Research starts: welcome to the forest

 As much as originally I was planning on going in to detail about the end of the process and finally getting my permit. I'm not going to. In between getting back from the quick trip to the forest, saying good bye to Mandy and Ross when they got back and actually getting my permit 3 weeks later I went through one of the most difficult times in my life having to say goodbye to my grandad for the last time. I don't want to talk about it any more, needless to say it was painful, hard beyond belief and left me feeling more lonely than I have ever felt before in my life, so I'm going to start this entry a bit after I got back to Indonesia after the funeral and once I'd finally got my SIMAKSI from the national parks people and on my way to camp. 

Heading to camp on my own, was no where near as fun as heading there with four other people, especially when your wishing that you could be at home with family through the whole journey. That said there is nothing better for the soul and to cheer you up than travelling up a river in Sumatra passing long-tailed macaques, water monitors, hornbills and the occasional elephant. Yeah that helps a bit! One of my favourite parts of the journey by boat is when I pass the village nearest to camp and go under the suspension bridge they have over the river, it's an oddly beautiful and elegant looking construction and completely incongruous with its  surroundings.

 As you finally near camp you finally know you're there once you see this one incredibly tall tree standing on it's own above the rest of the forest. This is one we can see from camp over the river and when close you can see it's bark is covered in small regular knobbly bits. These are apparently pegs the locals have put into it to use as a ladder as at certain times of the year this tree is laden with beehives and therefore honey, and the locals will climb this 50m monster after the sweet, liquid gold. Unfortunately that hasn't been while I've been there yet, so I'm still waiting on my jungle honey! Finally once you pass the big tree and go round a couple of river bends you see the concrete ruins of an old bridge built by the Japanese sticking up out of the river, that's when we know we're finally at camp as we pull in to the right bank just before we reach them. That's when you notice the set of steps leading up the bank and then finally the camp up the top of the bank.      

The sign that we're nearly back at camp. Huge 50m tree that that's probably only still standing due to it being an important source of honey for the locals!

The only problem with taking the boat especially on a nice and sunny day is that I usually never put sun lotion on. You'd think only a hour in the sun wouldn't be bad. Not so. On the boat ride to camp I probably had some of the worst sunburn I've ever had in my life! Instantly bright red as soon as I got out of the sun and then blisters on both arms that night! So unbelievably painful and took 2 weeks to properly heal! I'd like to say that I learnt my lesson but I managed to get really sunburn on my back a week later whilst doing my laundry in the river. Since then I like to think I've developed a healthy fear of the sun and it's consequences!

When you finally climb the steps you're welcomed with the slightly charming but incredibly rustic cabin that serves as home whilst in the forest. One of the most common questions I get while in the city or from friends is where do I stay and what is it like in the forest. Well this is it, welcome to Sikundur! The cabin is shared between myself and three other research students and 7 field assistants as you can imagine with that many people, space is at a premium. I share my small room with James the other PhD student, the girls have their room which is possibly the biggest shared between them. Five of the assistants share one room, sleeping packed together like sardines, though to be fair we almost never have all five here at the same time as usually ones off  but still pretty cramped. Then the two most senior assistants Ben and Suprah (the camp manager) have their own rooms which are little more than boxes. 

A thing I also get asked is about often is the bathroom situation, honestly, it's not great. There's a squat toilet that you manually flush with a cup and then a there's a traditional mandi which is a deep basin filled with water and a cup with a long handle that you use to pour water over yourself, or there's the natural way of cleaning in the river, though you have much less privacy then! Food at camp is ok, it's usually cooked either on a small portable style gas hob or on the "traditional kitchen" as the boys like to call it which is a fire pit with a raised bit with some thin metal on it to rest the pots or pans, but is surprisingly good, frying an egg this way was certainly interesting! We even have a couple of cats at camp! Raquel and Lucy. They were brought by Ben as a way to keep rats and mice away. Raquel is the older camp and been here for longer whereas Lucy was brought to camp as a kitten just before I arrived so I've been see her grow from a tiny little fluff ball into this strong jungle cat. Don't let her looks fool you though she's a devil cat! Especially when food is about! As soon as you have a plate of food both cats start begging for food and Lucy will try to steal anything from your plate if she gets the chance!  With all that I've said you could think I'm being negative about camp but all said and done it has it's charms and feels sort of like a home from home now and the guys feel like a weird, dysfunctional family away from my own. 

