Lots of cubs and big 5

Taking the maruti to talek today and then Nairobi tomorrow to pick up the new RA! Slept in this morning since I have been sleeping badly due to pee/hippos/etc. Lots to do to get ready for Nairobi trip, including clean my tent since someone might stay in it while I’m gone.

We saw the entire BIG 5 over the course of 24 hours and three hyena territories which was super exciting! Started with some lions in happy zebra territory the other morning, two big males, one walking, one sleeping about a km apart from each other. We also found HZ’s other den that morning!

More on that after. That evening in south we saw a black rhino which is always a treat! I’m at the point now where I’m starting to wonder- will I see another leopard or rhino before I leave? With most of Feb, March, and April left hopefully I will. South den scene is still booming and a real treat, great visibility, we know all the cubs, considering 6 months ago there wasn’t a den this one is amazing.

The next morning we joke about seeing a leopard since we didn’t get one last night (and thus have big5 in a single day). We see a serval and I decide that we can pretend the serval is a leopard. Spotted cat- all the same thing. Only finding hyenas in group of two and three so didn’t get a target trial in, but still been seeing lots of hyenas so still good obs!! Then as we’re driving along the river road back towards camp I spot a leopard up in a tree! Just the silhouette of a cat-shape and the long graceful tail dropping down. I shouted stop stop! We just got our big 5!! (In 24 hours if not in a single day). Beautiful sighting, my camera was on night settings though so my photos are a little fucked up. It chilled out in the tree for about 5 minutes then climbed down and walked off into the thicket. Leopards are simply magical creatures… blows my mind every time I see them, they take your breath away.

Great news- Emily got into vet school!!! Super super happy for her (and that I’ll have a roomie for next year!). So now we can start looking for apartments in earnest. Julie says most grad students live in an area about ten minutes drive away, but Emily and I think that for at least our first year we want to be within walking distance of campus, so less than two miles. After a year if we want to move closer to the grad student community we can. MSU is so big that it even has a grad student dorm so there will still be other grads around.I received a first year fellowship as well as an early start fellowship so I’ll probably move up sometime in june and possibly take a class during the second summer semester. Super excited to get an early start and do work for Kay with the database.

So we also found HZ’s other den with all our missing hyenas. Windsor has been very lame, just a sacked out hyena and little nursing cubs that you can barely see because of grass. We haven’t been sure if Boom and Arba’s cubs were alive because we hadn’t seen them in so long! However it turns out they just moved their den about 300m further south than their old den, closer to the dip of the valley and a lugga. Unfortunately the grass is out of control there and we need to figure out how to get around a lugga to get a better view of them. 

Named it Tigris Den, after deciding that their old den: Amazon was to be the start of a river themed den area. Anyway- we saw BOOM nursing two cubs which means Rum Gone and Plank are still alive, and we saw Arba nursing which means cute little Tarantula is alive!! We haven’t even aged Tula yet because we got such a brief glimpse of him. So far this theme of Pike’s cubs having cubs when they’re two and all the cubs living is unbroken! Hawk is also there which means she moved Sport and Play to this den from Windsor. We also saw Snapper show up and though we have no idea what snapper’s cub looks like we’re very excited to name it Dawa. Basically this den more than doubles the number of HZ cubs. The cubs at this den were all very big with spots running and play romping and I don’t know a single one of them! Very strange to see cubs with spots and not know who it belongs to. One of them was big and orange and fluffy so I declared it Clay Junior or CJ for short.

Also got my first real slender mongoose sighting. Before this it’s just been glimpses of tail or body that people assured me by process of elimination must be a slender mongoose. This one was running around on the track popping in and out of tall grass so we actually got to see its entire body sniffing around, and it didn’t run away with our presence. It stayed and scampered about for a minute or two before disappearing. Super cool. The tip of their tail has a black tuft of hair like a lion- very distinctive and cute.

And Lady is alive and only slightly gimpy, so now I really have no idea who the dead sub is. However, there are still many subadults we have not yet seen including Koala, Spec, Ana, BilJ, Crim, Spud, Slim, Dalt (though I think it was bigger than slim or dalt), Tero (hopefully not!!!) and Gobe.  

Stuff stuff...

Emily and Julie are back in camp! Slept great the night before last so doing the 4 hour drive to Keekorok and back was not too bad. Though I got coated in dust; Emily said I was looking very tan but I’m pretty sure I was just dirty. Funny how distances are out here- a two hour drive seems pretty short to me now. Keekorok is not too far away, about 60km, though I’m sure it’s only 30km as the crow flies. Back in the states any drive over an hour is a trip! It’s always interesting driving around in the middle of the day, the light is so different its like a breath of fresh air to see the Mara like this. There aren’t very many animals out but we did see a few lions on the drive back. The roads are still pretty bad, I can handle pot holes, mud, rocks, dust, dips and ditches, but shoot me now if I have to drive over washboards like that again. They just rattle the car so hard I feel like the car will fall apart, so I end up creeping along in 2^nd gear. Totally awful.

