Round Robin » tropical fieldwork

Lecture and New Book Chronicle Epic Quest for Birds-of-Paradise

Hugh — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 18:11:37 +0000

Thirty-nine of the most gorgeous, outlandish animals in the world—the birds-of-paradise—live only in New Guinea, associated islands, and adjacent tropical Australia. Though they’ve been known for centuries from paintings and specimens, it’s only now that all 39 can be admired in glorious photographic detail, thanks to ground-breaking work by Cornell Lab biologist Ed Scholes and National Geographic photojournalist Tim Laman.

On October 13, Scholes and Laman gave a lecture on their work to a packed house at Cornell University. Their talk kicks off a lecture tour, TV documentary, and museum exhibit (details and dates here) jointly developed by the Cornell Lab and National Geographic. The pair astonished the audience with stunning photos, video, and sounds of the birds, their plumage and behavior so far out of the ordinary they almost defy the imagination. The pictures are now part of a gorgeous coffee-table book (on sale Oct. 23 and available for preorder now), copublished by the two organizations. Cornell Lab writer Pat Leonard was at the lecture, and she captured the excitement in this review:

The walls of the auditorium reverberated with the hum of conversation and a sense of anticipation, punctuated by eerie recorded bird calls—just a hint of the eye-popping oddities to come. Cornell Lab biologist Ed Scholes (left, with laptop) and National Geographic photojournalist Tim Laman (right, with camera) took the stage to guide the audience through New Guinea’s remote swamps and cloud forests. Following in the footsteps of legendary explorers like Ferdinand Magellan and Alfred Russel Wallace, Tim and Ed spent 544 days in the field over 8 years, visiting 51 sites to document all 39 known species of the birds-of-paradise. Along the way, Tim Laman shot more than 39,000 photographs. “We can’t show them all,” he quipped. By the time the evening was over, you rather wished he would have.

Tim and Ed were entertaining speakers with a tag-team style to their commentary. They described journeys to 11,000-foot mountaintops, home to the Splendid Astrapia, and to lowland swamps where the Twelve-wired Bird-of-paradise woos a female by brushing her face and throat with his long wirelike tail feathers. (Click on species’ names to see videos of them.)

Most of the remaining bird-of-paradise species inhabit the middle ground, laying claim to small slivers of territory and to unique courtship behaviors. “The males play no role in the care of the young,” Ed explained. “Their only goal is to mate with as many females as possible. So it’s the females who call the evolutionary shots.”

The more subtly beautiful females obviously have a taste for the outlandish. Over the millennia, they have chosen males with ever more iridescent colors, flashy plumes and wires, or fancy footwork. It’s “survival of the sexiest,” according to Ed. In evolutionary biology lingo, that’s “sexual selection.”

Some species put their efforts into brilliant and varied colors to get attention. The male Wilson’s Bird-of-paradise has evolved bright blue skin on its head, yellow, green, and red feathers, purple legs and feet, and two longer tail plumes that form tight outward curls. He spends his days fussily tidying his display court.

The King of Saxony Bird-of-paradise banks on embellishment and behavior. Laughter accompanied a video clip showing him bouncing enthusiastically on a branch, making a loud crackling call, and waving long plumes that sprout from skin behind his eyes. The human equivalent, Tim pointed out, would be 10-foot appendages jutting from our temples.

Occasionally, it seems the courtship adaptations might be a bit of a nuisance. The Ribbon-tailed Astrapia’s tail is three times the length of its body. Tim and Ed said they’ve seen this bird checking for the whereabouts of its tail before taking off because its plumes sometimes get wound around trunks and branches during foraging.

The sicklebills use shapes and poses to attract attention. These “transformers” of the avian world include the Black Sicklebill who performs many wing shrugs before spreading his feathers up and over his head to create a startlingly unexpected hooded cloak (3:06 into video clip). Tim and Ed showed the first video ever taken that captures this behavior with both sexes participating—the female going beak-to-beak with the displaying male to play her part in the mating dance.

Another favorite was the Superb Bird-of-paradise. Deftly balancing on a log, he raises special feathers that transform him into a black blob punctuated with iridescent blue markings that look rather like a wide grin and two blazing eyes. He makes a loud snapping noise to accompany his bounding dance steps around the female (at 0:55 in the video clip).

Tim and Ed made one of their most intriguing discoveries when they decided to capture the “ballerina dance” of the Wahnes’s Parotia from the female’s point of view. It took multiple cameras and two weeks of trying. Tim whiled away long hours in the blind reading The Count of Monte Cristo on an e-reader and counting the number of finger-swipes it took to finish (11,000). Looking down from a branch above the courtship display area reveals a much different view than from ground level. We see a bobbing, weaving, black ovoid shape with flashes of iridescent yellow breast feathers and a wiggling blue line that marks the back of the male’s head, highlighting his movements.

The presentation closed with a high-canopy image of the Greater Bird-of-paradise, bathed in golden morning light, taken with the ingenious “leaf-cam.” (You’ll be able to read more about it in the October issue of Living Bird, our member magazine) The bird flourishes its russet wings and its yellow and cream-colored plumes. The impenetrable rainforest spreads to the horizon. The image prompted an audible gasp from the audience and a sustained standing ovation.

