Simon at Sepilok

Salina was moved from Quarantine to Outdoor Nursery today (Ruby went yesterday), leaving just Naomi in there needing to "complete her time" (90 days in total) before release.

Sogo Sogo continues to be isolated in the Clinic so there's little chance of me getting a farewell cuddle with her now :-(

Our "authorised" group photo day is tomorrow, so hopefully the sun will shine and i'll get plenty of time with all the others to make up for that disappointment. Not sure if i mentioned there is a Sea Eagle here too, recovering from an injured wing - beautiful bird...

Back to the small mammal traps again this morning and a prediction of 9 trappings from me proved to be a tad over confident.
There were in fact just two, one of which (a large tree shrew) was new to us and therefore needed to be weighed, measured and then released.

After that it was back to the new play area to hang up some more rope and chain swings and to tie a long rope ladder to a nearby tree.
The first few youngsters seemed to love it, even though construction was still going on all around them!

Our final small mammal trap visit (in fact our last real work day!) followed some torrential rain.
After this mornings dismal effort I predicted zero trappings, but we had two.
One was new, a Lows Squirrel. It was an adult but they are very small.

A little more drilling and final fixing of the ropes and we are as complete as we can be with the play area now - all we need now are the remaining coconut leaf roof panels to arrive and to put up a big scramble net at the back of the area.

Then we can stand back for a final "coat of looking at" and give ourselves a big pat on the back.
Here you can see Nick and I are not playing, just "testing the ropes for strength"...

If we get a dry morning tomorrow we hope to get some of the babies and youngsters out for an official opening and inaugral playtime on there - fingers crossed!!

As evening started to draw close we were allowed up to the Outdoor Nursery to see some of the older ones building nests in the trees around the area.

It was great to see Tompong, one of the newly released orangutans, happily breaking branches and settling down for the night.
Most of the others are still content to sleep on the roof of the nursery or under the water tank(!!) but they'll get braver and more used to living outside over the next few weeks and months.

Even allowing for a lack of experience, Kimbal's attempt at a "nest" on the ground with just a single leaf was still pretty poor though... :-)

Becky's birthday tonight, then our Sepilok farewell party night with the Rangers tomorrow. Some serious Tiger taming in prospect methinks... :-)