Haven’t seen Saur’s cubs in a while so I think she may have moved them to Sherman’s den. Emily says that Lady (Sherman’s subadult cub) was really badly injured and hanging out around runway den so we’re both really worried now that this dead sub was Lady. If he hadn’t been doing too well it wouldn’t be surprising if some lions got him or he just died from not getting enough food.

Hilarious morning the other day- not only did we see Sherman’s cubs for the first time (she has two!) but we also found some taka taka in the road. This taka taka turned out to be a tray of 12 yogurt cups, of which 10 were good!! So we’ve had yogurt for breakfast in camp for two days now. With three people in camp now the workload has significantly decreased and we spent all day yesterday watching movies, by which I mean Sherlock and Dexter.

I buzzed my head the day we found the yogurt and it feels amazing! I just didn’t have any reasons to not cut it anymore. I can’t really remember why I was growing it out other than just to see how long it would get. French-braiding it was fun for about two weeks before it was too much work. And if I buzz it now it will be short and messy by the time I get back to the US. No regrets! Brushing and detangling and just dealing with so much hair was just getting to be too much work! Not worth it. Buzz feels super cool, temperatures and breezes feel really neat. My hat also sticks to my head like Velcro.

The cultural differences with regards to hair also stand out- when I asked Philimon to borrow their clippers they were like: cool ok. In the US a girl buzzing her head would be a big deal, but here everyone has short hair, including the woman, so it was no big thing to them. A few questions on why I cut it but everyone is just like ok cool. Along with my shuka apparently I’m starting to look much more maasai!

Rain last night and sprinkles this morning so we’ve stayed in, however hippos were really really noisy which ruined what was supposed to be a night sleeping in! The weather has been very random with lots of clouds and random sprinkles these last four days. Makes for some very pretty lighting at times (and cool lightning too!) However this is supposed to be a dry season until the long rains in March so this off and on cloudiness is unusual, but of course welcomed since the short rains were very sparse and the crops always need more rain.

Great luck getting Target trials with Julie which is really exciting. Very fun to be doing grad student experiments again! Got two in happy zebra our very first night out which is just ridiculous because we’ve hardly been seeing anyone in HZ, let alone in good spots for target trials. Did one with NatG a mid-low ranking young male and Eremet, the high ranking young mom I’ve talked about before.

Then the other evening in South we started tracking Taj, a mid-ranking adult female. No sign of her, her beeps were going in and out a lot so we think she may have been deep in a lugga which creates a lot of bounce. We did find her 1 year old son chilling out a few hundred meters from the lugga and did a trial with him! A few minutes later we bumped into an immigrant male named Vail and put out target for him as well. South and HZ are the two territories Julie has the least trials in- so that we got two trials in both of them in Julie’s first few days here is really good.

Adventures

Totally exhausted from being in camp all alone! Somehow I just can’t get enough sleep or enough time to nap even. Took one morning to sleep in and felt great- got ten hours in! However I blew it by staying up late that evening hanging out with Chris, Amanda, David, and Ema (two other water researchers who are staying with the Majis).

Then the night before last night some hippos were being ridiculously loud. I really wanted to strangle them. Hippos make a wide array of noises. They usually start off with this high pitched whining shriek that is also kind of like a horse whinny or a rhino squeal. This then lowers down and fades into a series of angry surly grunts. This hippo must have been right outside camp- or perhaps there were two, but it was SUPER CRAZY loud. Argh. However I was just awake enough to notice the whoops and snarls in-between the deafening hippo screams. In my half awake state my brain told me that I had to ignore the hippos in order to figure out what the hyenas are doing, listening to the hyenas was an important job. My brain did not quite wake up enough to remind myself that I should just put my head under a pillow, ignore the hippos, hyenas, and snarling cat, and just go to sleep. Anyway in the morning Philimon said the hippos were probably fighting with the buffalo. Apparently buffalo get all huffy about hippos invading their space every night. And the snarling cat was a leopard who had killed an impala that they hyenas wanted to steal. Needless to say I slept fitfully! And fitful sleep produces lots of dreams about… rhinos. Totally random. But the rhino dreams turned about the prophetic because I saw a rhino while driving around that morning. It was being very chill until a plane flew over and it freaked out and ran into the thicket. Didn’t get too close a look at it because there were 3 hyenas 200m away that I needed to ID.

