There are a couple of exceptions to that, however. We knew we had Monitor Lizards but had not seen them for several months. Now one large adult has reappeared and two younger, smaller specimens. This picture is of one of the younger ones, showing off a bit, I think.

And the next two pictures are of a fledgling owl that I saw for the first time this morning. I have heard owls in the forest at dusk and later, and have thought I saw one, but this one flew straight towards me at about 8 am and, exhausted by its early flying efforts, I think, sat on this slender branch until a monkey came along and shook it off.

The next four pictures, though, are of species we did not know inhabited the forest, but the fact that they do comes as not much of a surprise.

Thanks to Rebekah for the toad (frog?) and Elizabeth for the other three.

So, last night she sat herself down on the roadside, legs even further apart than in the pic above. She seemed unconcerned that I was taking a close interest in her, but I don’t think she had the strength to move away anyway. After a few minutes she was convulsed by what looked like a silent hiccup but was a contraction, I guessed. And then another. Then she lay down. Over the next 15 minutes or so she sat up three times but each time she keeled over again, rather than lay down. Sitting up, she let out little whinnying noises but no other monkey came to her aid; in fact, they seemed to be deliberately ignoring her (unlike me). I supposed that perhaps she was calling out something like “Leave me alone! I’m having a baby!”

The fourth time she got up she moved towards the further side of the road but only made it to the middle. She stayed there for about 5 minutes, by which time there were only two other monkeys which had not gone up into trees for the night. They went, and Humpy slowly made it across the road and into the undergrowth. It was 6.35 pm and fully dark now so I left her to get through the night as best she could.

This morning I was back in the same spot at 7 am and so were about 25 monkeys, but no Humpy. And then at 7.32 I saw her sitting in the middle of the road again. CLUTCHING HER LITTLE BABY! Not very scientific of me, but I almost had a little tear, I was so glad the two of them had made it.

And here they are:

It was noticeable that she soon found some company, unlike the previous night:

So this is one monkey whose date of birth we will always know. I just hope that the baby is a female and so will stay with her mother.

They also visited our exhibition to learn about the long-tailed macaques.

Their help was really appreciated and we hope that they will be the first of many such visitors.

(At this point I should perhaps make two autobiographical observations: I read a great deal of ‘police procedural’ fiction and it is coming in unexpectedly  useful.  Secondly, I have often thought it surprising that more young males don’t come to a bad end as a result of their dangerous-looking play in trees: I almost want to say “I told you that was dangerous”.)

When I discovered the body of this young monkey I was picking up litter in the undergrowth. There were perhaps 50 – 60 monkeys on the road nearby, all within about 20 metres of me. None of them took any notice of me, but then they never do because they know me well, and know that I am not going to feed them or cause them any harm. I  spent some time looking at the body, photographing it, moving around it. None of the monkeys took any notice of me that I was aware of, although an infant in a low tree overlooking the spot did make some small noises. The other monkeys, however, did not respond to these noises.

I went away to fetch a bag and returned about ten minutes later. There were fewer monkeys on the scene when I returned and I became aware that the two nearest, perhaps just 2 metres from the body, were adults, a youngish male grooming a female who was sitting up and facing the spot where the body was lying. They watched me going back into the undergrowth but stayed where they were.

I put the dead young monkey into my bag and left. As I went away I looked back and saw that the male had left the female and was headed into the undergrowth to the spot where I had found the body. So this pair of monkeys were more than bystanders and suddenly I became aware that I had intervened in their grieving pro.

I felt some guilt but had taken the body because it is very rare to come across one and the last I had found disappeared after I had been monitoring it for several days. That body had been slowly stripped of fur, the flesh eaten away, and then all the bones disappeared except one rear leg which had snagged in some nearby branches. A complete, undamaged skeleton would be very useful for our exhibition so I don’t really regret taking it. What I do regret is that I intruded on the grieving pair and didn’t just sit myself down at a distance and observe their behaviour. If I had recognised them for what they were, I would have done so.

Easier to recognize are those monkeys which are carrying injuries, and unfortunately there are a number of these, so getting a sighting of at least one of them on any given day is fairly certain.

The easiest of our monkeys to spot is this one, which has no tail.