Tim and Ed hope the exotic evolutionary adaptations of the birds-of-paradise will exert another kind of attraction: drawing public attention to all that could be lost if threatened rainforest habitat is not protected around the world. You can donate to support our work here.

(This article was written by Pat Leonard. Photographs by Tim Laman. The Birds-of-Paradise book and exhibition are collaborations by the Cornell Lab and National Geographic.)

New Bird Species Discovered in Peru, Named for Cornell Lab Director

Hugh — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 17:13:35 +0000

A colorful, fruit-eating bird with a black mask, pale belly, and scarlet breast—never before described by science—has been discovered and named by Cornell University graduates following an expedition to the remote Peruvian Andes. The Sira Barbet (Capito fitzpatricki) is described in a paper published in the July 2012 issue of The Auk, the official publication of the American Ornithologists’ Union. A painting of the barbet is featured as the issue’s cover illustration.

The new species was discovered during a 2008 expedition led by Michael G. Harvey, Glenn Seeholzer, and Ben Winger, young ornithologists who had recently graduated from Cornell at the time. They were accompanied by coauthor Daniel Cáceres, a graduate of the Universidad Nacional de San Agustín in Arequipa, Peru, and local Ashéninka guides.

The team discovered the barbet on a ridge of montane cloud forest in the Cerros del Sira range in the eastern Andes. Steep ridges and deep river gorges in the Andes produce many isolated habitats and microclimates that give rise to unique species.

Mike Harvey was first to see the new species on October 8, 2008. “It was sitting about 60 feet up on a bare branch,” he said. “At first we thought it was the Scarlet-banded Barbet (Capito wallacei), but the more we looked at it, the more we saw obvious differences in its plumage.”

Though clearly a sister species of the Scarlet-banded Barbet, the Sira Barbet is readily distinguished by differences in color on the bird’s flanks, lower back, and thighs and a wider, darker scarlet breast band. By comparing mitochondrial DNA sequences of the new barbet to DNA sequences of its close relatives in the genus Capito, the team secured genetic evidence that this is indeed a new species in the barbet family (Capitonidae). The genetic work was done by coauthor Jason Weckstein at The Field Museum in Chicago.

The team chose the scientific name of the new species, Capito fitzpatricki, in honor of Cornell Lab of Ornithology executive director Dr. John W. Fitzpatrick, who discovered and named 7 new bird species in Peru during the 1970s and 1980s.

“Fitz has inspired generations of young ornithologists in scientific discovery and conservation,” says Ben Winger. “He was behind us all the way when we presented our plan for this expedition.”

The 2008 expedition was made possible by funding from a special gift to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and donations to the Lab’s student World Series of Birding team, Rawlings Cornell Presidential Research Scholars, National Geographic Young Explorers’ Grant, and the Explorers Club. Since the discovery, Harvey and Seeholzer have enrolled as Ph.D. students at Louisiana State University, and Winger is a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago.

(Image: Sira Barbet by Michael G. Harvey.)

A Tour of Australia’s Wet Tropics Endemics: Part Two [With Kookaburras!]

Hugh — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:45:37 +0000

This is Part Two of a post about searching for the 12 endemic birds of northeast Queensland’s Wet Tropics World Heritage Reserve, with the help of many of the region’s wonderful guides and lodges. Part One of the story is here. Part Two introduces six endemic species not mentioned in Part One: Grey-headed Robin, Bridled Honeyeater, Bower’s Shrike-Thrush, Atherton Scrubwren, Mountain Thornbill, and Chowchilla.

If aliens were invading Earth and you had just half a day in which to see the 12 endemic birds of Australia’s Wet Tropics (see Part One), your best bet might be a drive up Mt. Lewis, just outside the hamlet of Julatten. Especially if the aliens were willing to let you take along Del Richards, of Fine Feather Tours, as a guide. A wiry 70-year-old with a quiet manner and an impressive roster of bird calls he can mimic, Del drove us up Mt. Lewis for a six-hour parade of rarities and endemics. Over just a few miles and a few thousand feet of elevation gain, we saw 8 of the 12 endemics that lure birders to this part of Queensland—and I got the distinct feeling Del was saving the others so we’d have something left for the second half of the week.

Del picked us up at Kingfisher Park Birdwatchers Lodge, a small lodge/caravan park run by two expat British birders, Keith and Lindsey Fisher. Kingfisher is itself a remarkable spot for both birds and strange Australian mammals. We didn’t see regional endemic birds here, but Keith showed us the way to a few unforgettable Australian specialties nonetheless, including kookaburras, a Channel-billed Cuckoo with a bill like a toucan’s, and a Buff-breasted Paradise-Kingfisher.

Kingfisher Park in the Dark

When night falls, Keith turns into something of a mammalogist—he leads nighttime prowls to look for bandicoots, gliders, quolls, and melomys, as well as frogs and owls. At the edge of a pasture we awakened a group of Laughing Kookaburras, which filled the air with their incredible, unhinged-sounding voices. For a few minutes it actually sounded like aliens were invading Earth. This is what we heard (recorded on my iPhone):

A bit later we rustled up some Blue-winged Kookaburras as well. Where Laughing Kookaburras can look cute and harmless, Blue-winged Kookaburras, with their enormous heads and staring yellow eyes, look like escapees from an asylum.

