March 26th:
Night research for Geckos and other nocturnal reptiles is now a key part of my role and fortunately on the 26th I was able to night survey a huge mainland site with 8 (140m long) transects. The night started off well, as we saw 3 Gaur (Remember them from "Gaur, Grom and Gibbons"???) from the boat on the way to the research site as well as a female Sambar and Fawn (Similar to Red Deer but larger). Not long after reaching the island we saw the eye shine of a HUGE mammal not 15 ft away. It turned out to be a huge Sambar buck with 2 ft antlers and stood eye to eye with me (6ft tall). It stood watching us for a short while before disappearing off into the night. On the 2nd transect we found one of our small mammal cages left behind from the previous day, with a tree shrew still inside!! This tree shrew was weighted, measured, tagged and blood sampled before being released (The tree shrew screaming the entire time!). After crossing a stream full to the rafters with breeding frogs, we reached the 6th transect. About 10m in we all saw the eye shine of a very small mammal. Which Grom (our guide) explained was a (Meow Lik) or "Small Cat". We had seen a Leopard Cat one of the smallest cat species in South East Asia. Yes its no Tiger or actual Leopard but I was (and still am) ecstatic about this discovery. The night safari was all finished off by a 50m sprint after disturbing a wasp nest on the home stretch to the boat. Comments are closed.
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