He seems to live the usual social life,  mating with several females and often found shepherding young males, presumably his offspring. He frequents two main areas: along the wall north of the main gate, and in the open area just inside the main gate during much of the day. There is another male which has only half a tail and that seems fairly certainly the result of a traffic accident, but whether the same is true of this one I don’t know. I don’t see the monkey with the half-lethngth tail very often and have no photo of him.

Traffic accidents are almost certainly the cause of the most frequently-seen injury. At present there are four or five monkeys moving along on the ground using just three legs. Most often it is just the foot which has been rendered unusable, presumably by a vehicle running over it.

          injury to front right paw      injury to front left paw

Injuries to the eye are also quite frequent and are most likely the result of fighting, although slingshots cannot be ruled out as a possible cause. This male is one I see most days, and one of the conclusions I draw from that is that his use of the forest is confined to one particular area.

This next monkey has an injury to his right eye and some damage to his ear and shoulder – all of which indicates his recent involvement in a fight.

There are two or possibly three monkeys, all female, which have hump backs. The smaller of the two has the more severe case and it seems possible that her growth has been restricted by the disease causing such severe over-curvature of the spine.

This is the second female. Her spine is affected further towards the tail and the deformity is much less pronounced. Both the two monkeys  are sometimes found in the area just inside the main gate, although the smaller of the two is more often to be seen near the pond area further south. I have never seen the two of them together so their being of the same family can almost certainly be ruled out.

Most of the injuries I have seen our monkeys carrying do not seem to be life-threatening. But two monkeys, at least, do not seem to have survived. The first was a large male that I saw just once, in November 2011. He was with a group of all-male juveniles and seemed to be their guardian, while they were eating the rice grain we provided, anyway. His injuries were severe and probably received in a fight, but he was eating and appeared to be generally in good health.

Yet I never saw him again, though he would have been instantly recognisable. I can only think that perhaps he left the troop or that infection in his wounds caused his death.

A female that I came across in June this year had a very severe case of what looks like sarcoptic mange. She had lost a lot of hair from her back and the exposed skin looked very leathery. She was constantly scratching herself and this may have caused the open wounds. She was eating undisturbed by other monkeys but did not seem to be part of any group. She sat and ate and walked alone. I saw her several times over the course of a week or so, but have never seen her since. I can’t believe that she recovered though.

Contributed by Elliot Capp

After my time at ZSL London Zoo working in Butterfly Paradise I developed quite an affinity for butterflies and moths, and one of my first impressions as I walked around the sacred Don Chao Poo forest was of the vast number of butterflies and varying species that were present. As an avid biological photographer, I had come prepared for such an eventuality. From this moment onwards I tasked myself with trying to get photographs of as many butterfly species in the forest as was possible during my time there, in order to be able to identify them and create a visual identification display for the new research centre.

Figure 1: The Common Crow (Euploea core)

Throughout the three months that I spent carrying out research in the forest, whenever I got some spare time, I would head into the forest with my camera looking for some unsuspecting butterflies to photograph. I had photographed butterflies in the past and I was well aware of how skittish they can be when you are trying to get a photo of them, and numerous times I had walked away with either an empty shot, or a very colourful blur. So with this in mind every time I headed into the forest with the phrase ‘patience is a virtue’ ringing in my mind.

So tip-toeing amongst the leaves looking for my first targets, I re-discovered just how sensitive these little creatures really are. As soon as I approached them, hundreds of butterflies would burst into the air, quite spectacularly, and disappear. On my first few visits to the forest on my butterfly hunting trips I was successful with a couple of species – quite repeatedly. These were the species that turned out to occur most frequently within the forest and seemed least sensitive to disturbance. I started seeing more and more species, and noting down when and where I had seen them and what they were doing (sitting/flying around particular plants/speeding past), to enhance my chances of getting a useful shot of them.

Figure 2: The Archduke (male) – (Lexias dirtea)

After a few more visits, frequenting the places that I had noted down hives of butterfly activity I started getting a lot more success, even if I did have to sit in silence for a good few hours to get the photos. For the few species that I had not so far managed to get any pictures of, other than a very attractive, however indiscernible blur on my screen, I tried to think of a few tricks to attach them, such as putting sugar water or fruit juice on the floor. Although this was very successful in attracting vast quantities of ants, no butterflies were enticed by my trickery. My sessions of sitting and waiting also proved productive for photographing an elusive bird species (White Rumped Shama) and a Monitor Lizard.