Down along the creek behind Kingfisher Park we walked around a sort of drowned orchard left over from previous owners. Marvelous fruits hung from twigs or collected in heaps underneath: starfruit, mango, longgon, rambutan, custard apple, and others. After the week’s heavy rains, the ground squelched under foot. Small, quick mosquitoes swarmed over our elbows and ankles. Noisy Pittas called from the depths of the forest, and later we glimpsed the flat tail of a feathertail glider hanging over the edge of a palm frond, as if he’d forgotten to pull it up out of view after landing. A couple of Spectacled Monarchs (looking like a cross between a Phainopepla and a Blackburnian Warbler) roosted on loops of vine about four feet over our heads, and we found them with our flashlight beams. At dinner, a forest dragon sat by the bird feeders in the light of the patio.

Parade on Mt Lewis

Del arrived in a cream-colored Land Cruiser, immaculately kept and sturdily built in the last century, with carpet lining the dashboard and stiff leather seats. He’s thin and silver-haired, an ex-cattleman who has been leading nature tours for 30 years. He wears a wide-brimmed leather hat—ubiquitous in Australia—with feathers in the hatband. Del climbed carefully aboard, remarking that he was just back to work after knee surgery (“my seventh knee if you count the two I started with”), and we wound around the narrow roads. We passed Julatten’s football field, tennis court, and public library in one go, and turned onto the narrow strip of asphalt that leads to Mt. Lewis.

I was struck everywhere I went by how familiar the tropical vegetation looked and how unfamiliar the birds were. I’m sure the plant species were as unique as any of the birds, but to the casual observer the dense walls of dark green that climbed the hillsides, the tree ferns that spread out like table umbrellas, and the thorn-encumbered palm fronds looked familiar from my visits to Panama and Costa Rica. And just as in Central America, we entered the forest only gradually: first cruising through cattle pastures, and then into the broken shade of the first scraggly trees bending over the road. The asphalt disappeared and Del began negotiating the Land Cruiser around chuckholes and over washboards. Clouds descended, and the vegetation became thicker and wetter.

We were using one of the standard ploys of bird watchers the world over: drive a dirt road up a mountain, and watch the birds change as you climb through elevations and habitats. Every time we stopped the car we heard unusual sounds—the sharp descending notes of Yellow-spotted Honeyeaters; the thin trills of a Chestnut-breasted Cuckoo. Each time, Del’s fingers hovered over the ignition key as he gauged whether to stop against his goal of reaching the grassy end of the road, where Blue-faced Parrot-Finches cling to seedheads and Australian King-Parrots wing over.

Foraging flocks of 20 birds or more made their stately way over the road through the twigs, vine tangles, and crumpled brown leaves. In one of these, a parade of little warbler- and vireo-like birds turned into something of an endemic explosion: As Fairy Gerygones chattered in the canopy, a Mountain Thornbill worked its way down slender vines and a couple of Atherton Scrubwrens came up from the midstory to meet it. Suddenly a longer bird with a heavier bill hopped in to have a look around: a Bower’s Shrike-Thrush making its way methodically through, a bit like a Summer Tanager might move (my colleague Mike Weedon got some good photos). Below them, along the road-edges, Grey-headed Robins were both common and showy. These rich-brown, short-tailed birds swooped from ground to low perch and then stood at attention (not unlike an American Robin’s alert posture, although the two species are not the least bit closely related).

One of my favorite activities in Australia was working through the honeyeater family and its 70+ species. Around Mt. Lewis and Kingfisher Park I puzzled over Graceful, Yellow-spotted, Lewin’s, and Bridled honeyeaters. All of these are smoothly colored olive-green birds, each with a prominent dot, crescent, or teardrop on the side of the face. Yellow-spotted were perhaps the most common; Graceful were a bit daintier (see photo here), but hard to distinguish alone; Lewin’s was larger and darker on the head. And now, at the top of Mt. Lewis, Bridled Honeyeater, the one with the stormiest coloring, and the least yellow, made an appearance high in the treetops.

At the top of Mt Lewis, Del showed us one of the gaudiest finches I’ve ever seen, the Blue-faced Parrot-Finch, and then gestured down a dirt track at a Golden Bowerbird territory he knew about. But it was getting late—shadows were already making it hard to see under the canopy—and anyway Del wanted his guiding friends David “Chook” Crawford and Alan Gillanders to have their chance to show us some new species, too.

As we jounced back down the mountain, a couple of dark birds scampered off the side of the road and Del whispered “Chowchillas!”—our last regional endemic for the day. We crept to the edge of the road and looked what seemed like straight down a steep, leafy slope. Chowchillas are long-legged, sociable birds that haunt the understory. They are smartly colored in rich dark brown with white (male) or buffy (female) underparts. In the gloomy understory they were almost invisible, but my binoculars gathered just enough light to make out the bold, staring eyering and their gingerish way of stepping through the leaves. After my eyes adjusted, I could see 6 or 8 of them scattered down the slope. These large groups spend so much time together that their songs are a group effort, with some of the birds shouting “Chow” and others “Chilla” in a tight, circular rhythm [listen].

