what was funny is that to keep the shape of this 2 level fancy cake, there was a plastic cup and lid in the center of the cake! Hehe!

Next time I get online, I’ll be in Malaysia!! I fly to Kuala Lumpur on the 4th of August and then will be in Sandakan (Borneo) on the 5th, so I’ll be in touch again very soon (and more regularly!)!

Lots of love!
Danica