Filming Wild

Category: filming news, inspiration series, wild animals | Date: May 30 2008 | By: filmingwild

As many of you will know, we are currently working on a series of films under the umbrella heading of “Inspiration”. Each Inspiration film highlights a specific issue, through the eyes of an individual (or small organization) who is involved. The series seeks to create role models, whom others can emulate and learn from. Each film will show how people are benefiting by adopting conservation-based or environmentally sustainable initiatives – benefiting not just in terms of personal wellbeing but financially too.

One of our films centers on a man named Kahindi, “The Turtle Watcher” (see photos of Kahindi below). He is fanatical about saving sea turtles, which as you know are highly endangered, despite playing an important role in the biodiversity of our oceans. Working with the Watamu Turtle Watch, Kahindi’s job takes him from the beach where he monitors the coming ashore of turtles to lay their eggs, to the villages of fishing communities who – thanks to people like Kahindi spreading the word – now hand in turtles inadvertently caught in fishing nets. This means the turtles can be returned to the sea, instead of being killed.

This is the latest filming report sent in from the field by Simon Trevor, head of AEFF’s production team…

The final phase of the filming for our turtle film ended a week ago when Lesley Hannah [Kenyan camerawoman working with AEFF] was able to film a Green Turtle laying her eggs on a beach near Watamu on the Kenya coast.

Close up of the turtle laying her eggs deep in
the nest hole she has dug with her flippers - she
can lay up to 100 eggs in one sitting!

From the start, we felt that this was a vital sequence for the beginning of the film, and we had been waiting for an opportunity to film such an event. It has always struck me as strange that in wildlife documentary making, the beginning of a film is so often the last sequence to be captured on film.

Nesting turtles have been witnessed many times around the world but few East Africans will have seen this amazing event… and it is amazing for many reasons. Turtles look old and they are old! (Surely Stephen Spielberg based his famous ET on a turtle? Just look at that head!)

Turtles have been around for millions of years. In fact, it is said they would have witnessed the dinosaurs evolve and become extinct… so they would have been coming ashore during the hours of darkness to lay their eggs for aeons…

Today in Kenya, as in many parts of the world, turtle nesting sites are becoming crowded out by human activities along the remaining sloping beaches. These secluded areas are vital for the successful hatching of their eggs. We at AEFF hope that this film will help people to understand the role turtles play in the biodiversity of the oceans and make an effort to conserve them.

A female turtle returns to lay her eggs on the same shore where she was born, sometimes many years after the moment that she took that first gigantic step in her life of swimming out to sea as a tiny hatchling. She would have been one out of a thousand siblings to have survived and, in the interim period, would have covered hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of ocean. (Astonishingly, male turtles never return to land after they leave their natal beach.)

Once a turtle returns to her birthplace to lay her eggs, she will come ashore as many as four times, with intervals of ten to fifteen days between each laying. She can deposit as many as one hundred eggs at a time. This knowledge gave us a better chance of being in the right place at the right time to film a nesting turtle but the odds against us were still formidable.

One particular turtle came ashore at 1.30am, but was not spotted until she was already on her way back out to sea. Having spent many exhausting hours searching the beaches over several consecutive nights, Lesley was bitterly disappointed to have missed the turtle coming ashore. But, as the Watamu Turtle Watch ‘watchers’ knew, turtles sometimes come ashore but return to the sea without laying their eggs. This behaviour is known as a “false crawl”. So they all decided to wait and see if she would return again that night somewhere along the same beach…

Lo and behold, at 3.30am the enormous reptile reappeared. She came ashore again and this time she settled down to dig a hole for her eggs. Lesley and the ‘watchers’ were careful not to disturb her while she was busy digging, for with the slightest disturbance at this point, she would desert the nest and her precious eggs would be lost forever.

Filming could not begin until the turtle was actually dropping her rubbery eggs into the cavity she had dug with her flippers. Once she started laying, nothing seemed to bother her, she just carried on laying. Kahindi was able to walk right up to her and check her flippers. Everyone at Watamu Turtle Watch was excited to see a metal tag they had attached to this same turtle five years ago – when she was laying eggs in exactly the same spot! She was the largest turtle they had ever seen and would have weighed in the region of 250 kilos [550 pounds].

Kahindi checks the tag on the turtle’s flipper, placed there
when she was laying eggs in exactly the same spot five years ago.

By the time the turtle had laid her eggs and covered the nest it was 8 o’clock in the morning. Fortunately for the turtle, it was a rainy morning so there were no tourists to disturb her on the beach. The only humans who arrived to watch were hotel security guards, no doubt attracted by the “turtle watchers” on the beach so early in the morning. They were amazed and then fascinated by the mother turtle’s behaviour. When our film is finished and is shown on mobile cinemas and on TV, I can imagine how these guards will dine out on how they were actually there when it was being filmed!

