A Day in the Life of a Fisi Camper

People always seem to be curious about our daily routine here in the Mara. Knowing that we only observe the hyenas in the early morning and evening, people often ask me how we spend the rest of our time. So here's a rough outline of my daily itinerary:

4:30am: Fruit bats sound their alarm.

5:10am: My actual alarm clock goes off. I get up, get dressed, brush my teeth, groggily put on my headlamp, and trudge out to the main lab tent. I record how much it has rained since the previous morning and the previous day's minimum and maximum temperatures. I take a cup of tea for the road.

5:30am: We leave for our morning observation session. Since the sun doesn't rise until close to

7am, we spend the first hour using our telemetry system to track hyenas that are wearing radio collars (more about that another day). Sometimes we'll go and park at the den and see if there are any cubs out and about. We wait for the sun to come up and illuminate their identities.

9:00am: We return to camp, unload our equipment from the car, and sit down to a delicious breakfast consisting of one or more of the following: oatmeal, fruit, crepes, pancakes, scrambled eggs, toast, and french toast.

9:30am: We tackle the daily camp chore. This might be checking the solar power equipment, cleaning up around camp, checking the cars, or printing photos of hyenas for our identification catalogs.

10:30am: I spend the middle of the day on a variety of tasks, most of them computer-related. I check my email, transcribe the notes (recorded orally) from that morning's observation session, or do some dissertation-related work/reading.

3:00pm: The middle of the afternoon is my working-out time. I go for a run outside the park through the local Maasai village (more on that another day, too), or jump rope, or do pilates. It can be tough to stay fit when you're living in a camp surrounded by wild animals, so we often have to get creative.

4:00pm: I take a shower. Our shower is remarkably good—it's heated by kerosene and has great water pressure for a campsite. We shower with river water that has been treated with "alum," a chemical powder that makes the sediment in the water settle to the bottom of the tank. Showering outside is extremely refreshing, barring the occasional mosquito or peeping vervet monkey in a tree overhead.

4:30pm: We have dinner. Everyone each has his/her own favorite meals, but the consensus favorite is certainly guacamole, salsa, black beans or lentils, cheese, and chapattis. Chapattis are a flour-based pancake-like bread that is cooked in oil—similar to a thick tortilla, but with a different flavor. My other favorites are the sweet potato/carrot/ginger soup, spaghetti with steamed vegetables, and sukuma-wiki, which is very similar to collared greens. "Sukuma-wiki" literally means "push the week" in Swahili, and is so named because it's very inexpensive, so people often rely on it at the end of the week to "push" them to their next paycheck. We love it so much, however, that it's always the first thing gone from our weekly food order.

5:00pm: Our bellies full, we leave for our evening observation session. This usually includes being graced by a spectacular savannah sunset.

8:00pm: We return to camp for the night and head straight to our tents. I talk to loved ones or do some pleasure-reading—our camp has a substantial library of books accumulated over twenty years' worth of transient students.

9:00pm: At this point I'm struggling to keep my eyes open…a good thing, too, because 5am comes very quickly!

Ugali

The following is a poem written about ugali, a staple in the Kenyan diet. Ugali is similar to cornmeal mush and doesn't have a strong flavor, so it's used in conjunction with other foods—vegetables, sauces, stews, etc.—to add substance and carbohydrates to a meal. The author of this poem lived in East Africa for many years but currently resides in the United States.

UGALI-
Immaculately swept dirt,
an African hut/home
aroma of hay dripping
from recently rained upon
thatched roof,

Ugali-
A steaming mound of
lovingly, laughingly
prepared corn meal.
In the dark
field coarsened hands of
a dusky Sukuma woman.

Ugali-
scratchy, firm
hot ball rolled
in the right hand
—only the right hand.
A concave cup of
corn swiped in spicy
stewed sauce.

Ugali-
grainy and coarse
bland yet spiked.
A mushy meal
made meaningful
by careful preparation
and conversation.

Ugali-
a simple warm
welcome.

