Talek Camp Animals

Here at the Mara Hyena Project we live inside the reserve and as a result we are surrounded by wildlife. We have a few favorites among the visitors to our camp and today I’d like to share them with you!

This is Peppa. He is a slate-colored boubou and his favorite hobbies include hopping around our lab tent floor and singing a really pretty song to us in the morning.

This is Henry. He is a white-browed robinchat and an exceeding handsome little bird. He is very territorial of our lab tent. Sometimes if Peppa is caught too close, Henry is quick to get in Peppa’s face and chase him away.

This little ray of sunshine is Chase, a spectacled weaver. Chase is the best because he’ll look all over the lab tent for hidden bugs and snatch them right up when he finds them. He is also very bold and will sit right on our laptops!

This is a Ruppell’s starling, or as we call them, an Edgar. There are a bunch of these birds around camp so we refer to them collectively as Edgar. The Edgars are very loud at night, but they make up for it by being so iridescent and beautiful!

Cromwell, a cardinal woodpecker, is the latest edition to our camp menagerie and you can often find him pecking at the growths on the skulls around camp. These growths are horn moth larvae and Cromwell is getting many tasty meals from our collection! You always know where he is in camp because of his telltale rat-tat-tat-tat.

We also have an abundance of vervet monkeys that pass through camp on occasion. They are certainly cute, but very mischievous! We have to make sure to lock up our kitchen tent, otherwise we'll find it ravaged by hungry monkeys. 

Last but not least, this is a common bulbul. You may notice the flash of yellow on its bottom half, and for that reason we call these birds “butterbutts”. They love to perch on our tarp strings to keep a look out for good bugs to eat.

We of course love observing and being with our hyenas, but it’s also nice to have a few familiar faces we can count on in our own camp. It’s definitely a perk of living outside and when I eventually go home I’ll have to find some new friends in my own backyard!