Banyan Tree Blog – 2^nd Week Nov, 2015

This week the Wildlife Conservation & Rehabilitation Centre welcomed Johanna who is a vet working with Wildlife Vets International on Tuesday 10 Nov. In addition to bringing us some much-needed veterinary supplies, Johanna lent us her expertise by giving our current terrapin patients a quick check-up. She confirmed our initial findings and gave the patients a clean bill of health which means that they can now be released into the wild as per the Centre’s Policy.

The expert checking out our patients

Johanna also conducted a demonstration Post Mortem on a dead moorhen the Centre’s staff members had found the previous week while out putting traps in the wetland. She certified that the moorhen had been hit by a car, proof of which we got not only from the post mortem but also from the X-Rays taken from the state-of-the-art veterinary portable X-Ray the MCSS purchased from funds partly sponsored by the GoS-UNDP-GEF project and partly raised by Madaline Cole’s family & friends.

An x-ray of a Moorhen

   The post mortem served three main objectives. Firstly, it was to allow Johanna to teach us the anatomy of the bird and help us identify bone fractures which in her view are usually easy to diagnose and treat. She highlighted methods we can use to treat such fractures and precautions that we need to take while giving care to the injured bird. This is important given the population of resident birds in the Banyan Tree wetland.

Conducting the post mortem

On Tuesday afternoon Mary and I finally received the hook which had been found lodged in the back of a nesting turtle’s neck the previous week. It was a Banyan Tree staff member, Randy Camille, Senior Security Supervisor, who had encountered the turtle in front of the Rhum Shack on the Intendance Beach out of working hours, and had subsequently taken care to remove the foreign object from the injured turtle’s neck. Randy is a turtle enthusiast who is always willing to lend us a hand and his enthusiasm and compassion are greatly appreciated.

The nasty hook!

So last week I had hinted at the drought we had experienced in terms of terrapin trappings and I had indicated that we sorely missed our lucky charm to change the tide in our favour. Well, this week I’m utterly pleased to report that things are looking up. Mary is now firmly back in the fold and has already started working her magic. We are putting in mostly day traps in the wetland this week and on Wednesday afternoon we had a Black Mud Terrapin capture in Pond 7. It is the first time the Centre has captured any terrapin at this site and we have established that Ray, the terrapin is in fact a new sighting whose details have since been uploaded to our Terrapin Catalogue. In addition, a Banyan Tree staff member brought us a female terrapin found in one of the Villas by a hotel guest. This success was followed by yet another capture on Thursday. This time we caught Carl in Pond 1; it’s the second time Carl has been caught in our traps, the first time round we caught him while trapping in Pond 3.

On Thursday we also conducted our monthly Water test where we get water samples from different ponds and test them for the following: Ammonia, Acidity, Nitrite, Nitrate, Alkalinity and GH Hardness. The aim is to make sure that the water is safe for the different species living in the wetland, and if it’s not, to alert the hotel so that they can do further tests and take immediate corrective measures. The results show that the water is safe for our wetland species.

Conducting the water tests