Day 4

Take-off for the field! After making the final packing in the morning we took off from Dar-es-Salaam around 10:30am. Helping deploying our stuff to Ruvu South FR with an additional vehicle was the driver Hoja Ihuya from TFCG. Near our fieldsite in the village Kongowe, we met up with Jihaja. Jihaja is the project manager for TFCG in the Kibahe region. While having our lunch we also were accompanied by our cook Said. After finishing the final stretch to the forest we briefly stopped at a nearby village and got a local guide, Saidi Kagora, to come along.

Hoja Ihuya helping tto load the car with camping gear.

After travelling through a forest where a substancial amount of large trees had been cut down for charcoal production we found a good camp site and made ourselves a new, temporary home. Fieldwork begins!

Camp site is found!

Dividing ourselves in two pairs, me and Andy, Simon and Saidi, we started our survey around 6:30pm. Our first spotting was of an Easten Bearded Scrub Robin making a very funny buzzing sound. Moon was lighting up the sky and eventually the first galago made its presence apparent to us - a Garnett's galago (Otolemur garnetti). With the size of a small cat and weighing around 800-1000 grams, this is the largest galago in this forest, by far. Further strolling revealed that the forest contain the other two species that we hoped and are after, namely Zanzibar galago (Galagoides zanzibaricus udzungwensis) (80-110 grams) and the Rondo Dwarf Galago (Galagoides rondonesis) (60-90 grams). Happy days! We did not see any though.

Back at the camp for supper Simon filled us in on his survey what he and Saidi had seen. We thought that the galgos had been a bit quiet and with the massive ongoing forest destruction going on we were a bit sceptical to the sites potential as a galago trap site. During and after supper, however, the galagos really started to sing to us, all three species. This might just be a good place after all...Survey tomorrow morning. Trap assembly tomorrow during the day.

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