As we got in the Land Cruiser to head back down, I half-wondered if it was the sound of aliens invading. But then I remembered, of course—all these outlandish creatures live here, and I’m the alien.

(Photos iphoniscoped by Hugh Powell. The Laughing Kookaburra pic was taken at Villa Marine, a delightful accommodation in the town of Yorkeys Knob adjacent to Cairns.)

Parrots in Pine Trees: A Belize Conservation Story

admin — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:40:14 +0000

One of the birds I didn’t get to see during my travels in Belize was the endangered Yellow-headed Parrot. Today Katie Blake describes a close encounter with two of these delightful birds—orphans from an encounter with poachers. Katie was in Belize last summer as a research assistant studying Mangrove Swallows on the Golondrinas de las Americas project—the same project that has Daisy Yuhas studying Chilean Swallows at the tip of Argentina. Here’s Katie (pictured with one of the semi-wild parrots she met):

After months of tropical fieldwork, I’ve come to appreciate the power of rain. The cool downpour feels blissful as I let it fall on my unhooded head down to my toes, which squish water warmly around my woolen-socked feet. My two Golondrinas teammates and I are walking toward the Hill Bank Field Station headquarters on a day’s break from our work with Mangrove Swallows on the New River Lagoon, located on the Rio Bravo nature reserve in northwestern Belize.

It’s difficult to tire of the reflection of the wide sky over the lagoon or the multitude of jungle trails dripping in anticipation of a jaguar sighting and sounds of motmots. But on today’s visit to Belize’s pine savannah there’s tall dry grass, warm air laced with an overwhelming fragrance of pine, and the chance to glimpse one of the pine savannah’s most interesting species, the Yellow-headed Parrot, an endangered species that occurs in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. Although we sometimes catch fleeting glimpses (and more often hear) pairs of Yellow-headed Parrots flying close to our sleeping quarters in the reserve, today we saw at least three pairs in the pine savannah. Straining our necks to see them perched high in the pine trees, the sightings were well worth the trek in the rain.

At the white and green-trimmed ranger headquarters we’re met by Rufino. He’s a warm man full of colorful stories of encountering the red lion (puma) and tiger (jaguar). His gentle nature is balanced with his authority as head ranger of Hill Bank. He greets us at the door and starts the water for tea. Soon we are met by two other visitors, Sarah and Junior, who are juvenile Yellow-headed Parrots.

It is love at first sight. They fly over to explore me, sitting on my shoulder and picking at my hair. I am pretty much sold with their soft cooing. It is no wonder these birds are highly sought after for the pet trade (where they are known as Amazon parrots). They have bright beautiful plumage and impeccable abilities to mimic human speech. Sadly, this charm has been one of the leading causes of their decline. According to BirdLife International, around the mid 1970s, these birds began being aggressivley pursued for the illegal pet trade. Combined with habitat loss, populations of these birds have suffered dramatically, currently leaving about 7,000 individuals left in the wild.

The pet trade, indirectly, is how Sarah and Junior got to taking up temporary residence at the ranger´s station. They were found at just a couple of weeks old during a ranger’s patrol one night, apparently having been dropped by fleeing poachers. With permission from Programme for Belize, the agency that oversees the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area, the rangers fed and sheltered the chicks for weeks, a rare task for these rangers. At the time of our visit the chicks had been released to sleep and forage outside. Their chances of survival seemed promising based on their current progress, but it would be months more perhaps before they were strong enough to survive completely on their own in the wild.

Ecologically, the illegal trade of Yellow-headed Parrots threatens important habitat and biodiversity. Poachers often cut down nest trees in order to get the chicks. Because Yellow-headed Parrots nest in cavities of trees, this not only ruins a nest, it destroys habitat for future nests. These habitat stresses are confounded by the species’ breeding biology. Yellow-headed Parrots reproduce relatively slowly, laying on average two to three eggs per year, meaning populations recover slowly.

Programme for Belize has proactively initiated a large recovery project for the Yellow-headed Parrot. Because even protected areas remain vulnerable to poachers, part of the project ensures increased patrolling during the Yellow-headed Parrot breeding season. In addition, a large part of this project has been to garner local support by sponsoring community education programs that stress the importance of the parrot and its habitats. But, like many nonprofit organizations, additional resources and funding are always needed. Find out how you can help the Yellow-headed Parrot by visiting their website.

With education and support Yellow-headed Parrots can remain in the wild where the grasses grow high, where the thick air bears the scent of stoic pine, and where the rains fall hard.

Read more about our efforts conserving Yellow-headed Parrots in Mexico in our magazine, Living Bird; or see the Bird Life International fact sheet for the species.

(Image: Yellow-headed Parrot by palindrome6996 via Wikipedia and used under a Creative Commons license.)

Living Bird summer issue now free online

admin — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:29:04 +0000

How hard can it be to lose a flamingo? Well, the above species, James’s Flamingo, went missing for fully half the twentieth century, before an expedition rediscovered them in the volcanic lakes of Bolivia’s Altiplano, 14,000 feet above sea level. These days, two Cornell graduate students, Marita Davison and Jennifer Moslemi, focus their research on understanding these and two other flamingo species and how they shape the lakes’ fragile ecosystems. In the summer issue of Living Bird, you can follow them to the high lakes without risking hypoxia. The issue is now free to read online.

