The good, the less good, and the awesome: capture work 2015

Hey everyone! That’s right, it’s me again! I know, I know, I say that like it’s a positive thing, which is probably a bit presumptuous given how poorly developed my blogging skills are relative to Kathleen’s. ;-) Oh well. For this post, you’re stuck with me!

The capture season here is starting to wind down now, and so I thought I’d go ahead and do a quick post on it and share some stories, pics, and video. This year I’ll spare you all the details about my research per se, because most of you are already at least a little bit familiar with it anyway (and even if you’re not it’s not nearly as exciting as pics and videos). Just as a brief reminder though, my project year involves capturing and collecting data from three different species of antelope: bushbuck (the little ones), nyala (the medium ones), and kudu (the big ones). I typically dart the bushbuck and nyala from a vehicle because they’re small and like thick cover, and the kudu from a helicopter.

This year has been full of all of the crazy ups and downs that always seem to characterize this kind of work, so I thought I’d share just a few anecdotes with you of situations that started off badly and ended up working out well. The majority of the time when I dart one of these animals, things go just fine, but not always!

So, anecdote number 1. When I’m darting the bushbuck and nyala from the ground I have to use darts that include a small radio-transmitter inside of them so that I can track them in the bush. After being darted, these guys typically run off into thick brush, and can go for hundreds of yards before succumbing to the anesthesia. So, without transmitter darts we’d rarely ever find them. This year, with one of the first bushbuck I darted, the dart itself malfunctioned and didn’t inject. It stayed in like it was supposed to though (because of the barb), which allowed us to keep track of her via the transmitter dart. So, we spent the next hour slowly following her around trying to get close enough to get a second dart in her. In addition, because she already had a transmitter dart attached to her, I chose to use a non-transmitter dart the second time so that I could shoot farther (the darts are much lighter and fly much better without the transmitter). After a great deal of careful pursuit and patience, I finally had another brief chance to dart her on the move as she walked in front of our vehicle. The good news: the dart hit her perfectly and injected like it was supposed to. The bad news: as soon as the second dart hit her, the first one, which contained the transmitter, fell out! As always, she immediately ran off into the thick bush, and because she no longer had the transmitter dart in her, we had no way to track her. So begins the painstaking grid search, which most of the time leads to nothing. About an hour into our search, a vulture flew by us at top speed, obviously on a mission. We ran after it, and shortly thereafter noticed an eagle circling above the area where it looked like the vulture was headed. We searched that specific area, and after only a few minutes, there she was! Untouched and lying fast asleep on her side. She was in great shape, and after putting a GPS collar on her and collecting a variety of other data on her condition, reproductive status, size, etc., we reversed the anesthesia and she went happily on her way. Whew! That’s the third time in the past two seasons that either a vulture or an eagle has led us to an animal that we’d lost track of because the transmitter dart fell out. Crazy!

A couple of weeks later I had a nyala run across the road in front of me and stop just within darting range. She was obviously ready to keep running and I only had a few seconds, so I had to guess the distance instead of using my range finder. Unfortunately I misjudged and the dart went low. Rather than simply going beneath her and turning into a missed shot, though, it hit her in the leg and stuck in the skin there. The dart was a transmitter dart, and we followed her around for the next half hour, but because it wasn’t a good muscle hit, she was only partially affected by the drugs and never went down. Nyala are much more mobile than bushbuck, and eventually we lost track of the transmitter signal, and her. Rather than give up though, we decided to see if we might get lucky from the air. The helicopter we’d used for the kudu darting was still around, and although we’d never successfully darted a nyala from the air before (not for lack of trying last year!), we had to try; leaving an animal running around with a dart in its leg is not an option when there’s still something we might be able to do about it. It was much easier for me to pick up her signal again from the air, and before long we had her in sight again. She was obviously affected by the drug, and was running much slower than normal. She was in and out of the trees a lot, and so it took some patience on the part of our amazing helicopter pilot Mike Pingo, but eventually Louis Van Wyck, a game capture specialist who’s here helping out with the capture, managed to get a second dart into her from the helicopter. The first and only nyala we’d ever managed to dart from the air! 

