Rescuing the mountain chicken: 27/03/09

 We arrived at the transit facility this morning to see Tommy the carpenter already hard at work and the sight of all the transport boxes stacked up and ready to go was really encouraging.

Fired up by this and armed with brushes and washing up liquid we began the task of scrubbing out the temporary ponds – not an easy task as the liner is so strong and heavy but between us we worked out a good system and by lunchtime all the ponds had been scrubbed clean.

The afternoon was spent catching up on office work, emails and data entry and as it was Friday night for the Montserratians, we also had the evening off from night time surveys as it would be too dangerous for us to venture into the ghauts at night without a guide.

Tomorrow might be the weekend, but with the urgency of this project and the limited time available, we plan to work – another trip to Pelican at night to get further up into the ghaut and hopefully find more live animals to treat.

Time is always an issue on these night surveys – the route down to the ghaut is pretty steep and once in the ghaut there is no actual path to follow - you simply have to pick your way over the boulders and banks some of which feel more like cliff faces when you are not used to this work so it’s difficult to move at any great speed. Although the length of the transect is only 400m, progress is always slow, especially as we have to stop to set up a field station every time we find frogs to check, sample and treat where necessary.

Of course we also have to bear in mind that we then have to pick our way back down the ghaut to where we started – this sounds simple but in the dark and on unfamiliar territory it can be quite an experience! Quite how the Forestry guides manage to just keep walking up this almost vertical as if still on the flat evades me – especially as I find myself almost on hands and knees, crawling along at times!