So with the new Plan to await arrival of new transmitters, and spend the intervening time trying to recover the faulty ones being carried around by five turtles up on the mountain, I set some traps back in the river. Two of the turtles' transmitters hadn't completely failed, and I discovered they had moved 50m away from the river and were hiding out in caves! Pretty interesting as we'd assumed they spent all of their time in the river, nevertheless I couldn't see them in this turtle-sized cave. Mostly too small for me to crawl into, it extends back several metres under a pile of boulders, complete with hundreds of cockroaches and several bats.
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| Come out come out wherever you are... |
I would have thought that perhaps they'd lost their transmitters in there somehow and had gone elsewhere, or that something had eaten them, but even if this was the case I'd superglued the transmitters to their carapaces, and I thought it more likely that the turtles themselves were in there than their carapaces had been carried in there by some predator.
After five days of tracking them every morning to find them still in their cave, I thought perhaps they are moving out at night and going back in there by the time I arrive every morning? Only way to find out: a cave stakeout! So last night I packed up hammocks and tarps and fried rice for dinner, and headed up the hill with two rangers. We set up camp off to the side of the cave so I would be able to pick up their moving out at night with my antenna and receiver.
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| My hammock, swinging in the forest for the night |
We set up before dark at 6:30pm, and then there wasn't much to do but wait. I'd check for their signals every two hours throughout the night. But first for dinner, the rangers were hungry...
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| Mr Hat chowing down |
Swinging in my hammock, they grey sky faded between the gaps in the canopy above, and after a little while the only light was from the fireflies floating through the forest. Little flashing light globes going about their firefly business. I had a fully charged ipod to get me through the evening, but hadn't figured on the rangers playing their own Khmer music out loud, which sounds a bit like someone being strangled. I let them go for an hour or so before having to tell them to hush up, figured it would defeat the purpose of the stakeout if we scared the turtles with the music/strangling sounds. I hadn't quite figured how difficult it would be to fight off sleep every two hours to put boots back on and try to quietly creep towards the cave entrance with my antenna to see if there'd been any movement. Especially since there didn't seem to be any change, except that at 5:30am one of the turtle's transmitters appeared to be on the blink. We packed up, checked traps (again no captures) and headed for home.
So I know that for last night at least, they didn't move, and perhaps they haven't moved for the past week? Perhaps they were so stressed out by the transmitter attachment process that they are hiding out for a while? Perhaps I have been disturbing them poking around in their cave last week trying to get them out, and now they're determined not to budge? Perhaps it's just normal for them to be inactive for such a long time? Perhaps perhaps perhaps. So now I am going back to relying on a big trapping effort in the river, and hope with luck to recapture a turtle with a transmitter on it. Seems like a lot of effort to go to because someone else gave me inadequate transmitters, but on the plus side at least I am getting fitter!
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