This is the nyala from the story above. Beautiful animals aren't they?

Just like last year, I’ve also been privileged to see all sorts of amazing things during the course of my time in the field searching for animals to dart. Kathleen already posted a few pics of the pride of lions we came across on the same day that we had the transmitter dart fall out of the bushbuck. I’ve also been lucky enough to see elephants on at least half of the days that I’ve been out, so I’ve included a few elephant pics below as well.

 

The elephants of Gorongosa. I have a graduate student starting in the fall semester who will be spending the next 3 years conducting research on these amazing animals, including putting GPS collars on a bunch of them. Can't wait!

One thing I also did for fun this year was bring a GoPro camera with me for the aerial darting. As a result, I got some cool first-person video footage of myself darting kudu from the helicopter, as well as some good footage of one really cool bonus experience I had from the chopper this year. I darted 9 of the 10 kudu from the air this year, which was a real privilege, and I’ve included a few pictures and a couple of the better videos for you below. 

 Getting ready to put a GPS collar on a female kudu on film with Rob Pringle (my collaborator and former post-doc advisor at Princeton) and Corina Tarnita (another professor at Princeton).

 Using ultrasonography to measure the depth of the loin muscle on a kudu as one measure of her nutritional condition.

On her way about a minute or so after reversing the anesthesia.

Rob and Corina with a collared kudu, along with a crew from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). HHMI recently provided a major grant to the Gorongosa Restoration Project to fund the construction of an education center.

In this video, we were pursuing a group of about 8 or so kudu that broke up shortly after we saw them. You'll notice early in the video that we focused our attention on one lone female, but when we got close to her I could tell she was in poor condition, so I asked Mike to break off and find the others. Shortly after he was able to push a group of 3 into the open, which set me up perfectly to get a dart in!

In this video you'll get to witness something that was a first for me; two shots at the same kudu, but not because of a miss. If you pay close attention to the first shot, you'll notice that it hits her in the hindquarter and bounces right off! Definitely haven't seen that before. Mike went high to keep an eye on her while Louis got a second dart ready for me, and fortunately the second one did the trick. 

Below you'll see a few pictures and a GoPro video of my bonus experience. There's a Mozambican graduate student currently going to school in South Africa who was hoping to collect some data on sable (an amazing species of antelope with long, sweeping horns) as part of their thesis project, and had sent a couple of GPS collars to the park in the hopes of having them deployed this year. Since I was around and Rui (the park vet and head of law enforcement) was super busy with all sorts of other things, he let me do the darting and collaring! Man was this a cool experience. Sable have always been one of my favorite antelope, and getting to have my hands on one was a real privilege. 

 

Me and Mike Pingo's (the helicopter pilot) son Greg with a beautiful female sable. Unlike the species I've been working with, female sable also have horns.

Measuring rump fat depth with the ultrasound. This may well be the first time in history anybody has ever used this approach to quantify condition of a wild sable!

 

Headed back to the chopper after a successful operation. What a nice sunset eh?

This is the GoPro video I recorded while darting the sable in the above pictures. Rather than truncate it, I've decided to share the full experience with you which, like the kudu video above, required two shots. Unfortunately in this case it was because I missed the first one...

Well, that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed the pics and videos!

Caden's big day!

So, this post is going to be a tag-team effort between myself and Ryan. I’ll take the beginning and ending and he’ll be sandwiched in between. It’ll be fun!

Today is all about Caden, and we’ll start with a little learning experience he had last week with an “ouchie” bug. He’s about the age where it’s important to understand that he can’t just grab and pick up everything he sees in nature, and since we’re in Africa these lessons are even more important. He’s learning that snakes and bugs and spiders are all very cool, but some of them can actually hurt him, so it’s best not to touch without asking first.