Figure 3: White Rumped Shama (Copsychus malabaricus)

Figure 4: Monitor Lizard (Varanus bengalensis) in its nest

So how did my little side project pan out over the course of my three months attempting to establish a photographical biodiversity study of butterfly species present in the forest? All-in-all I am very satisfied with the photographs that I managed to get. There are some species that remained elusive to me, that I did not manage to identify, such as the large black and yellow butterfly that only seemed to fly amongst the upper canopy. However, this does provide something for future researchers to try and achieve. I hope that the butterfly display at the new research centre will encourage people to learn about the biodiversity present in their village.

So what was learnt from this photographical butterfly hunt? – Always have your camera ready, keep your eyes peeled, and yes, patience is indeed a virtue.

Figure 5: Blue Tiger Butterfly (Danaus limniace)

Over the past couple of weeks the team and I have been slowly but surely developing a list of all of the behaviours that we have seen the monkeys carry out.  This is with a view to creating an ethogram for use in our time-budget analysis and for future researchers to be able to use.  To start gaining a better insight into the behaviours that this species carries out, we had to sit and watch for hours on end, noting down anything and everything that we saw.

At the end of every day, we sat down and compared notes, and discussed what could be defined as different behaviours, and perhaps where there might be some potential overlaps in behaviour.

Figure 1: The king of the swingers

A couple of examples where our discussions about how to define certain behaviours went deep into the night were with different types of locomotion, and being able to define aggression.  What with all the differing types of movement that a monkey displays when getting about, such as walking, running, climbing, jumping, and the odd swing and cartwheel, we knew that if we had to write down every time they moved from a walk to a run to a jump, we would be constantly writing and most likely start missing behaviours in our observations.  Defining when a monkey was being aggressive was also difficult to decipher as with the younger monkeys it seemed to be a case of play, rather than an attempt to attack another individual, or warn them off.  Was this seeming aggression amongst the younger monkeys mere practicing for when they were a bit older?

Figure 2: My, what big teeth you have

In order to create more reliable results, and an easier-to-use ethogram, we grouped all movement as locomotion, and then stated whether it occurred on the ground or up in the trees (arboreal).  When aggression occurred between younger monkeys it was defined as play, and in older individuals, it was defined as aggression.  We are aware that with more time observing the monkeys, overlaps between these will occur, and with more experience with the species we hope to be able to better define these behaviours.

In addition to writing all of the behaviours down and defining them, I have been endeavouring to photograph all of these behaviours in order to create a photographical ethogram for use by future researchers.  Some of these behaviours were a lot easier to capture than others.  For example, we knew that the monkeys could sometimes be found swimming, but this behaviour completely eluded us whilst we were there, although during the many hot days we came across some very wet looking monkeys.

Figure 3: Female macaque defending food from male macaque

Writing this particular entry has got me thinking about all of the other problems that we have encountered during our time studying these monkeys.

The trials and tribulations associated with working with cheeky monkeys:

I couldn’t possibly go into all of the issues that are associated with working with these monkeys, but I shall try to cover the main ones.

First and foremost, the sheer amount of monkeys present in the forest (700+), although this was useful in terms of getting a greater sample size for our research, it did provide some problems with how skittish they were, and being able to keep track of the individuals that you were observing.  Great care also had to be taken not to bring any food or drink into the forest, as the monkeys were quick to spot this, which would lead to aggression directed towards us, and a bias in our research – this can be quite difficult when you are in temperatures exceeding 30°C all day.

People provisioning the monkeys also tended to upset our observations somewhat.  For example, numerous times we would be observing some monkeys, then all of a sudden a car horn would sound and they would all sprint off in the hope of getting some food.  As stated earlier, the hundreds of monkeys that would run over to try and get some food would make it nigh on impossible to follow the monkeys that you were focusing on.

Observing the monkeys in the trees was also very difficult, so our observations when in the dense forest would be subject to ceasing suddenly as the monkey disappeared out of sight with an agile leap.

Figure 4: How many monkeys can you see? It can be very hard to spot monkeys when they go arboreal

Although there are a lot of difficulties associated with observing these monkeys, so far it has been a great learning experience, and I look forward to updating you further on how things are going in the near future.