Rawa Danau III

Going around through the swamp with the Polisi Kehutanan for the Habitat-assessment

Rawa Danau II

A few advantages of the life as a biologist:
1. the view from the place I'm staying:

2. my workplace (all you can see and even more):

3. on the way to my desk:

4. one of my countless desks:

Rawa Danau I

At the moment I'm at Rawa Danau, a lake that silts up in Northwestern Java (at the moment in the state of swamp). There, some Black-Winged Starlings will be released. Here we're just putting up the Release-cage.

this way and similar are the views over there...

This ain't original!

One of the countless Agriculture-Custombikes here. So you can drive around with even more ricebags on your bike. The green plastic-container is the new tank. Those bikes are officially not even allowed in Indonesia. But no one cares...

Cikananga VIII

Medicine-check and measuring of a confiscated leopard

Cikananga VII

Market in Sukabumi

Cikananga VI

and that's what I'm doing during daytime: build nestboxes for the upcomimg release

Idul Fitri

Ramadhan is over. This is being celebrated by drumming and shooting fireworks the whole night in front of the mosque. As the Indonesians working for PPSC are all muslims and spend the whole night at the mosque we went there to have a closer look at the show. Most of us drummed a bit with them aswell. A video of the bamboo-canons with whom they shoot the fireworks is in progress.

Cikananga V

I'd say I've seen the area. Red circles: 2 and 4km radius; grey spots were excluded from the search (mainly monocultures and urban areas). Altogether I walked more than 100km.

Cikananga IV

I know, selfies are stupid. But I got bored making pictures of ricefields. Therefore my search for the bird from an different angle.

Birdsearcher Level -3: the Distracted
characteristics: should be looking for a bird but looks at spiders, snakes and butterflies

Birdsearcher Level 2: happy-go-lucky
favored mode of locomotion: farm tracks
characteristics: gets burned because of short sleeves

Birdsearcher Level 5: the Established
favored mode of locomotion: balancing on the 10cm broad walls of the ricefields
characteristics: long sleeves; stick against spidernets, snakes and annoying dogs

Birdsearcher Level 10: the Straightforward
favored mode of locomotion: straight, even if this involves going through the hedge
characteristics: scratches on arms and legs

Birdsearcher Level 20: the Lunatic
favored mode of locomotion: further
characteristics: slides down overgrown slopes with 40° inclination because the before hardly existent path
                             vanished into the Nothing

 

Cikananga III

teasing-time in the afternoon

I couldn't resist and had to annoy the scorpion for a while, hehe

Cikananga II

I started to walk around  and look for the Black-Winged starling here in the area. Means, I hike in between the rice paddies all day long.

a little sunshelter for the workers on the fields

Well, those guys are out there aswell. Birdcatcher in action. With a marketprice of more than a month pay for the Black-Winged starling there's little to wonder why I can't find him (yet).

Here something for the spider-lovers in between you

Ricefields and improvised bridges as far as you can see.

I just had to make a shot of this old lady, hehe

Cikananga I

The next two month i'm going to be working with the Cikananga Conservation Breeding Center. More information about this organisation you can find at www.cikanangawildlifecenter.com. I'm going to part of the project to reintroduce the critically endangered Black-Winged Starling (Sturnus melanopterus) into the wild. The first goal for me is going to be to find the released birds from last year in the area. If they haven't died or been caught to sell them we will start a new release. Then I'm going to collect data for a while after the release to monitor the success of the release.

Because I'm supposed to find the birds in the nature, I need to get to know them first. Learn their singing and what they are up to. And how could you do this better than cleaning their cages, hehe? I don't want to just sit around and listen to the birds so I helped the keepers to clean the cages of the breeding program.