After walking around outside with him all morning, I came into the cabin, threw my shoes off and discovered a tick on my foot. Eww… but a prime learning opportunity! So we went out onto the deck and I let him look at the ouchie bug on Mommy’s foot before I pinched it off and put it in a plastic carton so he could safely “hold” it and study it. 

It was an experience both fun and educational; what more could I ask for?

Now I’ll pass the laptop over to Ryan and let him share the most exciting part of this post.

*             *             *

Greetings family and friends! It is I, the elusive guy-who-doesn’t-blog-very-much, and at long last it’s time for my first entry. I finally have a bit of a break from capture work today, so I thought I would take a minute to share a really wonderful experience that Caden and I were able to share with Rui Branco (our park veterinarian), his 4-year-old son Diego, and our esteemed helicopter pilot Mike Pingo about a week ago. 

The GPS collars I’m putting on antelope here have a remote release mechanism that allows me to send them an e-mail via satellite and release the collar from the animal when the battery begins to get low. By the time we arrived at Gorongosa this year I had already released all of the collars from 2014, and my field assistant Flavio had managed to find most of them (they continue to transmit their GPS location to me even after they’re released). However, there were two collars that were a long ways out into the bush and inaccessible by vehicle. So, in the midst of our helicopter-based capture work, we decided it would be most efficient to just fly out there and pick them up.

This was not an opportunity to be wasted though! There was no darting to be done on this particular trip, just a short flight out and back, with a little bit of radio-tracking on the ground to locate the collar. Caden had been begging to go on the helicopter since it arrived, and Rui’s son, who happened to be visiting for the week, also badly wanted a ride. At $600/hour we can’t really afford any pleasure cruises. However, since this was a trip that needed to be done for work-related reasons anyway, we figured why not bring the kids along!

The whole thing was so exciting for them, and they both had a blast. Well, for the most part anyway (see below). Caden loved talking over the intercom, and Diego kept explaining how we were going to fly into space. Man those kids were cute together! 

When we landed at the general location of the first collar we decided that it would be best if I just hopped out to quickly find the collar while Rui stayed in the chopper with the kids. That way Mike wouldn’t have to go through the power down process, which takes several minutes. Big mistake! It only took me about 5 minutes to track down the collar, but when I returned to the helicopter it was to find Caden in tears. As much as he loves that helicopter, he did not like being left there by his daddy.

So, for the second collar we decided to make it a bit more fun for the kids. We landed a couple hundred yards away from where the collar was supposed to be, powered down the chopper, and let the kids go on a “treasure hunt” with us. We exited the helicopter into 5-foot tall grass, so we put the kids on our shoulders to walk through it as we tracked down the collar together. I would have given anything to have a picture of that experience, because it was so cool, and the kids loved it, but unfortunately none of us thought to bring a camera. I know, stupid right?

Anyway, when we got within about 20 yards of the collar and I had spotted it (in much shorter grass thankfully!), we let the kids down, told them the general direction the collar was in, and had them go and search for it. They both saw it at about the same time, and man were they excited! They found it! 

Then it was back to the chopper for the 5-minute ride home. On the way we saw a nice group of elephants, and Mike circled them so that both kids got a good look. Caden didn’t have to be told what they were…”real elephants!”

So, all in all it was a great little bonus for us dads, and I think the kids enjoyed themselves a bit as well. 

Next up from me will be a capture blog, and if I can get them uploaded I have a couple cool GoPro videos of darting kudu and sable from the helicopter. Stay tuned!

*             *             *

Thanks, Ryan, and now back to me again! 

Caden and Diego had so much fun together. Caden doesn’t often get playmates out here, but for about a week he had a buddy his own age (+ one year) to play with. Every day Diego, who woke and ate breakfast much earlier than our kid, would wait for Caden to finish eating so they could play for hours on the swing set next to the restaurant. 

So on the same day Ryan took Caden for a helicopter ride, we also went to the beach for a relaxing evening. Not the beach at the ocean, but the beach of the Pungue—the same river that Caden and I crossed in order to get to the grocery store. We three were there, along with Rui, his son Diego and his father Antonio, Diego’s nanny, whose name I could never quite get, Mike and Anthea Pingo, and Louis Van Wyck (a good friend of Rui and Ryan, and a professional game capturer from South Africa).

