michael see, monkey do: Searching

This is a turned stone:

When feeding, the monkeys move slowly along the forest floor, turning rocks over as they go and looking for insects. While I don't think I've ever successfully found a group using only these stones as a guide, by turning the rock back over and observing the discoloration of the grass underneath, you can make a rough estimate of how recently they visited the site. You can also turn another rock over nearby and compare the two exposed patches of earth. Rain can help enormously by depositing dirt against the bottom edge of rocks which have been turned for a while.

A macaque skull Chris found the other day

75% of the time, I probably find the group because one or more monkeys makes a noise. Maybe someone gets in a fight, or a male shakes a tree, or (as is often a case with this new group) a Berber dog has chased the group into the trees and everyone is screaming bloody murder. My strategy for finding the group therefore consists of a few minutes of walking, stumbling over broken branches and rocks as I scan the horizon and the treetops, followed by 30 seconds of me being as silent and as vigilant as humanly possible. This reliance on sound is also the reason we cannot search with any sort of rain protection on our heads, no matter what the weather is. Hoods make too much noise against your ears, and hats muffle the sounds too much. Last Thursday Chris and I searched for 7 hours before calling it a day. Some days we can search for as long as 10 hours. Sunday we got lucky and found them in 3.

The Berbers in the area are normally happy to help us out when we're looking for the group, although many times it seems they're so eager to help they just point us in a random direction. I don't know any Berber, so if I'm lucky enough to encounter a shepherd who speaks Arabic, I can ask him how long ago he saw them, how many there were, how far it is, etc..., otherwise we try to communicate with hand signals.