Summer at Mpala

Jambo!

I hope everyone is having a great summer so far. I have been in Kenya for about 6 weeks now and am way overdue for posting on this blog!

I’ve been staying at Mpala Research Centre, a beautiful field station in the Laikipia District in western Kenya. Most days I go out from 7-12 in the morning and 2-5 in the afternoon to record superb starling calls and do playbacks; it’s exhausting but awesome. I’m posting a shot of me in the field with my gigantic microphone! There are about 30 other researchers staying here; we share lab space and eat family style meals together in the dining hall-usually ugali, sukuma wiki, lentils, and other African or Indian dishes-and I’ve had a lot of fun getting to know everyone else. Sometimes at night we have a ‘sundowner’ on a cliff or lookout where we can relax and take in the scenery before the temperature drops and it’s too dark to walk around outside.

So far the trip highlights include meeting Maasai warriors that pass through the roads beside our nest sites, driving a rickety 1980s jeep through the bush and having to push start it at least once a week, having close (and sometimes scary!) wildlife encounters, presenting a poster at a regional wildlife forum, and hanging out with local kids at their conservation club meetings. I have been missing some conveniences of home, but overall things here are great. In fact, I’ve decided to extend my trip until the end of July- kind of crazy considering I was so unsure about staying here for more than a month!

I’m putting up some other pics taken here at the research center; one shows the elephants grazing really close to the dining hall and the other’s a nice sunrise shot. More updates to come soon… Can’t wait to hear what the rest of you have been up to!

Kwaheri :-)

Wildlife overload at Finca Luna Nueva

Hi! I guess I'm writing the first post?

OK here's an intro to my stuff in Costa Rica..

After an unexpected slumber party in the Atlanta airport, I arrived yesterday afternoon to Finca Luna Nueva, the farm I'll be working at, in San Isidro in northwest CR..

There are some students from EARTH University in CR visiting la finca, which is nice because I can kind of just follow them around while being introduced to everything. Today, before during and after applying a mycorrhizae spray to the turmeric plants, I saw and heard a bunch of cute and not-so-cute things: a hook-nosed pit viper, a paca, toucans, piglets, lambs, a sloth, tree frogs, and the "ghosts in a blender" sound of red howler monkeys. The difference between here and manhattan is .... really great.

I'm still a bit sleep deprived but I was able to start tagging the plants I'll be using for my experiment today, and it actually looks like it will happen!

Ok well, I hope that this post doesn't get lonely on here all by itself...

Hope everyone's having a great summer

Lisa

Introduction

So, I've been thinking about how great it would be to have one place where we could all blog about our summer research/travels. I'll send the account info in an email, but this way I won't have to wait until September to hear all the details of your amazing summer adventures.

My summer so far included a brief reincarnation as a 7th grade science teacher and then I launched into my first of three rounds of collecting insects on green roofs. I would post a silly picture of me sweep netting, but I can't find my cord to connect my camera. When I find it, I'll post a silly picture.

I hope you all post lots of photos of your studies and other adventures!