Eldridge entered the clearing alone yesterday afternoon with Scar Side absent from the clearing. The guard is over and Eldridge came in search of potential mating partners. Despite a high number of elephants approaching 170 yesterday Eldridge failed to find any other females in estrous. His presence dominated the bai and he was easily able to maneuver his way into the two favorite mineral holes. On several occasions there was a chorus from elephants as he approached, this is in response to his highly sexual state. Musth males can be heard to vocalize very low powerful calls and they have a particular odor which is clearly recognizable even in the forest where they have passed. The can also be highly aggressive during their period of musth with other elephants keeping a careful distance from them.

With the advancing dry season the night time temperatures have dipped to below 20 degrees Celsius making for cool nights, the coldest part of the year in the lowland tropical forest. However the nocturnal elephant activity has increased. Not only do we hear elephants all night long around the camp but there has also been several night time incursions into camp. Last week an elephant destroyed one of the two outhouses in camp which we are in the process of repairing. This time instead of a wooden planks the base will be made of cement. However a few days ago an elephant came into camp at around 11:00 PM and tried to make off with one of the sacks of cement which had been stored under one of the elevated houses. As he picked it up the paper sack ripped spilling the cement on the ground as one of the trackers chased him off. In the waning moonlight it was thought that the culprit was a large bull. We then swept up the remains of the cement and closed it up in one of the houses. In the morning we looked for the sack but after tracking the elephant for several hundred meters we concluded that the bull had eaten the sack. This type of activity soars in the dry season when elephants are food stressed and there being little fruit they resort to eating basically anything they find interesting. There is more destruction of trees and we observe far more in camp than during the wetter parts of the year.

Two days ago at dusk after I return to camp I showered and as I exited the shower I heard an elephant nearby. I found a group of three just behind the kitchen and was able to get a look at the adult females ears. She was easy to identify since I already knew her and had seen her at the clearing a few weeks ago. She showed no signs of alarm despite my proximity and being with her two calves, standing quietly in the cover of some vegetation at the edge of camp. Her name is Maddy and she came to camp last month at the same time of day and from the same point of entry. A half hour after our encounter she returned in the dark to aspirate the powdery layer of soil which surrounds the kitchen. I could clearly hear her as she vacuumed the soil with her trunk which resembles heavy breathing, a very common sound for the dry season.

Maddy

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