Here Be Lemurs

Antantetiambo sign in front of Désiré's house

The day after Faye and Erik flew in from Tana, we made the move out to Andapa.  Specifically, Désiré’s house is in Matsobe, which is sort of like a small suburb just outside the main town.  It is situated at a crossroads and is along a river.  Our tents are adjacent to the kitchen, where Désiré’s wife Valerie cooks the meals.  A typical meal here is a generous portion of rice with some non-rice in it, topped off with more rice and with a hot glass of rice tea on the side.  I can’t tell whether I’ll love rice or hate it by the end, but right now I’m really enjoying Valerie’s delicious cooking.

Although we are obviously lacking a few Western luxuries, I am quite comfortable here and have no real complaints.  Désiré’s family has been incredibly hospitable.  From the house, we have a great view of the scenic mountains and golden rice fields.  On clear nights, the lack of light pollution makes for some of the best stargazing I’ve ever seen.  The Milky Way is very visible.  Since this is my first time in the Southern Hemisphere, I’ve been excited to see some of the things invisible from the north, such as the Southern Cross constellation, the Coalsack nebula, and many amazing star clusters.

The day after we arrived here, we started our work in Antanetiambo, Désiré’s nature reserve.  It is a green hill that rises like an island out of a sea of golden rice fields.  Our first project was to flag the trail systems, which will facilitate ecotourism as well as monitoring by the ranger.  We measured out and flagged every 25 m and also made a GPS map.  The two main trails, both just over 1 km, are named after the two types of lemurs found in Antanetiambo:  Tsidy (mouse lemur) and Bokombolo (bamboo lemur).  We also marked 24 smaller side trails named after other local plants and animals.  Faye and I have seen a variety of these during our work, including trees, insects, birds, snails, and a few chameleons.  But I was of course most excited when we saw the lemurs.

A small juvenile chameleon we saw while flagging trails

Our first lemur sighting came unexpectedly when marking a side trail through a dwarf bamboo grove.  Désiré pointed out a few nesting mouse lemurs (Microcebus sp.) in the trees above us.  Mouse lemurs are nocturnal lemurs, and this genus contains the smallest primates in the world.  The multiple species of mouse lemur all look very similar, so we are not positive which species these are (perhaps Microcebus mittermeieri).  Even though mouse lemurs come out primarily at night, these ones were awake and watching us.  Perhaps our noise woke them up.  After marking more trails, we returned to that spot at the end of the day to check up on them.  They were still there, and we also found another group.  The next day, we spent a little bit of time looking for lemurs, and we found three more groups of mouse lemurs.  One group was very active and was actually hopping through the trees.  I was surprised to see one individual leave one nest and enter another nearby.  That group of five eventually hopped away through the forest.  I’m also proud to say that I found one mouse lemur on my own.  Désiré had assumed one nest was old and abandoned, but I looked closer and noticed a small mouse lemur head.

Mouse lemurs!

That day, we also saw our first northern bamboo lemurs (Hapalemur occidentalis).  These were spotted by Jackson, the other guide we’re working with.  Three individuals were moving about and feeding in the trees above us.  Much of our project later on will consist of observing them.  Since they were hard to see up in the treetops, I can already tell that this will be difficult, but they were still a joy to watch.  Unfortunately, darkness was falling, so we had to return before long.

After the trail marking, our next project was to flag several 10 m by 50 m botanical plots in preparation for a botanist coming in June.  Since this required us to mark straight lines at right angles to each other through thick vegetation, this was much more difficult than the trails.  Still, we managed to complete nine plots in a variety of Antanetiambo’s habitats.  It looks like the botanist will have his work cut out for him, trying to identify every plant species in the 4500 m² of plots.  I am curious about the process, so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

Tomorrow, we are going to Marojejy National Park, an excursion that was one of the things I was most looking forward to about coming to Madagascar.  This mountainous reserve is home to incredible biodiversity, including an incredibly rare lemur called the silky sifaka (Propithecus candidus).  You can actually see the boundary of the park from Andapa; there is a distinct line on the mountains where the slash-and-burn agriculture ends and the protected area begins.  At the moment, I am in Sambava for the night, and we will depart for Marojejy early tomorrow morning.

My next destination: the mountains of Marojejy