Monkeys, monkeys everywhere!

We were up early for the chimp trek at Kanyanchu Tourist Site. The guide explained that there are four groups of chimpanzees who have been acclimated to humans, two for tourists and two for research. The surrounding community is discouraged from poaching and harvesting timber because they receive dividends from the tracking permits. On our way to the starting point, we were accompanied by Molly, a Ugandan student doing an internship at the site. She was very sweet and excited to talk to us to learn we were enjoying our visit to her country.
Richard, our guide, called our group of 4 South Africans, the two of us and Molly over to the edge of the road and we followed him into the forest.  We walked along with Richard demonstrating the various bird calls we were hearing and identifying the bird. Eventually,  we began to hear a few chimp cries too. The chimps were enjoying figs, one of their favorite foods, for breakfast. We watched them feeding and moving about in the branches. They were waiting for a cue from the dominant male that it was time to come down. Soon enough one of the males came down and sat very close to us. He was finishing his figs by squeezing the pulp between his lower lip and teeth to get the juice. He looked like he had a big wad of chew in his lip, then he spit the dry pulp from his mouth. 

All of a sudden there was a loud crash and a lot of vocalizing. The biggest dominant male was crashing his way through the trees.  The President, as he is called made a big display of his strength and the other chimps called out with cries of respect. He soon settled in to let the slightly smaller but still high ranking male groom him. We followed the chimps as they made their way from the forest out to an open area where they were eating vines and leaves. We had a good view of them there.  Unfortunately,  some people in another group kept getting closer and closer, in spite  of the warnings of their guide. The chimps were clearly becoming stressed and our guide wisely suggested we turn back to observe some other chimps feeding further back on the path.  We soon left them to themselves and headed back through the forest to the road. The experience with the chimps was totally different than our time with the gorillas. The chimp's energy was more frenetic and they were much louder and seemed more stressed having humans nearby than their giant cousins. We were glad we had seen them but the experience was not as enjoyable as our visit with the gorillas.

We had a wonderful time later in the afternoon taking a walk around the Bigodi swamp with a super sweet guide, Robert. He works for KAFRED - Kibale Association for Rural Development. This organization has been promoting ecotourism and conservation by using the fees from the walks, gift shop, cafe and community tour to pay school fees and help the local population with microloans for agriculture. The area surrounding the marsh is cultivated with corn and coffee.  The coffee plants discourage the monkeys from eating the corn.
Robert was  a fabulous guide. He knew the calls of all the birds and could mimic them. He also knew how to converse with the monkeys.  We saw the emblem bird of KAFRED,  the great blue turaco and a few sun birds. We spotted the crested crane, also known as the grey crowned crane, in a pair with two immature young adults.  This is the national bird of Uganda and it was wonderful to see it up close and in its natural environment.

While we enjoyed seeing the birds we really wanted to see more monkeys.  At first it seemed we might have to be satisfied with the single black and white colobus hiding in a palm tree and a red tail that was high up in a tree, making it a challenge to see. He seemed to be able to see us just fine however, urinating on one of the ladies in our group as she stood below. As we made our way around the swamp, our luck changed and we saw a few more red tailed monkeys, a couple of grey cheeked mangabay and some red colobus monkeys. We were happy to have seen three of the 8 species of monkey in the reserve. Then as we rounded a corner there was a black and white colobus very close to the ground.  We looked around and saw movement in many of the branches of the trees. There was a whole group which was playing and feeding on vines in the trees. They were quite content with the buffet and didn't mind our company. We were lucky to see a very young one as well.  Robert explained this baby was a new born because they are born all white and get the black pigment as they age.  This little one was high up in the trees, practicing his climbing but sticking pretty close to mom. We did get some good shots.  Too bad we haven't had a good internet connection for uploading photos.  There will be a flood of photos when I get back. Happy with our swamp walk and hungry after getting the most exercise since our arrival, we headed back to KFC (Kibale Forest Camp) for dinner.

Red colobus monkey

Taylor had beef and I had tilapia for dinner.  Our food has been wonderful and we are certainly getting enough! We were joking by the end of the trip our resemblance to the hippo will be astonishing.

Red colobus monkey #2

Red Tailed Monkey, he was shy.