The view from the cabin. The tree with the tyre around it is one of the few places I get enough phone signal to be able to call home from, though it usually involves holding my arm in an awkward position whilst staying as close to the tree as possible!

The view of the river from the phone tree.

The communal area and where we sit and eat dinner at night

My "lovely" bed

James's bed and half of the room

The bathroom, warning at night this has loads of wasps and other bugs flying about in it and after lights off I've see scorpions in here more than once!

The ktichen where Ben and Ricky work up their treats

The traditional kitchen

The back of camp and the badminton court, really just a net strung between two poles but my Mum likes to think it's some 5* resort having one. Also it's now gone after elephants came into camp at nigh a couple of weeks ago and decided they didn't like it!

Don't let her looks fool you, Lucy is a little demon and killer!

One of the the things about camp that both reminds me of home yet at the same time really makes it sink in that I'm not in North Wales any more are the animals we get coming to camp. Just like home we have animals raiding the bins, except instead of foxes and magpies it's long-tailed macaques and 7ft long water monitor lizards (smaller relatives of Komodo dragons!). Instead of a sheep or neighbours dog breaking into the back garden and making a mess we have elephants! Swap the noisy yappy dog next door for Thomas langurs and gibbons. And lastly swap your spiders in the bath for a 30cm long giant centipede! Seriously if anyone in the UK moans at me about spiders in the bath or false widows, they really need to come here!

There is nothing more terrifying than just about to step down into the shower and then having a bright red and orange 30cm long centipede come running at and trying to attack your foot! Now this may sound like an over exaggeration but in Borneo the one thing the guides hated the most were the giant centipedes as they're massively aggressive and venomous, their bite supposedly is one of the most painful. The larger species are known to eat rats, lizards and even bats! Seriously google it the footage is pretty horrifying. As you can tell I really don't like them much, I think they're really interesting but still really dislike them. The one in the shower I quickly got one of the guys who then promptly removed it's head with a parang (machete) and then put it's body in the bin which it continued to run around in for another 30 minutes! Urgh, not a fan of them at all!

Long-tailed macaque that I had caught raiding the bins 5 minutes earlier

Good sized water monitor that had also been raiding the food leftovers at camp

Behold the horror of what is sometimes waiting in the shower in Sumatra! False widows pfft

After arriving at camp and making all the introductions to the assistants at camp and setting up my mosquito net and bed I went to organising my schedule for the next few weeks. The first couple of days were going to be spent acclimatising to the forest and walking the trail system with Ricky the newest of the assistants who was also getting used to the site as well. We didn't see much on these days, though Ricky showed my some interesting plants like Tiger leaf which is something you can eat if you have a really bad or upset stomach. The time spent acclimatising was well spent as getting to know your way around the forest is pretty difficult even with the trails and markers every 25m it's still very easy to get turned around and lost.

Ricky taking advantage of a nice cool stream to cool off. Finding nice cool, clean streams like these is a godsend on a hot and hard day as you can give your face a quick wash to get rid of some of the sweat, dirt and grime. 

On the second night in camp I was just about to have my shower when I heard the guys start shouting my name, so I quickly put my towel and shower gel down and headed out to see what was going on. On stepping out of the cabin I see the guys bringing up a fishing net, so I'm a little curious as to what they've got. They then shout "ular!", "python" hearing those words I quickly woke up and ran back to grab my camera. This was something I'd told the guys the night before that I was particularly interested in snakes and other reptiles, so I couldn't believe that I was already getting to see a python so early in the trip! Getting closer it was obvious the poor snake was badly tangled in the net and needing freeing and also it was a reticulated python, the longest snake species in the world!

