Bush Babies at Home & Komba with Calf!

So the last blog was all about going out in search of the wildlife... today's is more about the wildlife coming to us. I mentioned before that we had discovered the night time raiders of our bananas; a pair of short-eared bush babies (or short eared galagos as they should be referred to).

Provisionally named 'Bushy' and 'Fishy' - I know it doesn't seem overly original but we're not being quite as obvious as it seems... they're named in honour of Ekens, our former national scholarship programme student from Kenya Wildlife Service Training Institute, and then intern, who has been battling to recovery from an accident four months ago. He loves the bush... and fish! We know he'll be as excited as we are to have the forest wildlife sharing our office and home...

Well they've been climbing through our kitchen window every night since, having decided not to be overly concerned by our presence. And they've brought guests; two nights ago we had three of them clambering around outside the kitchen. And last night we discovered that one of them has lost the lower half of one of its forelegs. Clearly a major disadvantage for an arboreal species but with banana in mouth its having no problems moving around the kitchen, and it seems to be an old, healed injury. 'Stumpy' seems a little insensitive for the third of our banana thieves so we're inviting suggestions!

Meanwhile back out at sea yesterday, no reappearance of the spinner dolphins, but the research team caught up with some of the bottlenose dolphins near Kisite Island in the marine park, a group of 15. One of our identified individuals, 'Komba' (Kiswahili speakers will understand the link in this blog of two halves!) was recorded with a calf, not only happy news but also valuable data... we now know 'Komba' (or more formally 'individual 036') is a she!




Unfortunately, they also witnessed one of the tourist boats allowing their guests to jump in the water and swim with the dolphins... known to cause unnecessary disturbance and stress to wild dolphins, this was prohibited under the code of conduct introduced in 2007 and its a shame to see a regression in the standards of responsible tourism here.

Bush Babies at Home & Komba with Calf!