8am: the exhausted mother turtle, having covered over her eggs with
sand, leaves the nest and heads back to the ocean…

Just as the turtle laboriously began to haul her huge bulk back towards the ocean, the heavens opened and the rain came down in buckets. Lesley had seen the gathering clouds and had guessed this was going to happen so she had run back down the beach to get an umbrella. And that was how she was able to film the culmination of this amazing event, huddled beneath an umbrella, capturing that magical moment that the mother turtle, her awesome task completed, returned exhausted to the ocean. Well done, Lesley!

When you see the film, readers, as I hope you will, you will now know what went on behind the scenes…

As the turtle heads back to the sea, the rain starts pouring down…

Kahindi watches over her as the mother turtle reaches the waves

And off she goes, beneath the pouring rain, back into the ocean…

• Further reading: How the loss of nature and biodiversity will damage the world’s poor…

Tags: africa, animal, coast, conservation, DVD, education, environment, film, kenya, turtle, watamu, wildlife

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Category: birdlife, our life in the wild, wild animals | Date: May 29 2008 | By: filmingwild

There’s been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing of wild things over the past few days so I’m going to have to tell you about it all in fits and starts, as I find the time…one thing which is extraordinary is how much the big beach down at Hippo Bend has changed with the high flood waters while we were away. The high ledge has been cut away completely, and now the beach is just huge and flat, with a sudden very tall step up to the riverine vegetation right at the outer edge. The Vervet Monkeys have babies in tow at the moment, as do the baboons. They’re very cheeky and cute, riding “under-slung” beneath their mother’s belly.

Vervet monkey mother & baby

It’s strange not to see our swallows or sandpipers around – they’re up in Europe by now. Nonetheless, it’s certainly been a bird watcher’s paradise recently, with a great variety of eagles soaring on the hot winds, all sorts of other fine-feathered visitors (more about them in upcoming posts) and quite a few comical avian sightings too.

Tell me: what is it about storks and standing on one-leg? The other evening we saw this Marabou Stork performing a “one legged ballet” in the treetops – it transpired (I think) that it was merely trying to balance on a rather precarious perch on a decidedly windy day. It seems that standing on one leg is something the Yellow-billed Storks like to do too…and speaking of Storks, a couple of Woolly-necked Storks are back at Hippo Bend again. They’ve been there for several days in a row now. The light was bad when I photographed them, but nonetheless they deserve to be featured here too, I feel!

One-legged Marabou ballet

Yellow-billed storks get in on the one-legged act

Woolly-necked Storks in dull light

Speaking of all these different storks, brings to mind something which always amazes me, and that is the staggering diversity of nature. Even “small shifts sideways” creates amazing varieties of creatures and plants. Take, for example, the three different types of Hornbills we’ve seen around the house in the last couple of days – similar to each other, yet each so different…

Grey Hornbill in flight

Von der Decken Hornbill, male (compare with female here)

Red-billed Hornbill

Mongooses are another case in point. A few days back, we saw a band of Dwarf Mongooses carrying their tiny babies across the road, en route to a termite mound where they would have been spending the night. Dwarf Mongooses are fascinating little creatures. They’re like bees, in the sense that one animal cannot survive alone without a certain number of others. In order for these tiny mongooses to survive, each band needs to comprise a minimum of four-five members, each with strictly designated roles: the Alpha Female (leader of the pack and the only female to bear young), the Alpha Male, at least one Look-out, and at least one Nanny (if there are two babies in the group, then the Alpha Female will carry one, the Nanny will carry the other. If there are more than two babies, another Nanny is needed.) The mongooses move sleeping sites every day within their territories, carrying their babies in their mouths, in order to lessen the threat from predators, chief among which is the Grey Spitting Cobra.

A Dwarf Mongoose look-out keeps a close watch on us from the top of the termite mound where the band’s babies are hidden

Another social mongoose is the Banded Mongoose, which is bigger than the Dwarf Mongoose and more heavily set than the Black-tipped. As luck would have it, a band just passed by the house this morning. My view of them was not very clear, there were bits of vegetation in the way, but nonetheless I hope you can see their distinctive striped coats which give them their name. This band had big babies with them, already capable of foraging for themselves.

Banded mongooses on the beach, unfortunately slightly obscured by vegetation

The Verraux Eagle Owl and the Pearl Spotted Owlette are also examples of large and small…

The other evening we saw a Verraux Eagle Owl, a giant among birds, in the big riverine trees by Hippo Bend. These owls are HUGE, and they are all the more extraordinary for their pink eyelids, which you see each time they blink. The light was already low when we spotted the owl, so the photo below is a little bit fuzzy.

The giant among owls: the Verraux

At the other end of the scale, a diminutive Pearl-spotted Owlette

As we were walking back to the house, we turned and looked back over our shoulder, and there he was again, this time right underneath the Marabou with a penchant for one-legged ballet…

The Owl and the Marabou…

WANT TO SEE MORE PHOTOS? Follow any of these links:

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Tags: africa, animals, birds, kenya, nature, tsavo, wildlife

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Category: birdlife, changing seasons, insect world, our life in the wild, trees & plants, wild animals | Date: May 22 2008 | By: filmingwild

What a feeling it was, having arrived home after dark on Saturday (to the nighttime sounds of elephants, lion and buffalo all around) and then to wake up Sunday morning to that wonderful river view! And how the river has changed since we have been away, leaving in the wake of its ebb and flow, a completely new pattern of sandbanks and islands. Below the house now, we have a long sand spit, which – if it gets the chance before the next flood – will sprout grass and, hopefully, attract a myriad of game.

