Wednesday 14th

First job of the day should have been a five minute one, but it is a very fiddly one and sometimes takes ages to get done...far longer than it reasonably should. In the Forest of Birds the IDs are presented in a 'book' form with the IDs hole punched with metal eyelets that are threaded onto U bolts fastened to wooden backing boards. The bolts are done up underneath with nuts and on one book the two back bolt and nut are situated very close to the fencing, making undoing and in particular doing up of nut onto bolt very trying at times. Today was such a time.. the situation wasn't helped by my dicky shoulder and having to keep resting it between threading attempts. I got there in the end, but it was a very frustrating half hour!

However this is very much offset by the company I get to keep and today I was treated.. maybe they could sense my troubles and came over to be curious and in doing so gave me some welcome respite from the annoyance of 'naughty nuts'. I had the roulroul partridges come and check me out first. A group of six (three pairs of males and females), they gathered round me less than a foot away for the most part and at times even less than that as they investigated signs, spanner and nuts on the floor. Then the Fischer's turaco's came down to check out what I was up to, followed by a red-billed leiothrix (pekin robin) and a Victoria crowned pigeon, who flashed his wings up at the roulroul's sending them off in a hurry. Big bully!

Back to sorting stuff for the red bellied lemurs..... I discussed them with Phil... The species is sexually dichromatic and although we have just two males at present with no plans to get females, we know from years of experience that it is possible that may change. So the question was... do I illustrate the species with both the male and female showing, or just do a male. The answer is to do the latter but allow room in the composition for a female to be added later if necessary. Then looking through the photos I had, one of the individuals has a white spot (again bare skin) on the forehead between the eyes... but looking through internet reference I found most did not have such a marking. Was this an individual marking, age related or something else. I trawled through internet info and several books before asking a lemur expert that we have at the zoo. Seems it is probably an individual marking and may not be permanent. So I must not include such a marking on my illustration. So looking through my references I was looking for positions that would show the female and her paler underside  and a position for the male that would fit with that into the oblong format I need to do the illustration in. Once I had those picked ot I printed some of the photos off. Again another five minute job that took longer as the print came out very magenta.. so I spent sometime trying to colour match the original photo with a print copy.

The last part of the afternoon was spent having my appraisal with Phil.