September

Firstly every month Danau Girang Field Centre make a newsletter called the Jungle Times, as part of the Banteng team Naomi and I wrote last month’s Banteng report for it, the Banteng team will hopefully have a monthly update in it. The Jungle times also shows all the other research projects and current news for Danau Girang Field Centre.. check it out http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/biosi/facilities/danaugirangfieldcentre/index.html 

I spent the first 2 weeks of September with Rusdi on night time Banteng watch duty. During this time we spent the days at the forest house in Malua and the night times keeping watch for banteng. At the forest house we showered and washed our clothes and dishes down at the river because the water pump to pump the water from the river to the house was broken, when it finally got fixed I believe it was just a slipped belt that was stopping it working!!! We also played dominoes (thank you YFC indoor sports!), the boys played the guitar and we sat in the hammocks underneath the house chatting and reading... i would joke its a hard life but 17 hour night shifts are quite hard!! On September 16^th was Sabah Independence day so the forestry staff went home for the day, returning on the 17^th was a feast of fresh fish and lots of biscuits! One of many, many meals of fish that I ate in my time at there... fish caught from the river made up most of our meals over the 2 weeks. 

At the end of September I went on expedition to collect the sd cards and change the batteries in the cameras on the 2 grids of camera traps in Malua. On the first day I walked with Rusdi and we walked 2 transects of camera traps, 9km in total and were home by 1.30... despite me getting ants in my nose and falling down a bank, all in one go! The next day we all (Jo, Lee, Rusdi, Elena and I) started walking together and then split off into groups to check different transects, unfortunately the cameras from 3 of our stations had been stolen by hunters, despite them being padlocked in metal cases that were bolted onto the trees. At the next grid the boys decided that they could walk faster without us girls slowing them down so they went off to walk on 3 days while Jo, Elena and I sorted pictures from the previous grid and only walked on one day. One evening we went down to the house by the river where Rusdi climbed the tree to cut down some fresh coconut for us and dinner contained fresh mushrooms which the forestry staff had picked. I was very good at eating the coconut but pretty bad at cutting them open, I wouldn't survive very well on a desert island!  

Below is a photo of Rusdi up the tree, I missed him climbing it the first time so he had to climb it again for the photo!!