Well, the rooks probably won, or at least it was a score draw. They hadn’t really had enough time to get used to the experimental equipment (although it was all kit that they had played with in the past), but we got some interesting footage and certainly enough to set the ball rolling.
I’ve had three days at home, a fair amount of which was spent building a beehive – no instructions, very exciting, all we need now are some bees … Apparently, if you build it, they will come – failing that, Julie’s father has a very docile colony that we’ll grab a nucleus from.
Now I’m heading off to Madagascar for a month to finish off the ‘in country’ elements of our ‘Lemur Blues’ Natural World film for BBC2. We head off into one of the most remote corners of the country to film a darting exercise – Eric has located a new population of Silky Sifaka’s which he hopes to habituate and study – and darting to establish genetics is the first step. Then we head back up to Marojejey to catch up with Eric’s main study population.
It’ll probably be my last trip to Madagascar for a while which will be rather sad after a dozen or so trips over the last couple of years. I heard on Radio 4 yesterday that holiday bookings from the UK to Madagascar have gone up by 35% in the last few months. I really wonder if our BBC2 Madasgascar series has had anything to do with this, if so, this is wonderful. What will protect and conserve these vulnerable parts of our planet is enthusiastic people from the developed world going and visiting them, and spending their money. We benefit from experiencing these fantastic places, the locals earn valuable revenue from the tourists, and a high and real value is placed on the animals and environments we pay to see. Everyone’s a winner … apart from the emissions from the aircraft that take us there, not sure what to do about that one …