Maruti needs a new fuel pump, apparently all the repeated bangs in the gas tank have finally taken their toll. Laragin says the fuel pump has probably slowly been dying. Anyway he actually beat the dents out of the tank so maybe now the fuel guage will be more reliable too! The tank had been shrunk by a good 1/3 in size.

Den scenes have started to get a little boring because I know all the cubs now and playing isn’t a CI so there isn’t much to record. Watching cubs play is fun and sometimes they are ridiculously cute but mostly they just hop in the den, hop out of the den, run around and look at things then scurry back into the den. So it’s just a lot of in and out of sight CIs.

I will say that watching a mother hyena nurse her cubs is one of the most mentally satisfying things ever. Conversely watching a cub that wants to nurse but can’t is probably one of the most frustrating. Cubs put their ears flat back and make a noise we called a squitter, a whiny crying noise, when they beg their moms to nurse. Hearing a cub squitter is like hearing a baby cry; it’s like nails on a chalkboard. I want to shout out “for the love of god will someone please sack out and nurse that cub!”

At north den we have TREX who is a low-ranking new mom. Both her cubs have made it to 9 weeks now and are looking good though Clever Girl is definitely smaller than Shooter. Normally a new mom won’t successfully raise two cubs, especially a lower-ranking one so its great to see them both still alive. However Clever and Shooter are having some serious nursing issues. Cubs usually settle dominance pretty early on and the dominant cub will always take the preferred nursing position (parallel to mom) while the subordinate cub nurses by mom’s tail. In Clever and Shooter’s case, Shooter won’t let Clever nurse at all. It was hard to watch Shooter biting Clever until Clever finally just sat up and meandered away looking depressed. It’s hard to stay emotionally disconnected from the animals sometimes and Shooter was being so mean to Clever that I really wanted TREX to interfere and stop nursing Shooter. But it may be that TREX simply isn’t producing enough milk for the two of them such that when Clever starts nursing alongside Shooter, neither of them get very much milk. Since TREX is a low ranking female (and she’s been lame on her front left leg for over a month now) this isn’t too surprising. Clever Girl is an adorable little cub though so I really hope she makes it!

Siblicide does occur in hyenas but not as often as was originally thought. Usually when there’s only one cub the other cub may have died during birth, or the mother wasn’t able to produce enough milk and the subordinate one starves. Most siblings I see are best buds and when they graduate the den they often stick together.

Happy Zebra den was having some sibling nursing issues also, but not between the two nursing cubs! Pike and her daughter Eremet both have new babies at the den and the mom daughter pair are almost always at the den together, looking exhausted. (Pike now has 6 grandchildren!) A few nights ago Pike’s youngest daughter (only just a year old this January) had showed up at the den. Hyena moms usually nurse their cubs for over a year so Claymore got weaned very young to make room for Pike’s two new cubs. High-ranking animals usually get weaned a little younger because their mom can support them at carcasses and switch them over to meat more easily. Erem is also very young for her first litter at 2 years old, most hyenas won’t have cubs until they’re 3 to 5 years old.

Anyway since younger sisters are higher-ranking than older sisters Claymore is higher ranking than her older sister Eremet. Eremet was sacked out trying to nurse her new babies when Clay shows up and starts groaning her head off. Groaning is the noise a hyena makes, usually around cubs, to mean “hey I’m a friend, I won’t hurt you, I just want to sniff you.” I don’t know if it’s because Clay is so young and her sister is to but Clay just could not leave Pike, Erem, and their cubs alone. Any time a cub moved Clay would quickly turn around and groan and groan and sniff it. It seemed like Clay couldn’t understand that she’d been replaced by all these little babies and couldn’t understand why her older sister, who used to spend so many hours playing with her and rough housing her, was now being so boring. Pike finally chased Clay away and bit her a few times which stopped Clay from annoying Pike and but only made it worse for Eremet. Clay didn’t seem to comprehend that the cubs were hungry and wanted to eat, she seemed absolutely fascinated by the fact that Erem was producing milk because each time the cubs would start to suckle Clay would sniff and lick at Erem’s nipples. Groaning, like squittering, can start to sound extremely annoying when a hyena keeps it up for a long period. I wanted to shout at Clay, “stop groaning and go away! They don’t want you here! You’re being annoying!” 