We published the summer issue while there was nothing but bad news coming from the Gulf of Mexico. Cornell Lab director John Fitzpatrick urges us all to reconsider our collective energy choices, and we look to the Exxon Valdez oil spill to learn about the persistence of oil effects. (Members, look for a feature in the Autumn issue that takes a look forward at the future of the Gulf’s birds.)

Other articles strike out beyond the Gulf and away from the oil. Cliff Beitel takes us to tropical Midway Atoll, where Black-footed and Laysan albatrosses nest in the middle of military history. Gary Kramer zips up his parka to visit the Falkland Islands, finding four species of penguin plus steamerducks, Dolphin Gulls, and the island’s infamous “Johnny Rooks,” or Striated Caracaras. David Wilcove takes us to that largest island of all, Australia, in search of the unusual—and taxonomically unique—Plains-wanderer.

Lab members should be receiving their Autumn 2010 copies of Living Bird any day now. I’ve said it before, but I’ll just mention again for new readers how important—and easy—it is to join the Lab (video). We’re a nonprofit organization that gets very little funding from Cornell University. Memberships are a major part of the funding that we depend upon to keep going. Thanks to everyone who supports us.

(Image: James’s Flamingos by Marita Davison/Jennifer Moslemi)

Gabon Update: 104 seconds with elephants

admin — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:25:08 +0000

Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland are wrapping up their research at Grand Saline Bai, in Gabon—but Peter has sent us a recording of elephants cavorting in the dark, and Liz has just seen her first daytime elephants in the bai (clearing). Enjoy her photographs, and then close your eyes and listen in on Peter’s recording:

Imagine you’re in the rainforest of Gabon, 25 feet up in a tree at 10 PM. You’re looking out over a pitch-black forest clearing, no stars, no moon. Elephants are about and you can hear them splashing, blowing bubbles, and “rumbling”:

To your right the stream pools up, and two deep pits let elephants siphon up mineral-rich water. A few less-optimal pits are nearby too, which younger or subordinate elephants make do with when someone bigger is around. A channel leads left out of the clearing and about 50 feet along is a spring that must be mineral rich. Families of elephants hang out there every night drinking, drinking, and drinking.

Right now, while you’re listening, there are 14 elephants in the clearing. A family of six huddles at the spring, two moms with their dependent offspring, including one very little calf who still is wondering about the function of this long thing hanging down in front of its face! Another family of three is at a secondary spring a bit closer to the stream and the pool. Two young males are far off to the right hanging out at the periphery because of the three big males in the center of the pool.

Here’s a guide to what you’re hearing in the sound clip—a sample of what we experience every night on the platform. There are lots of sloshing sounds as the animals move around a bit and lift their trunks out of the water to drink.  When we need to, we use our night-vision binoculars and infrared spotlight to see what is going on. But much of the time we are in the dark, so to speak.

00:40 One of the males gets chased out of the pool by a bigger male.

00:59 A loud, deep rumble from the biggest male in the pool.

1:22, 1:39 Males in the pool are blowing air out of their trunks to clear sediment out of the mineral pits, then siphoning up another drink.

Here’s a visual depiction, or spectrogram, of the sound clip.

Elephants have deep voices, so I’ve set the graph to show only the lowest 300 Hz of the frequency range—that means the higher-pitched night calls and splashing sounds don’t show up. What is really cool is that the microphones picked up three other rumbles—two before and one after the one that we can hear on the recording. They were so low that you and I can’t hear them at all (I’ve indicated them with arrows on the spectrogram). I think the short rumble just before the male’s is what triggered his call. We will have to wait until we get back to the Cornell Lab with all of the data from the acoustic array before we can find out just who gave those other rumbles!

Liz’s Morning Treat

Although we’ve seen many elephants now at night, I’ve been keen to see them in the daylight, wihtout the greenish cast of my night-vision binoculars. Today was my chance. I was at the end of my nighttime observation shift. Dawn had broken; the mist slowly lifted, and colors gradually returned to the bai. The morning chorus of birds greeted the day. Bleary-eyed, Eugene and I started to pack up when we heard the tell-tale sound of rustling leaves on the far bank opposite us. A family group of eight elephants appeared on “south stage.” They seemed nervous but gradually came to the pond in front of us.

We saw one large adult female with small tusks, along with a smaller adult female, sub-adults and juveniles—all different colors, depending on what mud they’d been washing with or wallowing in. They still seemed nervous as they milled about the pond. Then a young adult male elephant approached with apparently one thing on his mind—females. The big adult female seemed to be having none of it, though, and kept chasing him off. The rest of the group climbed the bank and headed out of the bai, as if the female had told them to leave. She followed, turning back to head off the male, and to retrieve one of the group that had got left behind. A few moments later, they were all gone.

It happened very fast, but I did get to see elephants in the daytime!

