News from the field 11 (April 24th to 30th)

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when you are radio tracking is thinking you know where the animal is despite where the signal is coming from. It is difficult not to act on these hunches that make you think she is in this or that patch of jungle, but it can create dangerous situations when you are following a tiger on foot. On Monday we had a good example of this when we picked up the radio signal on the western headland. I took one compass bearing from which I immediately knew where she was; near a tidal creek that ran through a knee height patch of young goran before winding into taller gewa and keora trees.

She must be near the spot where I had found her previously; on the west bank of the khal just behind the tree line. The light was fading so we waded through the sticky mud over to the east bank of the khal. I scanned the opposite bank further up where she must be lying up but couldn’t see anything. Alarm calls of Chital suddenly rang out near her position, confirming what I had thought about her whereabouts. Switching on the radio receiver I was surprised to find the signal coming in strong from the side of the khal we were standing on. Somehow my mind managed to override this bit of information and let me walk up the khal bank (towards the signal) to get a better view of the other side. Now the signal was so strong that it was difficult to know what direction it was coming from. Out of curiosity I detached the antenna and held up the end of the connecting wire. Even without the antenna the signal was coming in strong from the low goran in front of me. She was very close. We backed off quickly and, by picking up the signal from different angles, I realized just how close she had been; probably between 20 and 30 m away. Although she has never shown any signs of being aggressive towards humans it is a bad idea to test her tolerance levels too far.

The next day she had moved but, where we had nearly bumped into her the day before, we found what was left of a female chital she had been eating. That night she came to the village waterhole and everyone in the tree we were sitting in (everyone but me that is) saw her black silhouette as she walked past.

Mid-way through the week the wind and waves started to pick up. This was just enough to send several trees, those that had been barely clinging on to the river banks, crashing into the water. One of these trees that lost its footing we had called “tower number 3”; one of the trees we climb every day when we are trying to pick up the tigers radio signal. I am glad we hadn’t been 40 feet up in the air when the tower gave way.

Adam Barlow
Katka