Apparently this net had been set up somewhere nearby illegally and the snake had gone in trying to steal some fish but got itself caught as well. Now there's not many things that the guys don't like here but snakes are one of them, so I had took over to try and free it. First grabbing a long brush I used the handle to hod her head down before securing a good grip at the base of the skull preventing it from biting me and then using a sharp knife quickly started to cut it loose. The only issue with this is a snake doesn't know you're trying to help it so it quickly started to wrap itself around my arm which made keeping hold pretty difficult, so I passed the knife to one of the assistants to keep cutting it loose while I tried to keep it still. Unfortunately I lost my grip, but Supri, one of the assistants was quick to take hold of her, this thankfully also  gave me a chance to take some more photos. Eventually it was freed and we were able to have a good look at it and identify that it was more than likely a female, due to the lack of the vestigial legs (claspers) that you find in male pythons.

After a quick look we went to release her. The best place to do this especially with us having cats at camp, was to release her back into the river. So we headed down and got to the river where to of the guys were cleaning themselves, needless to say they quickly got out when they saw what we were about to do. Once we got there Supri was making out to throw the snake back but stopped as I shouted not to do that. The way to release is place it on the ground facing away from you and toward an escape route and then release the tail and then very quickly let go of the head and step back. Luckily Supri did this well and the snake was more than happy to slip off into the river, and we watched as she slipped off into the night. Turning around though I saw the guys faces who'd been cleaning themselves there a minute before, they weren't very impressed or happy with me but at least we had an inside shower to use instead!

On the topic of releasing animals, when I first arrived at camp there was another animal waiting to be released. This was a slow loris that had been confiscated from the pet trade and the SOCP had been asked/volunteered to release and monitor it so just by camp was a tree cut of from all those surrounding it and surrounded by a low fence. This was where they were keeping the loris until it had recovered properly and looked healthy enough to release. Every night one of the guys would go and take some crickets and fruit for it to feed on and build it's weight up and then eventually four weeks later the fence was taken down and a bridge was made between its tree and the rest. Since then two assistants have been going out each night with a radio receiver to to track the loris via the radio collar they put on it before releasing it, and they check up on it's location and if they can see it, it's general condition and health. This sounds like a lot of effort but this is the first slow loris to be released back into the wild in Sumatra. It's incredibly important though as slow loris numbers in the wild have been drastically dropping due to them being taken from the wild for the exotic pet trade due to the videos that have been circulating youtube of people tickling them or just saying they're cute. These videos are bad though as they are always wild caught lorises and as slow lorises are actually venomous many have their teeth cut or ripped out before being sold, so they don't survive too long and can never be released back into the wild. If you'd like to find out more check out the Little Fireface Project who are based in Java and lead the way with slow loris conservation and rehabilitation: http://www.nocturama.org/

Once I'd finished having my orientation to the forest, I started to go out with some of the assistants to help cut the transects that the girls and I would be using for our research. This involved finding the location of the start which had been uploaded onto the GPS and once there walk 500m North in as straight a line as possible, placing markers and recording the location on the GPS every 25m. This is so that when I did my surveys I know how far along the transect I am and if I get lost it's easy to find the next point. These took about a week ad a half to finish as the girls had already started the week before I got there.

After cutting the transects we started on our vegetation transects. These involved going along the transect and every 50m starting from 25m recording the nearest tree in every quarter. This is called the point centre quarter method or PCQM so you have a point then divide it into four quarters then in each quarter you record the nearest tree, this is a good way of randomly sampling the forest and getting a good set of vegetation data. For each tree I'd record it's height, height of the first branch, CBH or circumference at breast height, crown width to the North, South, East and West, crown shape, crown connectivity, and then branch numbers which would be estimated for each size class of branch. These are important as they allow us to quantify the structure of each tree and the forest structure as a whole and then determine if any of these factors play an important part in where orangutans prefer to live, how they move and where they build their nests. These took another 2 weeks to complete as the girls and I did one transect each, each day, so with only 30 transects we got through them very quickly.