As I’ve said in a previous post, the Pungue is a deceptively fast-flowing river, and there is always the chance of crocs in the water, even if they wouldn’t come up on land with that many people there. So we drew a line in the sand that Caden and Diego were not allowed to cross and Antonio volunteered to be the “bouncer” at the line, because for a little while Caden, being Caden, tended to think that “don’t cross the line” was a game of Let’s see what I can get away with. The line was well away from the river so there was no danger of Caden falling in, and soon he lost interest and went back to playing in the sand (i.e., purposefully fall down the side of sand dunes over and over again), or running around with Diego, or throwing sand into his own face, or tackling Diego etc.

Yes. He did, in fact, throw sand in his own face.

It was so nice, just sitting there, laughing with friends. A relaxing end to a very full day.

Happy Father's Day!

Caden had a surprise for his daddy yesterday, and he has a message for Pops, Papa, and all our friends.

Crossing the Pungue

This has been a big week for us, and it’s funny how quickly that can happen! One minute we’re all having dinner at the restaurant, and the next someone mentions a trip to the grocery store and anyone who wants to go says, “sign me up!”

Four and a half of us (Matt, an employee here at the park, Anthea, the wife of Mike the helicopter pilot, Megan, a visiting student from Trinity Collage in Dublin,  me and Caden) headed to Chimoio on Friday morning. And this trip was exciting for me because we were getting to town by a little bit of a different route than last year. We met at the Chicalango restaurant at 8am and had a quick bite to eat before hitching a ride with a scientist who was driving down to the Pungue river. 

Caught mid-sneeze.

Little man still has his breakfast muffin.

 

Walking the last little bit to the boat.

Just your average trip into town.

After crossing the river, which was wide and shallow and had a much stronger current than it looked like, we walked for about 10 minutes to the hospital where Andres’ truck was parked—he was letting Matt borrow it for the day.  

 

At the hospital Matt showed Caden how to pump water like the locals do. And then off we went down this horrendously bumpy dirt road. Now, when I say “horrendously bumpy” what I want you to visualize is a cowboy trying to hold on to a bucking bronco. That’s how bumpy it was!

And Caden fell asleep anyway. Sometimes I don’t get that child. I’m sitting next to him trying to hold on to my teeth and he’s nodding off in his carseat.

Once we were in Chimoio we, of course, took care of the most important things first and stopped at an ATM. Matt stayed in the car with Caden, and Anthea, Megan and I went for money. At the ATM Megan had a creepy encounter with a man who had a crisp suit and a lazy eye. He was as affectionate as a drunk, but he knew what he was about because when she jumped back from his oily smile he took her place in line… like a punk.

For the first time I considered how lucky it was that I didn’t know Portuguese, because if I were fluent, I would have wanted to give him a piece of my mind for sure!

So after that… interesting experience, we went FABRIC SHOPPING. Woo!

I learned a lot about Anthea’s shopping abilities on this trip. She doesn’t really speak Portuguese either but apparently good bargaining doesn’t require that both parties speak the same language. She was winking and smiling and pointing out flaws in the fabric and getting discounts left and right. Her skills were a wonder to behold, especially for me since I have never been a good haggler. I’m too American, I guess. I either assume the price is the price, or that offering a lower price will somehow insult the shop owner. Like Daniel Son under the tutelage of Mr. Miyagi, I have much to learn from this Bargain Master.

Surprisingly, I didn’t actually get any fabric for myself on this trip. I went into that shop with things like curtains and throw pillows on my mind. I didn’t see anything that fit the bill for either, and didn’t feel like transitioning my mind to fabric just for fabric’s sake. Shocking, I know, but I wasn’t worried. We’ll be here for a while and I’ll get another chance to buy capulanas. At least I got some fabric for another scientist who hadn’t been able to come and had sent some money and a short shopping list with me, and Caden and I both had fun looking around at everything. He kept climbing over the flatfolds and saying, “Ooh, this one’s pretty!”

