Media Centre for Gain a BTEC in Biological Survey Techniques in Kenya

Kaylynne Parkes - My Forest Day

My alarm goes off at 6am and when I roll out of my tent it’s still dark. Breakfast, consisting of mandazi is delicious and soon after everyone is ready to head into Shimoni forest to start the day. With our packs full of water, first aid kits and lunch and with our binoculars, compasses and whistles around our necks, we head off through the village along the path that leads us to our transect. Stepping into transect 3; we take out our pangas so we can clear a path wide enough to walk through. Conveniently, the person in front of me is much taller than I am and is clearing my path of the millions of spider webs that happen to be at about face level, no matter how tall you are. After about 20 minutes of trekking over fallen trees and overgrown vines, a troop of Angolan Black and white Colobus Monkeys are spotted. We survey their behaviour and identify the group size and sex of the individuals and then we take a short break. After everyone has had a samosa or two and some water we continue on in hope of finding more monkeys. 32 sections later, or 1.6km, the transect ends abruptly at the ocean. Lucky for us, we can eat lunch in front of a beautiful ocean view. We’ve all starving after working our way through 32 sections and the sandwiches we made this morning don’t last long. We spend some time relaxing and re-hydrating before returning home. On the way back, we conduct canopy and fruit & flower surveys so that we might be able to link the presence of primates spotted with habitat characteristics. It’s about 2:30 by the time we finish and almost time to go home, but first we stop by the butterfly traps to identify the species caught since baiting them about this time yesterday. A fellow group member learns quite quickly that now isn’t the best time to have a phobia of insects, especially flying ones! Luckily, everyone survives and we’ve even found a new butterfly species in one of the traps. We’re hot, sweaty and tired but the days not over yet and the swimming pool at Shimoni beckons. After a refreshing swim, we enter the data we have spent all day collecting and we gear up to venture into Shimoni to teach the local dolphin tour operators about dolphins – which species they’re seeing and what behaviours they are exhibiting. They’re all really eager to learn and a lot of fun but by the time its over I am definitely ready for dinner. Dinner in Shimoni is a weekly highlight, at a local restaurant we’re served rice, beans, cabbage, spinach and fish - Yum. The best part though is the glass of cool passion fruit juice that comes with dinner. With full bellies we walk back to our Shimoni satellite base and relax a bit before bed and well earned sleep.