Turtles and Tortoises!

While I've been helping out with the turtle hatching over the last week or so, I've had many opportunities to see things I wouldn't have imagined seeing before.  It amazes me how exceptionally strong and able these tiny creatures are the moment they are hatched.

The three we released yesterday

Yesterday, the Travencore hatched as already mentioned.  We give it water a couple of times a day and it drinks very happily.  It's yolk has nearly been absorbed and so his belly is not so swollen and soft.  It is a feisty wee thing - won't stay still for long and fights to be let go if picked up (to put in the water. etc).  I suspect this tortoise will go far!

The Travencore drinking water

You can still see the egg tooth on it's nose

Also while checking one of the batches of eggs, I saw a tiny movement so I investigated further.  An Indian Black turtle had just broken its shell.  So it now has a night in the cupboard to complete the hatch - hopefully before I get there in the morning!

The Indian Black turtle

Dang, blast and other nasty expletives...

I wrote a whole post the other day and it did it's usual 'save' every few minutes then something went wrong and the page disappeared and so did my just written blog…

So I said a few carefully chosen words and shut my computer down and went to bed.  Best thing to do in these situations.

I've bravely decided to try again,  although I have no idea what I was writing about last time.

I'm on turtle duty while the curator is away.  He has several turtle eggs incubating at different temperatures and my job is to check temperatures morning and evening, check for newly hatched turtles and ensure moisture and water levels are good.

We also have a few tortoise eggs as well and they don't need a lot of input, just the odd squirt of water to keep humidity up.

Today we released three turtle hatchlings into the gharial enclosure as these weren't ones from the temperature batches.  There are 2 more who will also be released in the coming days once they are deemed old and fit enough.

Dropping the hatchlings into the water...

Not quite quick enough as Robin the Gharial came
(very quickly and quietly) to see what was happening!

And the last one goes in

My big excitement today was the hatching of a Travencore tortoise.  I had checked the egg this morning and put it back in the cupboard where the temperature is constant.  This evening, I was thinking I didn't need to check it as it was fine earlier.  But I took it out anyway.  I looked in and saw the little thing had hatched!  So sweet, and still folded and crumpled from being in the egg.  I cannot believe how big the turtles and tortoises are when they come of the eggs - the egg never looks big enough!

So this little fellow is with us for a few days until his umbilical cord is healed and he is ready for the big world.

This gecko was all of about 2cm at most

I was cleaning around the office desk that I use most days and some of the papers and things haven't been moved for a very long time.  I shifted something and the tiniest of gecko's ran out of the pile so I caught it and had a good look at it.  It had little folds of skin on the back of it's neck so I assume it was not very old.  I took some photos then tried to place it near where it came from so it would hopefully find a safe place and some food.

All clear for the ear...

Well more or less anyway.

I went back to the Dr today and he cleaned my ear with a sucky tube thing and sent me home.  He said 'It's a long way for you come isn't it' and I said 'yes'.  He then said 'Only come back if you think you need to'.  So I assume if I lived closer, I would be making another visit??

I am staying less then 40km from this hospital but in my 2 visits it has varied between 1.25 and 1.75 hours for each leg.  The first visit was a total of 3.5 hours in a car and todays one was more like 2.75hrs.

When you work out that it's less then 40km, that equals a very very slow drive…

And this is my 5th trip into Chennai in a week.  Well over 12 hours wasted in cars, buses and auto's!

I couldn't imagine having to commute in this city!

Isn't this how people usually travel in India - the ads say it is so it must be!!??  

Incredible India Indeed!

A confession, a tiny rhino, a squirrel and the Morelet's

I don't know what others think in the photo below, but without being too judgemental, I suspect someone is trying to hide something and I think given the chance to confess, we may well find out what happened to a certain flying creature…  Unfortunately with egrets and herons living in exceptionally close proximity to crocs, this is a reasonably common occurrence.  But bear in mind they also receive a lot of protection from other predators by living within the croc enclosures.  Only the slow, weak or foolish get eaten so I guess it could be called 'survival of the fittest'.

This rather large flying creature is apparently a rhino beetle.  It took some time to get this photo as it was intent on flying away, we eventually managed after it realised it wasn't going anywhere until after I got a photo.  When it was flying it reminded me a lot of the New Zealand weta.  A huge, almost cumbersome creature.

Rhino beetle

The Indian squirrel is tiny!  About the size of a chipmunk (if you've seen one of those) or a medium/large rat (I suspect we have all seen one of those!)  It is incredibly fast and it has taken me weeks to get a photo that isn't just a blur from one edge of my photo to the other!  Very cute indeed.