Looking upstream from the house, you can see how new sandbanks have appeared while others have disappeared…

The corresponding view downstream from the house, also showing how the character of the river has changed since we’ve been away. You can compare different riverscapes, moulded by the water over the days and weeks here.

Already since we’ve been back, we’ve had our familiar Waterbuck (five of them in the herd now) and Impala coming down to drink. One of the small rams has lost a horn, so now is a smaller version of the dominant ram in the area who is also, strangely enough, one-horned. Despite this deficiency, he has managed to stay in charge of his harem for a remarkably long time. (We’ve seen both the small bachelor herd and the main herd of impala below the house since getting back.)

Young impala ram who has lost one horn since we’ve been away

Sunday and Monday were grey and overcast and there was hardly a crocodile in sight (we only saw one tiny one, forlornly lying out on one of the sandbanks, as if willing the sun to come out), but today was hot and sunny all day, and the crocodiles appeared in their dozens. The herons seem to have disappeared though – both the Grey Heron and the Goliath (although I have seen the diminutive Green-backed Heron). The Yellow-billed Stork who had taken up almost permanent residence below the house also has not shown itself until today, when it landed a little way down from the house. (I presume it is the same stork as it seems to prefer keeping itself to itself, away from the main flock which we can see congregated on the river’s edge at Hippo Bend.)

“Our” Yellow-billed Stork back again

But many of the old regulars were here to greet us on Sunday morning: the Spur-winged Plovers, noisy and boisterous as ever, and trying to intimidate the resident troop of Vervet Monkeys (babies in tow); the orange Butterflies busy by the river’s edge; the cacophonic Hadada Ibises, and the Egyptian Geese, in flocks of up to ten birds, all squabbling with one another and trying to challenge the resident pairs which have staked out territories along the river; the Baboon troop that likes to spend the last hour of the day relaxing on the sandbank; the Hammerkops who were busy mating; the Pied Kingfishers, hovering so expertly above the now low and calm river, elegantly poised for the lethal dive onto an unsuspecting fish many feet below; even the Spot-flanked Barbet was in the bushes by the house.

Vervet monkey being harassed by plovers

Orange butterflies by the river’s edge

Hadada Ibis foraging on the beach

Baboon in doum palm tree, late evening

Hammerkops mating

Pied Kingfisher, poised for the killer dive

Spot-flanked Barbet

Pair of Egyptian Geese feeding at the river’s edge in the golden evening light

And some birds had even moved into the house during our absence (alongside the Agama Lizards and Rainbow Skinks who have remained in residence all along): the Sparrows are nesting on our balcony (all the to-ing and fro-ing of the parents to feed the chicks attracting the attention of a curious yet harmless Bulbul) and the Swifts are building a nest inside a disused light socket on our roof. And our regular visitors to the birdbath are back too, including the Glossy Starlings who seem to have some big chicks with them again. (The adults have white eyes and more radiant plumage, while the youngsters have dark eyes).

Male Agama Lizard on our bird table, with Bulbul washing in the background

Non-breeding male Rainbow Skink eating ants attracted by the bird food

A Sparrow with a mouthful of food for its chicks

A Bulbul comes to see what all the fuss is about

A pair of Little Swifts are nesting in a disused light socket on the roof (don’t worry, there are no live wires in there!)

A stern stare from an adult Glossy Starling!

There has not been much rain since we left, and so the landscape is fairly dry. Nonetheless, the sanseviera plants around the house and in our flowerbeds have flourished, sending up countless new spikes from their underground root systems.

Sanseviera fruiting

Ian (my husband) and the guys who work with us were busy with the eternal chores associated with living in the bush, including pumping water from the river, so that laundry and showers and all the normal business of the day can continue…

In the heat of the day, a Tawny Eagle comes down to take a drink

Our unexpected homecoming surprise was a gift from Bernard, one of the Wakamba guys who works for us and is obviously a talented craftsman. In our absence, he had made us a tree ingeniously fashioned out of old wire with tiny miniature beehives hanging from it – just, he said, so we never forget the honey thief…

Ian admires our gift from Bernard, a Beehive Tree, cleverly fashioned from old wire. (Some conservation organizations are making similar items from old wire snares, as a way of generating income for communities living in or bordering wildlife areas, and thereby also providing a financial incentive for people to remove snares from their land.)

SEE MORE PHOTOS FROM KULAFUMBI SINCE WE’VE BEEN BACK:
Animals
Birds
Butterflies
Plants & Flowers
Kulafumbi Landscapes
People Pics

PS. It was Full Moon on Tuesday - the 20th.

Tags: africa, animals, birds, conservation, flowers, kenya, nature, plants, seasons, tsavo, wildlife

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