Settling in

Tuesday 30 June

Last night was my first night on the island. I heard a monkey fight around midnight, which was the first time I’ve ever woken up to that, though likely not the last.  At that point I got up to pee and let a fairly large spider into the tent.  Whoops!

Today was my first day navigating the island by myself.  So far, things have gone pretty smoothly!  Today was quite rainy, so there were periods of little monkey activity/visibility as they were huddled waiting the rain out. I am getting better with identifying them, but still have a ways to go.  In order to collect interaction data to you need to be able to identify a monkey at the drop of the hat. 

Sone grooming Kinu.

I’ll be collecting 2 types of data while I’m here.  The first is behavioral sequence data to use for fractal analysis, to get an idea of how complex the animal’s behavior is.  This is collected during a focal follow, which means you follow just one monkey for some amount of time.  I will be aiming to conduct 1 hour and 8 minute focal follows (seems like an odd amount of time, but it helps with the type of analysis we’ll be doing), where I record the sequence of behavioral states a monkey is in.  By behavioral state I mean I’m collecting behavior that lasts a bit of time (greater than 3 seconds), such as walking, resting, foraging, grooming, etc.  This is opposed to the second type of interaction data, which I will also be collecting to construct social networks, which comprises of usually quick interactions such as an act of aggression or a communication signal.

I attempted to do a practice focal follow today and I failed pretty hard.  Let me tell you, following monkeys in the forest in the rain is not easy!  I abandoned this attempt and decided to just practice following monkeys through the forest.  They are much easier to follow on the beach, but I’ll be following them in the forest as well, so I need to get up to monkey speed.

Also, I’ve had a fair amount of success feeding myself, which is an accomplishment because I hardly ever cook.  This morning I made rice for the first time, which was by no means perfect, but was cooked to an edible standard. I mixed in some seasoning and made rice balls for lunch.  This evening I made pasta, and cooked a potato for the first time.

The Kitchen.

Fine dining - last nights dinner.

Also noteworthy is that I lost both my pencil and a glove in the forest today, and miraculously was able to find both!  Hooray!

A little more info on living off the grid - I’ve been bathing in the ocean at night, which is quite soothing after a day of chasing monkeys in the mud.  The thing I am most concerned about is getting clothing to dry.  Because of the humidity and rain, nothing is drying and everything is getting wet!  Fortunately the temperature has been nice – not too hot or cold to make being wet all that bad. 

Living with monkeys.

The Tower of Power.

Kinoko.

Gibosi. 

Kibana (and baby bump!). 

Siso.