 

Sorry for the bad picture. I didn’t remember to take any pictures until after we’d already left the shop. Then I had to hurry back and take a quick shot through the iron bar door that they’d closed because they were all going to lunchtime. At least I remembered to take a picture at all this time. If we go back to that shop again I will try to take a couple more so you can all really appreciate the size of this shop. The amount of fabric in there is just overwhelming!

After they’d shooed us out of the shop so they could close for lunch, the plan was that we would stop at this pizza place Matt liked and get some lunch of our own. But when we got there it was all closed up! We were all a little bummed, but Matt also knew of a really good place that served this amazing chicken, so we went there instead, but not before doing some veggie shopping at a local market. This place was the real deal, folks. Just look at those pictures!

 

 

I had shopping lists from several people that wanted fresh produce, and Matt and Anthea were both so helpful in finding the veggies and carrying the bags. Matt speaks Portuguese muito bem, so he did a lot of the questions and translating for us, but I remembered how to say a couple things and was so proud of myself when I understood the answers.

It’s the little things in life that make you happy.

After that we had lunch. That. Chicken. Was. Amazing! And they gave us so much food! We got three large plates of this awesome chicken, with salad, rice and French fries on the side, which was more than enough food for four and a half people. Lunch cost us 880.00 Meticais, which is about $30.00 US. Not bad, huh? I wish I’d gotten the name of that place…

 

Oh well. Matt knows where it is. I’ll just bug him for the address if I need it.

After that we went to the grocery store and then we drove back to Gorongosa on the main road, which was as full of car-size potholes as it usually is, but was not nearly as bad as that dirt road was. And last but certainly not least, we stopped at a roadside stand for some fruit.

Bananas! Bananas that weigh more than Caden!

 Crossing the Pungue on our way back to the park. This time we drove over the bridge instead of taking the boat.

Caden fell asleep on the way home as well, and woke up just in time to see a porcupine right outside of the park gate. It was dark, so I didn’t get a picture, but you should definitely Google the African crested porcupine. It is really neat looking.

All right people. That’s about it for this post. And if you’re wondering why this post is up mid-week instead of on the weekend, it’s because this has been a busy week, and we’ve got another post coming this Saturday, which will be centered on Caden and the big adventures he had yesterday. Sorry for leaving you on the edge of your seat… well… no, actually, I’m not.

See you then.

Elephants on the Runway!

Lunch was quite an exciting event yesterday! A group of 6 or 7 elephants crossed the open runway field, in plain sight of everyone! It was so unexpected and so amazing. We all left our tables and raced to the fence, getting as close as we could dare to go; I learned my lesson last year and stayed well back, especially since I was trying to juggle Caden and the camera. Even the people who have been here for years were just as excited as the weekend campers to see these elephants, and, unfortunately, I only have one good-ish picture to share. Look right behind the red helicopter. :-)

Guess where we are?

Well, there are baboons jumping on our roof every morning (I didn't request a 5am wake up!), a vervet monkey stole an apple from the breakfast buffet today, and we passed through a group of feeding warthogs on our way home from playing in the red helicopter… we must be in Africa again!

Our trip started out the same this year as it did last year: getting up early in the morning...

...taking an hour shuttle ride to JFK, sitting on a huge plane for fifteen hours (I watched four movies)...

 

 (some African river near Beira, as seen from the plane window)

...waiting over an hour while the police in the Beira airport decide what to do with Ryan’s dart gun--let it pass, confiscate it or, try to get some money out of Ryan in exchange for letting it pass… even though we have all the proper paperwork...

(that dartgun business is enough of a story to take up an entire post on its own, lemme tell ya)

...and getting to the park just before they close the gate at 6pm!

