Simon at Sepilok

All is still going well at the Outdoor Nursery. All six of the new releases spent the night outdoors and were there this morning waiting for some TLC. Gradually they will get used to the idea that such attention will be limited from now on. Direct contact human will be minimal and highly discouraged. It's quite hard to abide by that rule at times but we know it's in their best long term interests. Some will probably stay close by the security of Outdoor Nursery for many months (or even years - like Doggy) but others will soon venture out into the depths of the reserve and enjoy full lives of their own.

For Group 1 today was the start of our Small Mammal Survey period. Nick dropped out so he could continue with the play area roof so Vicky and I went with Rangers Gabili (the machete man) and Irwan out into the reserve with 30 small traps and some bananas for bait.

The idea is that we leave the traps spread out in lines of 10 along 3 different transects of the forest and then monitor what (if anything) is caught in them over the next two days.

Checking the traps in the afternoon will show us the daytime creatures and checking them again in the morning will hopefully catch us some night animals. Here is a picture of Vicky and Gabili setting a trap...

Just in case you are worried by the ethics of us trapping animals, the traps are not designed to hurt them and after the classification data and size and weight has been recorded they will all be released again.

So after lunch we head back out into the forest. I predicted 5 trappings, Vicky said 2, Gabili said 1, Irwan said none!
It soon became clear that i'd been a little over optimistic, with all the rain this afternoon nothing much had fancied venturing out of cosy nests and burrows! But then after visiting 26 empty traps we had one - a large tree shrew had been caught. Gabili put on a glove and held her up for inspection. We measured the tail length, foot length and body length, then slipped her into a muslin bag for weighing. After that we just snippped a little hair off her left hind leg (so that if we trap the same one again tomorrow we won't double count) and it was time to say goodbye.
Her little jerky movements and beady eyes reminded me of the little squirrel at the start of Ice Age as she ran off into the trees. The rest of the traps were empty so maybe we'll have better luck with the night mammals in the morning...

Tonight is our group Culinary Night with Sylvia. The idea is that we help her to prepare a dinner using some of the many local ingredients. Hopefuly we won't get the chicken feet soup recipe the last group had... :-0