And poor Erem couldn’t do a thing about it, each time Clay stood on top of Erem to sniff and lick her, her cubs would run away into the den, and Erem would look so distressed. Erem’s cubs are very tiny and very black, and at such a young age they need all the milk they can get! I had to remind myself that Clay wouldn’t hang out forever and when I came back the next night I was happy to see Erem nursing two happy and relaxed cubs. Clay’s my favorite happy zebra sub but she almost lost that status that night I was so annoyed with her! Part of me feels sorry for her though; all the other cubs in her cohort still have the attention of their moms while Clay is now all on her own!

When it comes to sibling relations hyenas can be a lot like humans, at times best friends, sometimes annoying the heck out of each other, and sometimes they won’t stop fighting!

Alone in Serena

Back in the mara after a good vacation in Mozambique and enjoying the solitude and driving around watching animals that I get to enjoy all by myself. The grass is crazy tall once again and animals just disappear into it. Watching a lion walk in tall grass is almost mystical, just a slight movement out of the corner of your eye, and then it’s gone. Then the tail flick and like the drop of a stone your mind recognizes that ancient predator: lion. Then the tail is down and there’s just a gentle movement of grass that sets your senses tingling as you watch its gentle hidden motion.

I saw this lioness just before sunset on my way to the den. When I drove closer three more lionesses appeared out of the grass. Literally appeared as if out of nowhere. The way they blend in is simply fantastic, as as they walked past me and into the sunset all that I could see was the black tips of their ears just above the swaying grass.

Later last night the Maruti died, Emily and I did not have any overlap in Serena, we traded places on the drop off. But she said that Laragin had said the engine needed cleaning. I’ll have to call him tomorrow. I was only a few hundred meters from camp, on the road above camp, if I cut through the woods that would get me straight to camp, but the road loops around a bit to stay in the grass. I called Philimon and Moses to see if they could walk out and walk me back so that I could get the cruiser and pull the maruti back. I hear a few hippo noises in the woods and then a hyena comes loping out of the woods in the direction of camp! Finally Moses and Philimon show up from the direction of the road. Turns out there are buffalo in the woods so we have to stick the road and skirt them. They tell me this as I climb out of the car and turn on on a maglight. Part of me was terrifed and part of me was completely calm. Just a few hundred meters through the African bush after darkness- with buffalo. No biggie. Carefully, quietly, and quickly we make the walk back to camp. When we finally are within a few steps of the cruiser I  heave a sigh of relief. It does not take long to tug the maruti back to camp.

TREX is still very lame on her front left leg. Sometime back in December we first saw her all gimpy, when she was at JFab den. Usually hyenas stop limping within a week or two so it worries me to see her still lame. Maybe it’s broken? However both Clever and Shooter are doing well it seems. Though Clever is a little small, Shooter wouldn’t let Clever nurse this morning, but if Clever is clever at all she would have nursed if she was hungry earlier when Shooter was not nursing instead of waiting until her sibling started to nurse.

Ema is officially missing and Dave thinks she’s dead. Her collar has died and Dave always thinks a hyena is dead if its collar has died. But we regularly don’t see hyenas for over two months when they are perfectly healthy. In Ema’s favor she had just started whammin’ so we might not see her until her cubs are around 2 months old or until she brings them to the communal den. Also in her favor is that all of her latest points in December are from waaay up north almost past the northern boundary of north’s territory. This is an area we rarely drive, actually never drive, so if she’s hanging out there and has her cubs in a den up there we definitely would not see her. I drove through that area this morning but it’s a huge space and there aren’t many tracks. Additionally I didn’t get there until 8 since I spent a lot of time at the den this morning. If she was in a hole I wouldn’t have seen her head above the grass and thicket. So I’m not giving up on her yet. The best I can do is try and hit up that area now and then but I can’t drive there every time I do north obs because it takes the entire morning just to drive over there, drive around, and then drive back to camp and doesn’t leave time to check out the usual hyena haunts.

On a good note the dead subadult that Emily found by the den is not Rama. I took DNA tissue samples from the jaw my first day back and then with Philimon’s help we took off the skin and most of the flesh from the skull before putting it in a bucket high up in a tree for the bugs to clean off. Malo’s skull is up there too and it’s clean enough to take dental measurements on now. This sub was completely eaten by the time Emily found it so all we have is the head. There are a ridiculous number of lions in the area, seen them two days in a row now so it’s not too surprising to find a dead sub. In fact, I’m almost positive this is not the only sub that has or will die. Alll the cubs that were at Schiphol Den when I first arrived are over a year old now and graduated from the den. This is their most vulnerable time, too small and inexperienced to be smart about lions and too young to even get their own food and yet they are out there wandering around. Just last night I saw a TINY sub walking on the road, it looked smaller than even Slim or Dalt to me but it must have been one of them out and about all alone in the great big mara. It’ll be another 6 months though before we can take stock and declare anyone missing however.