GorillaSound

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!