I am observing some Morelets hatchlings each night and this is a photo of the second time they were platform fed.  Up until now they have been tong fed - long metal tongs that allow us to control who gets what in terms of food.  They each had turns so Mr Feisty-Pants (name changed for privacy reasons, lol) who would leap at the tongs as soon as he saw them coming got the first bit and then the rest took turns while Mr Feisty-Pants attempted to get to the tongs before the slower more timid crocs.

Mr Feisty-Pants on the right guarding the food while the littlest one tries to climb aboard

The ranks don't seem to have changed now we place all the food on a platform and they help themselves.  Mr Feisty-Pants is still the first to eat and the others have to be quick witted and clever to get to the food.  They are getting much better at this now and the last feed they had, everyone got a good share of the food.

Snake vs Gecko

This morning I was sitting in the library whiling away some time when something caught my eye in the window.  I looked up and waited and then suddenly a gecko started to try to climb the glass.  It looked very funny as it couldn't get any traction, I assumed there was something tasty up higher and eventually the gecko ran up the outer windowsill and sat up there for a few minutes.

I laughed and watched it's antics.

Then all of a sudden something else caught my eye at the bottom of the window and I realised there was a snake and that was why the gecko was trying to get up the glass. The snake had the gecko in it's mouth and they fought and turned for some time.  The gecko escaped a few times, but the snake was a bit more flexible and was able to follow the gecko very quickly.

I didn't know at this point what snake it was, but I now know it was a bronze back which is nonvenomous.  It came in a tiny hole/gap from the outside window and got itself trapped between the inside and outside windows with a huge gecko in it's mouth.  No idea how it thought it would get out again if it ate the gecko as it's belly would never have fitted out the little hole again!

Anyway, human intervention followed much to my disappointment as I was enjoying the spectacle.  The outside window was opened and the snake took off like a robbers dog without it's gecko.  One of the women opened the inside window - much to my horror! - and the gecko was sent packing too.

I hope the gecko survives - although I suspect a a very sore head for a day or 2!
Annoyingly I only had my iPhone so my photos are very average.

Beef day

Thursday was beef day for the crocs.  Twice a month huge amount of beef that is already chopped into portions arrives and it gets sorted into buckets for different enclosures.  The beef is all parts of the cow as it is important for crocodiles to get skin, bones and offal.

The fun part is getting to throw it into the pens and watching the crocs down it in single gulps.  They enjoy their beef days very much.  My aim got a lot better after a few direct hits of a lump of bony meat straight onto the crocs head - the noise was very loud, being bone landing on bone.  I suspect if the crocs could talk, their words would have been unrepeatable.  Poor things!

The idea is to ensure that the smaller crocs who don't push forward get their share of the meat too.  So long distance throwing of beef is important.  I was rather proud of myself when I threw 2 lumps in a row that landed inside the crocs jaws.  I think we were in sync with each other.

Selecting a piece... 

Eyeing up a deserving beast

And throwing it!

I much prefer the fish feeding days…  Beef is a bit stinky and sticky!

Egrets, ears and ewwwwww!

The last few days have been manic.  We are cleaning virtually the whole place as there is an inspection on Monday.  My main job has to been to scrub bird poop off walls surrounding the enclosures and a few pond scrubs too.  Its dirty smelly work, but somewhat satisfying to see the difference once each section is finished.

I am looking forward to Monday evening very much indeed!

I have also been feeling rotten the last couple of days and during the night I discovered I had another ear infection.  I am very unimpressed as this is the second one in just over a month.  Considering I don't remember having one in my adult years at all, then to have two like this is very frustrating!  I only have half a course of drugs as for some reason the Dr only prescribed that for me.  So I am hoping I can source another half course.  Cross fingers!

One of the night heron chicks on a fence int he pond

There are 2 night heron chicks who have fallen from their nest and are in the Siamese and Nile enclosures (side by side enclosures).  They've been there for several days now and I can't help but wonder what their fate will be.  They are probably not old enough to source their own food yet.  They drink from the crocodile ponds but so far the crocs have left them alone.  They can't fly yet either so I suspect it won't end well…  Poor little things.

A night heron

An egret at sunset

Egret

Egret egg fallen from a tree (hatched - egg is empty)

Unfortunately when you have a crocodile park and a nesting zone in the trees above, there are often sad tales of untimely endings.  Both night herons and egrets nest here.  It is an amazing sight to watch them building nests and feeding young.  The noise is incredible, especially when the macaques try to raid the nests!  The birds all start to 'scream' and they dive bomb the monkeys.  Sometimes the birds win and sometimes not.