GorillaSound

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 30 2009 | By: gorillasound

Sorry for the lack of blog posts over the past few weeks. The satellite internet connection didn’t work for awhile but is now back online.

October is not a great month. It’s the rainy season so it rains nearly every day. If it rains during the night the gorillas will all be up in the trees in the morning, trying to warm up by being closer to the sun. Then once they’ve come down from the trees they sleep a lot. If it starts raining during the day they’ll find a tree to sleep under. This can be interesting if you are already under the tree Kingo wants to be under. There aren’t many fruits in the forest so they spend a lot of time in the ebuka thickets eating herbaceous vegetation. They have been in the same area of the forest for awhile now and sadly for us its near a sweat bee tree so there have been some days with a million sweat bees crawling all over our faces and arms. And with all this sleeping during the day they aren’t vocalising much. So it’s a wet boring month at Mondika!

Although every day something interesting happens. I’ve been following Kusu and Ekendi so I’ve become more aware of their behaviour. I just realised that when Kusu charges past us and then stops in a travel pose, he’s not trying to freak us out. Well he could be, since I’m not a mind reader, but it is exactly the same way he initiates play with Ekendi. However we just stand or sit there and ignore him, instead of chasing after him and wrestling him to the ground like Ekendi does. So Kusu must think we are the biggest boring kill joys this side of the Mondika river.

And yesterday I was following Kingo through Ebuka thickets. The vegetation is really thick and spiny but there are paths. The problem is if Kingo wants to come back the way he has come and you are still in his way because there often isn’t anywhere to go. So Kingo was eating some leaves and then he decides to go back down the path towards us. Bakombo, Bakanga and I all start squeezing ourselves into this little gap in the vegetation off the path so Kingo can get past. But no, Kingo decides he’ll go off the path and cut through the vegetation in a way that intersects directly where we are all now squeezed together. So he growled at us. Anyway at the time this was hilarious, the whole trying to get away from him but ending up even more in his way, that we were laughing our heads off for about five minutes. I realise that it doesn’t sound very funny when you read it, but you had to be there, it was hilarious!!

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 18 2009 | By: gorillasound

I’ve spent the past two days following Kusu and Ekendi. Although close together in age, these two gorillas have very different behaviours. Kusu is more independent and will spend a lot of time just hanging out close to Kingo, while Ekendi will often spend a long part of the day close by Mekome.

Following the juveniles can be tough, everything happens so quickly. Kusu will be happily feeding close to Kingo. Kingo moves away. Kusu continues feeding until Kingo is very far away and then suddenly he’s off and running through the forest to catch up with his Dad. A few times he’s been running so fast he looks like he’s about to crash head on with a tree but he never does. The problem Kusu has is that although he may spend a lot of the day away from Mama every so often he wants to be with her and will start a long search for her as she often feeds far away from the rest of the group. Once when he was looking for her he came up to where we were sitting and stood there as if to ask ‘ok so do you guys know where Mama is?’

Ekendi likes to hang out and play with Kusu who likes to be close to Kingo. That can lead to problems if Kingo is far away from the other females. Yesterday Kusu and Ekendi were playing close to Kingo and the females were heading off towards the swamp. Ekendi then wanted to be with Mekome but she was too far ahead for him to find her all by himself, so he started calling for her to come and get him. Kingo was close by and was vocalising to Ekendi to let him know that he was there but Ekendi wanted Mekome and continued to call and call. Finally Kingo joined in calling with Ekendi but Mekome didn’t come back so Kingo had to ‘take’ Ekendi to the swamp.

Hopefully they won’t stay in the swamp for a long time as the water level is really high with the rainy season.

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 14 2009 | By: gorillasound

The other day was Emilie’s turn. Following her is not always easy and never relaxing! She walks incessantly, moving so rapidly from one spot to the next that if you are not always ready to run you could easy lose her. Anyway, we were following her among the rest of the group, who was sleeping, while I saw Ekendi approaching the mother (as always whimpering), and I decided to stay and look how was going on between mother and son. He went directly toward her breast, as a response Mekome aggressively bit him. Ekendi, as well as it happened last time started to scream and scream. At that point, Kingo who was sleeping less than 10m away vocalized, Mekome immediately put her arm around Ekendi, who stopped screaming. After few seconds, Mekome bit him again, but looking to Kingo embraced him again. She did it again another time before Ekendi accepted to just sit close to her. It was really funny to see the entire scene. At the end Mekome stood up and walked away, leaving the little Ekendi dreaming about his milk. During the same days and the following days we still have observed Ekendi and Kusu breastfed by their mothers. We have impression that the frequency (the number of time we see them suckling) decreased but the time when they are allowed to get milk increased. We are now starting to collect same data specifically on them to have an idea about how young gorillas get weaned and how their social and ecological behavior changes consequently.

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 11 2009 | By: gorillasound

Kingo’s home range is on the other side of the Mondika river to our camp. To cross the river we have a bridge. Over the actual river it is a proper bridge; planks on top of tree stumps, and over the swampy part of the river it is just long branches laid in parallel. With the rain comes higher river levels and much of the swamp bridge is under water.

On Thursday night some of us were woken up by an elephant in the river. He was just splashing around and eating vegetation. I don’t think anyone was particularly concerned, it’s the sort of things elephants occasionally do. However when we woke up we discovered the elephant had destroyed our bridge! There is one elephant that comes frequently, often in the evening to feed. He just steps over the bridge as it is only 20-30cms above the level of the river. We’re not sure if the elephant that night didn’t see the bridge or couldn’t be bothered stepping over it, but he’d knocked all the planks off the stumps.