(Images by Liz Rowland and Peter Wrege)

Gabon Update: Elephants Through Night Vision Glasses

admin — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:43:48 +0000

Biologists Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland, of our Elephant Listening Project, are spending night after night on a tree platform in the rainforest of Gabon. They’re learning about forest elephants, and their night-vision binoculars are a key piece of equipment. Here’s Liz with a first-hand description:

A change of plan

As so often happens with field research, things haven’t gone quite according to plan. After six 24-hr sessions of watching the bai (clearing), we had yet to see a single elephant in the daytime, despite seeing plenty at night. This is unusual—perhaps due to late September rains, we’ve speculated. But we decided that if the elephants aren’t coming during the day, neither are we!

We’ll make better use of our time by cutting out the daytime watches and doubling the number of night watches. It’s been a good decision. It’s quite amazing to watch elephants with an infrared light and night-vision binoculars. When there’s no moonlight, you can’t see a thing in the bai. But then you look through the binoculars and miraculously, there are the elephants in greenish monochrome, their eyes reflecting brightly back at us.

Sometimes they arrive almost silently. One night, I heard just a very faint rustle and looked down to see a huge male, slowly but steadily making his way to the pond. For such huge animals, they can be surprisingly delicate. Sometimes they stand in the pond and gently feel the surface of the water—I’ve no idea why. Once I saw an adult female do this and her youngster mimicked her exactly!

The nighttime elephant activity seems to follow a pattern. Elephants trickle in just after darkness has fallen. Numbers peak between about 10 PM and 1 AM. After about 2:30 AM, we hardly ever see an elephant—that’s when it’s most difficult for us to stay awake. They arrive either as solitary adult males, or in family groups—adult females and 2–8 dependent offspring. A few are quite easy to identify, so we know that sometimes elephants come and go a few times during the night. But, mostly we can’t distinguish them, so it’s impossible to know how many individuals we’ve seen. We’ve counted a huge variation in the number of elephant-entries into the bai per night—from 2 to 67.

Male elephants can be aggressive, but often they’re content to drink side-by-side, after first figuring out who’s who. But last night, we had a large male in the reproductive state known as musth, when they tend to be dominant over all non-musth males. This one didn’t seem to mind the presence of two smaller adult males in the pond with him, but he was intent on driving off another large male. He’d head him off whenever the other approached the pond. This went on for at least half an hour.

Finally, the non-musth male came too close and the aggressive male apparently chased him off into the bushes. There followed a huge crashing of trees—it sounded like he was just venting his anger by pulling the trees down. Moral of the tale – don’t annoy a musth male.

At quieter moments, the elephants seem to be always on the alert, and often turn to face us with their trunks up in periscope position, sniffing the air, ears wide. Quite a sight when eight or so are staring at you! I swear I saw one almost stand on tip-toes he was so intent on getting a good whiff. If something scares them, they can turn on a dime and be gone before you know it.

We also see other eyes shining in the infrared light: small crocodiles silently glide across the pond, chevrotain (small antelope) delicately pick their way around the edges – picking for seeds in the elephant dung, lizards crawling up and down tree trunks, and once we saw a couple of African buffalo.

(Images by Liz Rowland)

Gabon Update: Elephants Enter the Bai

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 19:45:06 +0000

This month we’re taking occasional time-outs to hear about elephant research that Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland, of our Elephant Listening Project, are conducting in Gabon (previous posts here). Peter is a veteran of many trips to Gabon, but this is Liz’s first time seeing forest elephants. Last week, she saw her first four. A few nights later, she witnessed a full-on elephant party in the clearing. Here’s her account:

26 Sept

Finally, Peter, Eugene (our Gabonese colleague), and I are on the observation platform overlooking the Grand Saline bai (forest clearing), watching for forest elephants. They come here to drink from the mineral-rich springs in the watercourse. We want to know whether elephants use these areas differently in day and night.

To find out, we climb into a tree platform early in the morning and settle down to watch and listen for an entire day and night in silence. Bird and primate calls alternate with fish splashing in the pond and thwacks as one of us swats at a fly. The hours tick by and the day heats up. No elephants. A kingfisher flits over the stream and wagtails strut around on the sandy islands.

Eventually darkness falls, the air cools down, and everything begins to feel even damper. We take it in turns to keep watch, scanning the bai regularly with night-vision binoculars, which transform everything into a surreal monochrome image.

We can’t see much, but we can hear a lot. Here’s the sound of the forest, with a tree hyrax calling into the night:

At 11 PM I hear a beautiful deep, long, elephant rumble from behind the platform, but nothing appears. Finally, at 1 AM three large dark shapes appear from the forest, only about 35 feet from our platform: a mother elephant and her two young. They push their trunks down into the spring and loudly blow out the surface water, then suck up the mineral-rich water into their trunks and carefully pour it into their mouths.

Mum is nervous though and doesn’t settle to drinking. She turns this way and that and puts her trunk up vertically like a snorkel to smell the air (elephants have an extremely sensitive sense of smell). Perhaps she can smell us, or is nervous because elephants have been poached here within the last couple of months.

A few minutes later, the elephants trot off out of the bai, disappearing down one of the many elephant trails that lead into the forest (more about baby elephants, with photos). I’ve now seen forest elephants, and one of my dreams has come true.