-bzm, 10 May 2008

Individually ID-ing hyenas

One of the most common questions I get about my research is, “Can you REALLY recognize all the different hyenas you study?” The answer is yes, but it takes a while to get good at individually identifying animals! There are several ways we tell our hyenas apart…

The first clues we use are a hyena’s body shape and coloration. Male hyenas look quite different from females; their bodies are smaller and skinnier. This lets us immediately determine whether a hyena is male or female. Coloration is also really helpful in being able to tell who's who! Hyenas’ color ranges from blonde to red to dark brown, and their spots can be anywhere from barely noticeable to extremely dark.

The second way we can recognize hyenas is by their spots. After a hyena develops its spots, the pattern never changes. Once we learn what a hyena’s spots look like, we can recognize it for the rest of its life!

Finally, hyenas often suffer ear injuries due to aggression from others. This damage can range from tiny slits in their ears to huge chunks of missing skin, and it lasts forever! We often use hyenas’ ear damage to help us tell different individuals apart.

The pictures above are of two different hyenas, ET (a female) and Alum (a male). Their body shapes, coloration, spot patterns, and ears all help us to tell them apart. Could you recognize these hyenas again?

The Other Residents of Our Camp

We aren't the only primates who inhabit our camp here in the Mara. Vervet monkeys, bushbabies, and baboons also call Fisi Camp home, and their presence can at times be quite amusing, but it can also be quite irksome.

The vervet monkeys squawk at each other all day long, use the tarps over our tents as trampolines, and spend a lot of time devising plans to steal any food we might unwittingly leave out of a zippered tent (or, on occasion, in one). They watch us from the haven of the bushes, and when they think we aren't looking they creep closer and closer, jumping on the tarps above each tent if they have the chance. If we are vigilant enough to catch them in the act, they freeze and look at us for a moment like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar, then scamper off back into the bushes. This continues, and each time the vervets try a new route to their destination. It all basically amounts to a giant game of capture-the-flag, with the fruit in our kitchen tent as the flag. Yesterday I spotted a vervet getting close on my right side so I yelled, "I see you!" and it ran off. Apparently, however, it didn't think I saw it double back into the bushes, because two minutes later it was creeping toward me again, this time from my left side. This time I stood up and yelled and it got the message, at least for another few minutes. I wonder if I catch one if it will put its hands on its head and walk to a designated vervet jail…

The bushbabies are barely recognizable as primates—they look more like gremlins (but only Gizmo, the cute gremlin). They are about the size of a stuffed animal, all black, and with huge pointy ears. They have a long tail and they are adept trapeze artists, often leaping from tent pole to tent pole with ease. One, which my labmates have named Milo, is especially fond of hanging around at dinner time, and when he is lucky enough to get a scrap, he eats it very carefully with his tiny little hands—definitely his most human-like quality (well, besides his gluttony).

Then there are the baboons. Baboons are a bit more problematic because they are a lot bigger (a large male is the size of a small man), have very sharp teeth, and are a lot gutsier when it comes to stealing our stuff. We've had an assortment of belongings stolen by baboons, primarily containers of sugar. One time a box of wine went missing, and after a few days we found the remains of the container discarded in the woods. Suffice it to say I imagine THAT was a fun evening for that baboon! One particular male has his own specific spot in the woods where he stashes his loot, and we have found many of our things there, the most amusing of which was a pack of D-cell batteries. I'm not sure what a male baboon needs with D-cell batteries, but perhaps he's building something, in which case we should probably offer him our electrical tape and our spare wires and see what he comes up with. Last summer I was sitting under at our main table one afternoon, and this very same male walked to about ten feet from me and sat down. I saw him and started warning him to stay away, at which point he seemed to contemplate my threat level (I'm 5'1") and proceeded to march right up to the lab tent and go inside. He emerged a minute later with our box of banana bread in his hand, paused long enough to give me a look that my labmate Andy oh-so-accurately described as the baboon equivalent of an obscene gesture, and ran off to his spot in the woods. I now know that I need to start yelling a lot earlier and wave my arms, which seems to work. Our banana bread is FAR too precious for me to let that guy get the better of me again.

