Raptor Rehab

Jason has been doing some raptor rehab the last week and his two charges have now flown off to be productive members of raptor society. They were probably just not quite ready to be booted from mom's nest and were having difficulty getting off the ground and away from predators. A few days for their young wings to mature and they were off!

St. Kitts: Day Three

For day three we had a capture spot all picked out for the evening so we went with Amanda for our first look at Ross University and to attend a visiting scholar's talk on monkey depredation. Doesn't matter where you are - something wants your food! The rain was crazy that day so we postponed the campus tour and went into town to get a driver's license for Jason - more on crazy drivers another time - and ate lunch in downtown Bassetterre where I discovered conch fritters - yummy! We then dodged the rain back to the car and headed off for picking up our rental and off to bats! The evening scheduled bat hunt was at an old sugar plantation manor up on the top of a place called Monkey Hill, with beautiful old landscaping and lots of old run down outbuildings with fruit bats hanging out in the rafters. It was a great location for batting in the rain - we were able to set up a net in an old building, and our table for processing in the old kitchen across the courtyard. And there was bat catching success which made everyone happy. Several Jamaican fruit bats made our acquaintance that night and flew away with little black 'I was a research subject' marks on their heads.

St. Kitts: Day Two

We met up with Amanda and drove around looking at houses that have bats in the rafters and such, and picked a spot for the first capture day with lots of potential for bats. Then we went hiking! There is a cave at the top of a ravine that is referred to by everyone as the bat cave, due to the many many bats that live there. The hike was my first venture into rainforest, and it was a beautiful way to do it. I met my first strangler figs, and did my first rock climbing that involved something less than vertical - it was only a few feet of it and there was a rope but still - a bit on the intimidating side. We eventually got to the cave and there were over a thousand bats there, flying around, generally not happy with our presence. It was deemed a definite spot for later when the students were more experienced. I managed to give myself some nasty heat exhaustion, though I really tried to not. Apparently my hard-won skill at sensing the danger signs doesn't work in high humidity.The evening's bat hunt involved first time net-setting and shortly after the first two nets were up we caught a bird, which everyone enjoyed looking at briefly. It was a good thing we caught a bird because then we caught nothing else. It was a very windy night an apparently bats don't like flying through smallish spaces when wind can toss them about. Go figure. Time to go home and crash and sleep off the remnants of heat exhaustion.

St Kitts Day One

On day one we got here in the afternoon and after our open-air deplaning we spent a LONG time hanging out in the customs line in the humidity and heat. So it's humid here. Not unexpected if you think about it, but I'd read that St. Kitts had low humidity - not 'relatively low' or 'low for the tropics', but 'low' - it's not true! Not when you live in a dry oven state. After meeting up with Amanda she brought us to our lovely little sea-side apartment. We are just far back enough to not have a view of the water, but we can hear it quite well! So we unpacked and took some relaxation time on the beach, took some pics, and then headed out to dinner with Amanda. After a stroll on the beach we went to a great little jerk place on the beach with all the great ambience you could hope for - right off the sand, palm trees through the roof, bright colors, and great food. I had jerk chicken but we were advised by our dining neighbors to be sure and get the lobster before we leave. Yum!

St. Kitts Adventure

We've been on St. Kitts (also known as Saint Christophe) for nearly a week now and I'm just now finding time for writing a bit about our trip! Things have been crazy busy getting the bat project up and running, but we've managed some very cool dual purpose adventure. Jason has a hard time putting on his tourist hat - every place we go he's evaluating habitat: fruit to eat, flowers to pollinate, water with the right set of access requirements…

So a quick overview of what we are doing here. Jason and Dr. Amanda Loftis here at Ross University's School of Veterinary Medicine co-submitted an internal grant to the school to study local bats and their parasites. Very few bat studies have been done here, and all during the summer. Additionally, the parasites and the ramifications for island health have never been studied. Jason is here to train Amanda and a solid team of students on all the steps and processes of bat capture and release. Where to capture, how to capture, how to untangle the bats from the capture nets, tips on handling bats (these students already have very good animal handling skills as vet students), what measurements and details are important to collect for bats, and then release. The net set-up and take-down is it's own set of skills to learn as well. So far we have spent every day scouting and surveying potential bat capture locations, and every evening attempting to capture bats. We only had one dud of a night, every other has had plenty of bats with the last two being crazy with trying not to have too many bats to handle. They also have two solid fall-back locations where large numbers of bats can be caught - one of which will be great for rainy days. So the scouting part is done! We will be spending the rest of our days being tourists and adventurers, with the bats in the evening. Yay for touristing!

I'll be posting day by day travel logs later, as well as a few things that require their own post. Like driving!

p.s. There are lots of photos on my facebook page. I won't post picture in here until I have access to my home computer because this mac and I aren't friends. Can't mess up the research photos!