Departure

Sitting in a hotel in Nairobi at the moment. Up in about 6 hours to catch a connecting flight! (That's where I started writing this at least until my internet ran out!) But anyway, since I'm done, gone, etc. I thought I'd just upload the last few photos I've taken. Also, there's some ones from earlier on that I didn't put up!

 This is Carla the new Forest staff. The other forest staff left at the same time I did so it's just her now.

 This is my eye because... well, why not?

 Two sleeping sykes' monkeys in a tree.

 Tropical House Gecko. These are these are the same ones that run around the house all the time.

 A bat found trying to sleep in a tree. Think I disturbed him a little.

 The shadow on the wall makes this thing look really cool I thought. It only has two wings on each side really, but it looks like it has four.

 Agnes, on the left, was our waitress for the past 6 weeks.

 Miguel looking interested.

 Perfect timing.

 I, uh, didn't want to leave...

 Lisa

 Jack

 Stace

 Charles Cornforth the Third, Son of Gary.

 Can't remember what this bird was. Might have been a flycatcher I think or something.

 Scooby, smuggler's dog. He came for a walk with us down the West Road on my last day.

 Pippa. Pippa's creepy.

 The galago that would visit us at smuggler's and steal our food.

 Zanj Sun squirrel. I badly wanted to get a picture of one of these before I left because they just look so cool. Taken on my last day.

 Another dead snake with the head cut off. I should say that cutting off the head isn't just like mutilation or anything. The fangs can still inject venom if the snake is dead so it's common practice. At least in Shimoni, I think.

 Found this little guy in the golden orb-web spider's web, the one I've been visiting. No idea what he is. Could be a male, or a baby, or a completely separate species.

 Pretty flower.

 Either a different millipede from the giant african millipedes we usually get or a baby one. Not sure which.

 Din dins.

 Some sort of really really flat slug outside the house. It looked 2D almost.

 A couple of speckled mousebirds. Hadn't seen them for 6 weeks, then saw them everyday for like three days or something.

 Pretty butterfly.

 The whole time I'd wanted to get proper shots of baboons. Usually they're a lot more common but they seemed to disappear once I arrived. Again, my last week is when everything seemed to happen.

 A motorbike came along and this guy ran for it.

 An Olive Bee-eater, sometimes called a Madagascar Bee-eater. I thought they looked pretty cool.

 Not 100% what it is. Some kind of pipe fish one of the guys said. Head looks like a sea-horses.

 Crowned hornbill. One of the more common birds.

 Some sort of Death Fly... of Death! Huge little bugger.

 Bonfires & Coke. Sat around watching the burning of the rubbish.

Liked the colour of this dead coral. The colour has faded in most of them.

 Sun. I got bored.

 A sea urchin. I stepped on one of these during a trip to the shelf. Spine went straight through my shoe and into my foot. I was knee deep in water and about ten minutes walk from land with nowhere to sit so I had to walk back to shore with it in my foot. Not pleasant.

 Don't think I included this one in the Roseate terns post.

 This little guy wandered in one days and decided that this was his watermelon. He got up and tried to walk away, but the watermelon was too heavy for him so he just stood there holding it and started crying.

 Jessie & Mark. American forest volunteers.

 Jess, the new community staff. There hasn't been any community anything for a while so she's on her own at the moment with the exception of the community officer.

 About to sneeze.

 ZORRO!!

Like I said, Pippa's creepy.

Came out of arrivals gate to this. There's a more embarrassing version of this story that's better told in person so I'll wait.

So that was Kenya. That's everything that happened and pictures to prove it. I'll be seeing you all soon.
Laters
-Kev

Kisite Revisited

On Tuesday a few of us were told that we'd be going out on the boat the next day rather than going into the forest. There's a group of Roseate Terns on Kisite Island at the moment, about an hour and a bit off the coast and GVI and a couple of guys from Kenya Wildlife Service go out and take recordings. This is only the second time they've done it. Roaseate Terns are migratory and at this time of year they use the island as a breeding ground.
Anyway, I'll start from the morning.

We started off at the jetty at around six in the morning. We waited about an hour to get the permits and for the boat to arrive.

A photo I took of a kingfisher while we were waiting around.

A black kite.

After about an hour on the boat we arrived at the island. There's a sand bank just before it where the boat pulls up. As we came closer there were hundred of terns resting on the bank and we could see a few flying above the island.

The boat pulled up about 20 metres from the sand bank and we waded in from there.

A close-up shot of a Roseate Tern.

A few of the hundreds of birds on the sand bank.

Our base manager and the guys from KWS went to go up onto the island to count the eggs and see how many pairs of terns there were. That's when things really started happening.

 Literally thousands of terns took off from the island and started swarming all over the place, calling out to each other. Eventually I was able to get closer once the tide went out.

It was like being in a wildlife documentary. Thousands of them flying and calling to each other like a metre above my head.

The captain got a call that there were whales not far from where we were so we went to the shore to see if we could get a look at them. This is what I got:

Those little triangles waaaay out there are dorsal fins, I was told, of a humpback whale. Would have liked to see them closer but you could see the spray from their blowholes which was cool.

Saw some other cool things on the way tot he shore though (the tide had gone out so the shore was a lot further away than it had been).

 An eel

 This is the view of the island from the shore. All of it was previously covered in water.

 Sea Cucumber.

This crab looked like it had a fight with the octopus it's holding. Think it had won since it was the one still moving.

That's all really for now. Might post a few straggler photos tomorrow since it's my last day! :'(
See ya'll soon
-Kev