That’s us half way! We finished the first half in the most incredible fashion. After not seeing any primates for close to 5 weeks we finally had some luck. Like any normal day, we were walking along one of our transects when the GPS batteries died. As we sat briefly to switch the batteries for new ones, we suddenly heard some faint noises. As we waited for a few moments the noises got closer and closer, then our guide Boa whispered “Mangabey, Mangabey”! We were of course very excited and we waited silently to see if they would get any closer. At this point several other calls were heard (Lowes monkey, spot-nosed monkey and olive colobus). We then realised that this was a much larger group of primates than we had initially thought. Unfortunately, they weren’t getting closer, and it was at this point that we decided to split into two pairs and try to sneak along and maybe catch a glimpse of some of the primates. To our amazement, we succeeded! White naped mangabeys moving through the Reserve in multi-species groups with lowes monkey, spot-nosed monkey, and olive colobus. We even managed to observe a couple allogrooming in the trees. All four of us were over the moon to have seen the mangabeys… it’s not every day you can say you’ve seen critically endangered primates in the wild!
After all of that excitement we had 3 days off at the Escape 3 Points Ecolodge and our team went home to see their families again. This was fantastic and a great way to celebrate our recent findings! A few days by the beach eating some different food (including chocolate cake) was very much needed. We also walked to the lighthouse at the very bottom of the Cape Three Points peninsula. This is the southern most point of Ghana, and the nearest land mass to where the equator and the prime meridian meet at longitude 0, latitude 0 and altitude 0… giving Cape Three Points the name “The land nearest nowhere”. On Tuesday, we arrived back at camp and for the last couple of days we have been busy changing the batteries of our sound recorders, and preparing for the transect days that lie ahead. Hopefully they will bring many more primate sightings.
1 Comment
Joseph Welsh
3/21/2018 03:47:49 am
well done lads
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Authors:Ryan Nolan Archives
May 2018
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