29 Sept

We’ve spent another elephantless daytime at the bai. But the night doesn’t disappoint us! At first a group of seven appear, far off to the left, and make their way down into the stream. And then more appear. They keep coming and within about half an hour, there are more elephants then we can cope with! We soon give up on trying to record the sex and age of each.

It’s enough of a challenge just to count them. If only they would stand still for a few moments, but no, they either huddle together in tight groups or wander up and down so we can’t keep track of them. I try different techniques—counting first bums, then trunks, but just when I’ve got the same answer twice one moves to reveal yet another elephant. The consensus is that we have 27 elephants.

Why are there so many tonight? Until now, the maximum we’ve had at once is seven. The moon isn’t especially full, and we’ve not had rain. Have they all coordinated their movements to arrive at the same time, rumbling the news to each other through the forest, or is it just chance? Whatever the reason, this is certainly an opportunity for them to socialize.

While most stay in the stream far to our left, one large male strolls alone into the big pond in front of us. He swishes his trunk lazily in the water and flaps his ears, making loud thwacks, then drinks. He’s evidently in musth (the reproductive state that male elephants come into once a year): he has enlarged glands on his forehead that secrete fluid. Soon, a family group of six enters the pond too. The male doesn’t seem to take much notice at first, but then approaches one of the females, sniffing her to see if she’s in heat. No luck though, and he wanders off, allowing another adult female to dominate the spring there.

After a while, more elephants wander near us. Two young males joust—interlocking their tusks and pushing each other backwards. Meanwhile, some of the other youngsters get into trouble. They lose track of mum and give the “help me” aooga call (a rumble-roar combination), to which mum responds with a reassuring rumble. Some elephants find the ideal rubbing log and back up against it to rub their backsides. I can just imagine the satisfied expression on their faces!

A mother with a tiny infant stays out of the way most of the time, presumably so her youngster doesn’t get trampled. Some elephants have now climbed up out of the stream and are milling around near our platform. Elephants are everywhere! It’s really quite noisy what with the bubbling and blowing, calling and ear flapping, and the occasional fart! After a couple of hours, they start to wander off and within half an hour they’re all gone. We each turn on our headlamps and frantically scribble in our notebooks, trying to recall events. That was perhaps a few too many elephants at once. Be careful what you ask for!

(Image by Peter Wrege, from a previous visit to Gabon)

Field Report: Sounds of Gabon—and a Few Sights

admin — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:45:25 +0000

One glossy python and eight automated recorders: those were the highlights we heard about this weekend from Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland. They’re spending the next six weeks recording elephants in Gabon—here’s post #2 from them:

Everything is in place: eight autonomous recording units (ARUs) now surround the bai (clearing) at distances ranging from 150 to 300 meters. Each has a GPS device attached to provide millisecond accuracy—allowing us to use differences in arrival time at each unit to pinpoint exactly where each recorded elephant rumble or trumpet originated. Our observation platform has been fitted with camouflage netting and a bit more rain protection. All that we need now is for the rainy season to begin and for the elephants to pour into the bai.

Our primary objective is to find out what is really happening at night in forest clearings. The only previous observations have been done during full moon nights and without specialized equipment—and even this has been done rarely. From our sound recordings we know that most of the elephant activity occurs at night, but is that activity different from daytime? Are there different subsets of animals that come only at night (for example might the biggest bulls avoid clearings in the daytime because of the risk of being killed)?

In order to see in the dark, we are using night-vision binoculars (sensitive to infrared wavelengths) and a specialized LED floodlight that emits only in the infrared. Best of all, we are now entering the main phase of the project when we get to sit for hours on the platform and just observe and listen to all that is around us.

Here’s what the forest sounds like at morning, as a group of Black-casqued Hornbills wakes up:

Last night was our first overnight on the platform. It was both wonderful and instructive. We put white paint marks on some of the trees to help us estimate how big individual elephants are, but these were not very visible with the infrared binoculars. And boy is it hard to estimate size from up on a tower (looking down adds to the change of perception that comes with the darkness).

As far as birds go, in just a short while we saw African Finfoot, Hartlaub’s Duck, Black-casqued Hornbill, African Green Pigeon, African Pied Wagtail, African Pied Hornbill, African Grey Parrots, and heard lots and lots of birds that will keep us busy identifying them at times when elephant activity is low.

We’ve made many treks through the forest now, following Eugene (one of our Gabonese colleagues) in silence and single file, mainly using the network of elephant trails that crisscross this forest, often stepping in their immense footprints.

Eugene knows this forest well, and is constantly on guard for the tell-tale sounds of elephant. If he sees or hears one, we have to strictly obey his orders. As we wend our way through the undergrowth of shrubs and vines, all we see of the immense trees is their thick, straight trunks. Flowers are rare here, though a pink-flowering saprophyte is flowering now, as well as a white-flowered shrub whose beautiful scent perfumes the air.

The forest is more a place to hear animals than see them. Birds and primates call against a constant cacophony of frogs and insects. Our Gabonese colleagues can identify many of them. The “casque-noir” (Black-casqued Hornbill), is one of the more common ones. These large birds slowly flap and glide, often in pairs, around the forest, their wings making an odd sound rather like a slow helicopter. They have a confusing variety of calls, sometimes sounding more like ducks to me!