We’ve settled in pretty quickly this year. So quickly, in fact, that I’ve already lost track of what day it is. Every day just feels like Day here. There is no Monday, Wednesday, Sunday, etc. when we’re here for three months. There’s no clear activities going on that would indicate whether it’s a weekday or a weekend for me because Caden and I pretty much do the same thing every day, and if Ryan has work to do today then he works, if he doesn’t, then he rests and we get some family time. And that’s how it goes for the whole season. 

One of the ways that this season is different from the last is that I came more prepared for the down time and the mosquito hours when it wasn't really a good idea to let Caden play outside. I brought a whole totebag of craft stuff to keep a three-year-old entertained, and it's working pretty well so far.

 

 We made a fish, and I tied it to a stick so he could pretend it was swimming. Being Caden though, he decided it was more fun to take the fish/stick and whack it around the bedroom. Luckily there is very little furniture, and what there is is very sturdy.

We made bunnies out of toilet paper rolls. He enjoyed rolling his bouncy ball at them like they were bowling pins.

Anyway, the subject of this blog post was a little bit of a conundrum for me because we haven’t been here that long yet, and nothing much exciting has happened yet. Then I remembered that last year you guys had asked some questions about our cabin; what it looked like, what the inside was like, etc., and this week I thought to myself, “Why not give them a tour?” So I made a little video—hopefully it loads properly—and I hope you guys enjoy it... but then the internet said, "I don't think so," and put the kibosh on the whole thing. It probably said it in Portuguese, too, the multilingual punk.

So, I tried for hours and hours to upload that video. I tried different network connections, different locations around the park compound... I alternated between pleading and threatening... and when I saw that after all of that my progress was still only at 5% I had to grudgingly admit defeat. I will do a post with pictures of our cabin, but it will probably be the next one, as this post is already waaaaaaaay overdue.

In lieu of a cabin-touring video, and in the absence of any really exciting stories, here's a bunch of random pictures from our first week and a half here.

 

Here's our resident geckos. I used to think there were three, but I've only seen two of them for a while now, so I think the third decided he didn't like us as roommates. :-(

A giant pillbug (or rollypolly, as I always called them). It's hard to tell from the picture, but this guy was about an inch long.

Our first eight-legged encounter of the season. Bleagh!

It's dead.
Actually, this is just the husk that the spider shed...which means he's still out there somewhere, wandering about.

What I really wanted was for Caden to pick it up so I could take a picture of him holding this very live-looking spider and freak the grandmas out. But he wouldn't go along with it (kid has more sense than he lets on sometimes), so I volunteered because I still wanted you all to see the remains of this little monster. See how much I love you guys? The sacrifices I'm willing to make...

Here's a snake skin we found while out exploring. Coolness.

Caden's favorite cubbyhole. It was built as a lockbox to keep your valuables safe. I will admit I have occasionally been tempted to lock him in there. Alas, the key doesn't work, so the lock cannot lock.

Serious Minion.

Silly Minion.

Has anyone seen Despicable Me? Caden is currently crazy about the minions. He has a minion ball cap, minion jammies, minion t-shirt...

Trying out the GPS collar...

A dung beetle? This guy was about the size of half a golf ball, and he totally reminded me of those big black beetle-things in The Dark Crystal. Anyone remember those?

Drawing snakes in the dirt. Caden informed us that this is a Mommy snake and a Baby snake. Awww.

Our cabin from the outside.

A devoted little knitter, sittin' in a car seat. ;-)

Spawn of Shelob eating a bumblebee. Move along before you get nightmares, people.

A little bushbuck that hangs around near our cabin. We see her almost every day.

This guy was grazing near the swimming pool and I was just so impressed with his tusks that I had to take a picture. I mean, we see warthogs all day, every day over here, but most of them are females and juvies. This guy was pretty cool looking.

Ryan got to see lions on one of his days out and about in the park. He counted about ten in this pride, but there might have been more. A very cool sighting of one of Gorongosa's few lion prides.

Well, that's about for now. Things have been kind of quiet since we got here, and since I don't have much else to report I don't think I'll be doing another post until Saturday of next week, which I will seriously try to get uploaded on time. So, have a lovely weekend, and T.T.F.N.