BBC comes to Kenya

It’s been a rather hectic few days here at camp, because BBC has been here filming our hyenas (as well as us!) for a short documentary. It’s been really interesting to work with the film crew – I had no idea that so much time and energy goes into a 4-minute TV segment! There were two producers, a cameraman, an audio guy, and a driver, along with a LOT of impressive camera and sound equipment. They taped several hours of footage of us darting a hyena, working at camp, and conducting our hyena “intelligence tests.” I don’t think the crew was prepared for all the logistical difficulties of working out here in the field, as their grand plans were repeatedly challenged by bad weather, rough terrain, and rather unpredictable hyena behavior!

However, in the end they got some great footage, and it will be fun to see our hyenas star on TV. The segment will air in early October during a special live episode of Big Cat Diaries. If you have access to BBC, be sure to watch!

Juvenile hyenas at play

We watched a wonderful play bout, involving several juvenile hyenas, that lasted over half an hour. These kids played very rough, but nonetheless looked like they were having fun. In the photo, they are playing right in front of our new research station, which is hidden in the trees at the top right of this picture.

Welcoming the wildebeest!

As we celebrate the launch of our new blog, we are also welcoming hundreds of thousands of wildebeest to the Masai Mara! We (as well as all the hungry carnivores here) have been eagerly awaiting the "Great Migration" for months, and it has finally arrived! Over the next few weeks, up to one million wildebeest will cross the border from Tanzania and eat their way through miles and miles of tall grass here in the Mara.

We were lucky enough to witness one of the first river crossings that these wildebeest encounter on their epic journey. It was completely amazing...thousands of wildebeest were just standing over a gorge, waiting for one brave herd member to decide to cross. Once the first individual descended down the steep bank, chaos ensued as all the wildebeest flooded into the tiny crossing and flung themselves into the river. This herd was lucky enough to escape the hungry crocodiles waiting in the water, and they all emerged safely from the gorge.

Now the plains are bursting with prey, and our hyenas are all fat and happy! More updates to come as the amazing migration continues to move across the Mara...


-Kate

Returning to the Mara

I just came back to the Masai Mara, having been away since last August. Like most places I've called home, upon returning I feel as if I'd never left. Everything is familiar: my tent, the roads, the hyenas, the french toast we had for breakfast this morning, even waking at 5am and going to sleep at 9pm. I would say that I forgot how much I missed field work, but that's not true…I did miss it, but I never forgot. We continue to live the dream here as we spend our days witnessing animals at all levels of the food chain exhibiting a wide range of behaviors. For instance, I couldn't help but smile this afternoon as the Land Cruiser I was driving approached a family of warthogs (mom, dad, and three young ones) foraging near the road. After seeing me—well, more likely hearing me, given the noise the truck makes—dad gave me a watchful eye as mom rounded up her kids and herded them away from the road. They gladly clung to her side as I drove by and nodded to dad my appreciation of his family.

The fruit bats outside my tent have taken it upon themselves to decide that 5am just isn't early enough, and that I should really be waking up at 4am each morning. They ensure this happens with their calls, which are dead ringers for an alarm clock—an alarm clock without a working sleep button. The soy milk and spinach in my diet have been replaced with fifty-seven different types of carb. In two days I've already acquired eight unidentifiable bug bites, and the baboons and vervet monkeys prowling around our campsite leave an unmistakable stench.

It's good to be back in the Mara.

-Leslie

New research station

Thanks to a very generous donation from Mr. Thom Hogan, during the past several days the research team from the Holekamp lab has been able to establish a new Carnivore Monitoring station in the western part of the Masai Mara, in an area known as the Mara Conservancy. The accompanying photos show erection of the new research station: they include pictures of the site when we first arrived, Dr. Holekamp and MSU graduate student Eli Swanson unloading a vehicle, Kate Shaw and Eli Swanson at the newly erected kitchen tent, and a shot of our new lab tent.

Moss guards her dead cub

This morning we came across an old female named Moss who was guarding her cub that had clearly just been killed within the preceding couple of hours. Watching this is one of the saddest things imaginable; Moss repeatedly tried to groom her cub and wake it up, but to no avail. We do not know what had killed the cub, but it had blood on its neck. Photo taken by MSU student Audrey Derose-Wilson.