Meanwhile, the primates—mangobeys and putty-nosed monkeys—are hooting and hollering! There are crashing sounds, too, from animals going about their daily business, and from surprisingly frequent falling dead branches. At the moment, I’m just beginning to distinguish dead wood from the live animals (not saying much for an experienced zoologist!). Occasionally we’re treated to glimpses of smaller birds: an iridescent sunbird, brilliant blue kingfishers, and a flock of pretty red-billed finches.

“Arrette, arrette, python!” exclaimed one of our three Gabonese colleagues as we drove on the disused forestry road toward our work site, in a logging tract all-too-aptly named “Precious Woods.” A 5-meter-long python (not a very big one they said!) slowly slid back into the stream below.

Lying in my tent at night, the volume coming from the forest ramps up. The frogs and insects really get going, as well as a whole new collection of sounds: hooting owls, strange screeching tree hyraxes that seem to work themselves up into a frenzy, and many other mysterious calls. Last night though, I heard a sound that I did recognize: a distant trumpet. We’d all retired to our tents by then. Eugene whispered out to anyone still awake “Ah, l’elephant est la bas.” “Oui,” I replied, and smiled as I finally drifted off to sleep.

(Images by Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland. For more about this project, visit the Elephant Listening Project, or follow them on Facebook)

Elephants Visit Round Robin

admin — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:29:47 +0000

Not everything we study at the Cornell Lab has feathers. Some have thick wrinkly skin, enormous ears, and an oversized nose they can grab things with. That’s what the scientists in our Elephant Listening Project study. Two of them—Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland—have just headed into the rainforest of Gabon for a stint of recording and watching the region’s forest elephants.

The Elephant Listening Project is a part of our Bioacoustics Research Program. Created in 1987, the program recognizes that sound is a vital means of communication—but one that humans, in comparison to other animals, are relatively poor at using. Our scientists and engineers develop technology that narrows that gap and provides a window into the ways animals use sound to survive. Along the way, we learned that sound, because it travels so well, could also help us monitor rare, remote animals such as whales and elephants.

Forest elephants are a separate species from both African and Asian elephants. They live in Central Africa, but scientists know very little about them—even their population size, which is somewhere between 24,000 and 200,000. But we do know they’re threatened by poaching, habitat loss, logging, and oil development. (Find out more about forest elephants.) Peter and Liz will use recording devices to help count forest elephants and will also compare their diurnal and nocturnal behavior patterns—a job that will have them pulling all-nighters from a treehouse overlooking a forest clearing (called a bai).

Peter and Liz are still on their way in to camp, but they’ve already sent a couple of updates by way of introduction. Here they are:

Owendo, N’dzonde, N’djole, Ivindo, Moanda–the tiny towns along the single railroad that arrows southeast into the Congo Basin of Gabon–they don’t pass nearly fast enough. Liz Rowland and I are on our way to begin a new field season in our study of forest-elephant language and nocturnal behavior. We’ll spend the next six weeks perched for 24 hours at a time on a platform above rumbling, trumpeting pachyderms.

Scientists in the Elephant Listening Project at the Cornell Lab have been listening to elephants in Central Africa since 2000. We record the calls they make to each other and study them to help with their conservation.

This is my tenth trip to Gabon in four years, but this time I’m accompanied by my collaborator Liz Rowland. Liz has spent the last five years analyzing elephant sounds back home at the Cornell Lab, and she’s just beginning her first excursion into the field to work with these amazing animals.

What will it be like to live in and work from a rude camp of tents in the forest for six weeks with no car, no amenities? Fantastic and full of surprises no doubt. And what do we hope to discover? Whether elephants get lost in the dark, and whether the real giants of the forest come out only at night! Stick with us!

After five years with the Elephant Listening Project, I’ve seen and counted thousands of elephant calls, using graphs called spectrograms to analyze them in detail. But until now I’d never set foot in Gabon and have never seen a forest elephant.

All that is changing! I met up with Peter in Libreville, the capital of Gabon, and we were soon on the train to somewhere deep in the rainforest.

This is longer than I’ve been away from home for many years, so it was with a mix of emotions that I said goodbye to my husband. Sadness at leaving him behind (he would’ve loved to come), excitement about traveling to a new part of the world and seeing the elephants, and, I have to admit, a hint of trepidation. What’s it going to be like camping in the middle of the rainforest, in the hot, humid weather for six weeks with all the bugs and snakes, or trying to sleep during the day after a nocturnal shift?

I started my transition to Africa with a long layover in Casablanca. Arabs wearing colorful, flowing gowns, turbans, and slippers with curled-up toes; burkas; also skimpy Western-style jeans and t-shirts. The sounds were a similar mixture Arabic and French being spoken with African accents. Combined with jet lag, it was quite an otherworldly experience!

During our 11-hour train ride into the Gabon interior, we got acquainted with some fellow passengers. A guy in our compartment had worked with CEB (the logging company that leases the land where we’ll be working). We struck up a conversation with a French guy who turned out to know all about sound analysis. After leaving our analysis lab behind, I wasn’t expecting to have a chat about Fast Fourier Transforms quite so soon. Small world!

(Images courtesy Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland)