Day 17

Starting the morning at 4am with a cup of hot chocolate served at the tent by Simon. It’s not raining anymore but it still drips from the canopy. Up on the road Andy heads to the left and Simon and I go to the right. Simon almost immediately spots a small galago heading down a tree. Great! Physical confirmation that something of a smaller character is here as well! We continue and see a Garnett’s galago, a Palm Civet and a Genet (exact species not known but see pictures of the common Genet (Genetta genetta) here). Not too shabby! Simon then hears a longer bout of a smaller galago’s call. His impression is that it is a Kenya Coast Galago calling. We hope to hear more but the rest of the morning is quiet. We just have to wait until the evening see.

Our camp at Kambai Forest Reserve
(Photo by Simon Bearder).

 The afternoon was spent assembling the traps. The Chardonneret traps, cage traps, do take some time to pull back together again but when Said, Abeid, plus all three of us made a joint effort it was pretty painless. Price to most esthetically assembly goes to Said. His skill goes way beyond superb field cooking.  All but two traps were then rigged and baited before darkness fell upon us at 6:45pm.

From left: Said, Abeid and I assembling Chardonneret traps
(Photo bt Andrew Perkin).

Joining Simon again, we didn’t see or hear anything. That’s not all true of course. We did see one Garnett’s galago and loads of fire flies. The latter does make the forest into a discotheque with their green and white lights floating around, very fascinating to watch. Back at camp we had a feast waiting. Earlier during the day we got a chicken delivered, donated to us by Patrick the farmer, and Said had now prepared it for dinner. Andy was not yet to be seen so we felt obliged to dig in before he came back. Just when we finished our supper Andy returns to camp. His evening had been more fortunate than ours, to say the least. He had recorded an advertising call (the telltale sign of a galago species) and taken photos of the caller. It does appear that the Zanzibar galago is in town!

The Zanzibar galago! (Photo by Andrew Perkin)