Luckily we had the construction team from Bomassa on site (they are building us a new dining room, store and office). So they very helpfully stood around and told our trackers how to fix it. But very nicely the swamp section has been added to so we can nearly cross the river without getting wet feet!

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 07 2009 | By: gorillasound

Roberta and I planned to do all day in the forest so we could catch up on an afternoon we had to miss due to bad weather. By the time we got to the gorillas it started to rain. All the gorillas were high up in a tree and although we could see Kingo we couldn’t tell which female was which, so we sat and waited for it to stop raining. After an hour it had stopped so we started data collection. At least Roberta did, Kingo climbed down from the tree and away he went. I was going to be following Mama, but all the females were still high up in the tree and we couldn’t see their faces. After much walking round the tree and staring through binoculars we figured out where Emilie was, but there were two females who could possibly be Mama. We had to wait for them to come down. Eventually after more than an hour and a half Mama came down from the tree. By this stage it was 9.50am and I could do five minutes of data collection before it was time to swap over with Roberta!!

Then in the afternoon it rained again, so we got wet and the gorillas don’t vocalise much. Kingo spent all day sleeping or up in a tree. But every day with the gorillas something will happen and today it was Kusu trying to steal a rain poncho. Dona and I were following Kingo who was sitting down. Kusu and Ekendi were also close to Kingo and Kusu was between 7-10m away from us happily eating termites. From behind a tree we heard a female so Dona said he would go quickly and see who it was. We were sitting down next to each other, and Dona was sitting on his rain poncho. He got up and left his poncho on the ground. I was just watching him go thinking its amazing how silently the trackers move through the forest. Then a movement catches my eye and I turn round and can see Kusu almost running towards me, staring at the rain poncho next to me on the ground. I quickly grab the poncho and put it on my lap and start clacking at him so he knows that I’ve seen what he’s up to. He looks at me and then does this long detour around me to pretend that really he wanted to go and sit under this tree over here, far away from me and that really the rain poncho had nothing to do with it.

I can understand that if we left something behind on the ground the young gorillas would be very curious about it, but I was very surprised that Kusu would try to grab something on the ground which was right next to me!

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 02 2009 | By: gorillasound

Another day in the forest, this time we decided to do all day in the forest. During the afternoon I was following Mekome with Dona, while Julia was with Kingo with the help of Bakanga. The group was traveling south, just toward the Mondika river. They arrived very close to the river and then Kingo stopped and decided to think about it for a little bit. He sat at the base of the tree and stayed there for a while. The females were scratching the soil around and the little Ekendi and Kusu, quite far away, were already playing into the water. At the end…Kingo decided to not cross Mondika and started to head again towards north.
When the group started to travel Ekendi decided to approach Mekome and why not get some milk before the walk. As lately Ekendi and Kusu always do, they whimper while they reducethe distance to their mothers for milk purpose. But this time it didn’t worked as he expected. Mekome decided that it was not the right moment and when Ekendi tried to put his mouth on Mekome’s breast, she bit him on the shoulder. Ekendi started to cry and screamed so loud that Dona and I were already expecting the arrival of Kingo. More he screamed and more Mekome bit him. She did it for three times (two on his shoulders and one on the head) until Ekendi, still screaming, went 1-2 meters away and sat sadly. Mekome started to travel as nothing happened, and the poor Ekendi just followed her from a secure distance. Later on the little boy got his milk, but not before another hour and only when Mekome lay down to get some rest!
The squabble of growing up already started for our little (and white-spotted butt) Ekendi!!

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 02 2009 | By: gorillasound

I arrived in the Congo with two pieces of luggage. Actually I just arrived in the Congo as my luggage remained in Nairobi for a few days. Briefly, I saw all my luggage in Brazzaville. Then when I left to go to Mondika my second piece of luggage (a storage box with things like all my forest pants, socks, medicine and batteries) was left behind to follow on another flight as it counted as cargo. One month later!! It finally arrived. Luckily I managed to borrow pants to wear and I discovered you can survive for one month on two pairs of socks. Your socks don’t look so great but you cope.
In other logistical matters, our trackers failed to turn up from Central Africa. Usually trackers leave on the pirogue and then new trackers come back on the return trip. This usually means 5-6 days where there are fewer trackers in the camp so they have to work all day following the gorillas instead of swapping at lunchtime. This time the pirogue didn’t come back. They left to Bayanga on Tuesday the 22nd and were supposed to be back on Friday the 26th. We didn’t hear until the Monday that the pirogue had broken down and the trackers didn’t arrive until Tuesday. That meant the other trackers had to work nine days non stop and were absolutely dead on their feet.
And the eco-guards were doing a patrol around Mondika and found a poaching camp about 40kms away, in the park. In total they found 300 animals which had been killed and smoked. Some bushmeat was brought back as proof (antelope, crocodile, porcupine, pangolin and monkey) and the camp was burnt down. This poaching camp had been in operation for a long time. They managed to arrest two of the poachers, one poacher with a rifle escaped and they heard other people firing at them in the forest. This meant that half the patrol came back to our camp (poachers and bushmeat included) to get us to pass a message to Bomassa to send a truck to pick them up. And since we don’t have a radio (its away being repaired - for the last 4 months!) we had to send an email and assume that it was received as most of the people working at Bomassa are away at the moment.

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