After these I took a quick break back in Medan to rest and recover before going back to start my nest transects which are the bulk of my research this year. Once I was back a lot of days were wasted as there weren't any assistants free most of the time. When they were free I got them done. The method is pretty similar to the vegetation. I walk along a transect slowly looking for any nests within 25m of the transect. When ones seen, its distance along the transect as well as away from the transect are recorded along with it's height in the tree, age class and position. Along with these the same things are recorded about the nest tree as those in the vegetation survey as well as the tree species, and then any tree within 5m of the nest tree and of a CBH more than 30cm have their distance and height recorded. This helps me to understand if orangutans are choosing nests in denser areas and if they may be selecting trees that are taller than their neighbours and of course if thee's a particular species of tree that they prefer. That said, spotting orangutan nests is no easy task, below I've put in a picture of one of the most obvious nests I've seen, most are a lot smaller or broken up or just way higher in the trees. At the moment I'm halfway through the first set of nest transects and just came back to Medan to renew my permits, 3 months goes quick here! Though it may seem like I skipped over a lot it's mostly that everyday seems the same and it's only the interesting moments or pictures that I take that make anything stand out. So below I've put in some of the best and most interesting ones I've taken or seen so far. Sorry If that's a bit of a cop out but I'm heading back to the forest in 30 mins!

This little guy loves hanging out under the roof of camp, surprisingly the guys didn't know he was a tree frog or that tree frogs existed! Very cool little guy though and see him quite often.

One of the animals I most looked forward to seeing in Sumatra was a flying lizard or Draco lizard. They technically don't fly, instead they glide using flaps of skin that they can extend out from their bodies with elongated ribs. Very cool animals. These ones also have a small flap on their throats that they can also extend and move, these are brightly coloured and used as a signal to other Draco lizards for either courtship or aggression such as protecting ther territory and competing for mates

One of the mammals you'l see the most in the rainforest here are the squirrels, this one I don't know the species but we also have flying squirrels here!

The Thomas langur is one of the noisier species in the forest. Only found in North Sumatra, little is known about it compared to it's more famous neighbours

This little guy is a pain in the bum! The first time I saw the mantis was when I heard the girls screaming and then shouting me to help get rid of it. The problem was was it was scuttling about their room and Lucy the kitten kept trying to attack it whilst it would go into a defensive posture and bite her. So I had to try and get rid of it. Stupidly I though I could just pick it up and take it outside. Bad idea. The spikes on it's front legs that it uses to catch its prey are actually quite sharp and painful! So eventually I managed to get him onto one of the clip boards we use on transects and then took him of out the room. Of course though I had to take some photos, that though was much easier said than done! Every time I got too close with the camera he'd spring up into his kung fu style position with arms raised ready to attack. Eventually I got bored of this and just took him outside. An hour later I went to my room to go to bed and there he was on the floor waiting for me! After the hassle I had before I couldn't be bothered so I just opened the window so if could fly out and then pushed it onto James's side of the room. Luckily he wasn't in camp at the time otherwise I don't think he'd have been very impressed sharing his bed with an aggro praying manits!

This is probably one of my favourite photos I've taken so far, just because of the colours in the gecko's eye, it looks like the world i the eye of a gecko/

So below is one of the coolest things I've seen and definitely didn't expect to see. It's a twin-barred flying snake. Yes there are flying snakes! They an't glide as far as the lizards but from the top of a tree they can glide 50-70m to the next by flattening their ribs and their body. Such a cool animal and luckily their not dangerous!

This picture was a nice surprise as when I was taking it I was looking at the bird and had no clue that there was a lizard as well!

The are illegal bird cages used to catch birds to sell into the pet trade here in Indonesia

Thought this looked like an eye!

As you can probably tell, I really like taking photos of damselflies! This one though was one of the hardest as he almost never stopped and wouldn't let me get close except for this one shot!

Another one of the flying animals I saw here and never expected to see was a colugo or flying lemur. Unfortunately I only had my phone with me that day but using that and a pair of binoculars I thing I did ok

One of the coolest, strangest and probably most stupid things I've done since I've been here is moving this little pit viper off of a trail and into a safer place, using a stick. Such a cool snake though and very relaxed as you can see in the picture though I was more than a little nervous!

That's it for this time, sorry I've skipped a bit, very short on time. Hope it was ok. Next time I should have a little more to talk about! Cheers.

Oh and if you want to find out a bit more about the work going on a Sikundur check out:
http://www.sumatranorangutan.org/research/sikundur

Also have a read of James' blog, He's been at Sikundur longer and probably much better at writing about research: http://www.scientificamerican.com/author/james-askew/