Category: Home
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Redemption
from Sept 18: We’d just come from a sighting of 5-6 pesut foraging in the tributary to Muara Siran, and I’d grown a little frustrated by my seeming inability to pull it together and take focused photos…it was a tricky sighting, with the dolphins surfacing all scattered about and at long intervals, and we spent…
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Driving Past the Mosque
In Bangkok! Some thoughts from yesterday’s journey from Samarinda, Indonesia. I was prompted to post this because I read this article this morning, which articulately expresses most of my views on the whole awful film fiasco. In the taxi from Samarinda to Balikpapan yesterday morning, I passed a large and gorgeous mosque (not the one pictured). Illuminated by…
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Exuberantly feeding.
Back in Samarinda today after a wonderful field season on the Sungai Mahakam. Behavior noted during yesterday’s pesut (Irrawaddy dolphin) sighting: “Feeding/foraging, moving upstream. Exuberantly. Farewell party.” We had a great sighting late in the afternoon, on our last day of fieldwork on the Mahakam River. Lunging, low jumping, sideways swimming with tail swipes…we stayed…
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Off to the river
There’s something kind of languid about the phrase “the river”. Down by the river. Rollin’ on the river. Off to the river we go. My newest field book is labeled and ready to go. I’m…somewhat packed. I’m semi-organized. Research permit stuff seems to be complete. It’s time for fieldwork! Will be focusing on the Central…
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THE GREAT RESEARCH PERMIT SCAVENGER HUNT SAGA. PART 3.
PROLOGUE PART 1. Bangkok. PART 2. Jakarta. PART 3. SAMARINDA It was a relief to leave Jakarta and fly to Balikpapan, the capital of the province Kalimantan Timur (SE Borneo). From Balikpapan, it’s a 3 hour drive to Samarinda, where my collaborators/friends Danielle and Budi of the NGO Y.K. RASI live, and where I needed to…
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THE GREAT RESEARCH PERMIT SCAVENGER HUNT SAGA. PART 2.
PROLOGUE PART 1. Bangkok. PART 2. JAKARTA Arrived late at night on August 7. Happy to see that the driver I’d hired to take me to the hotel was there with my name on a sign (love that). He was friendly, and his car was clean and new and functional (these things are not guaranteed).…
Tara Sayuri Whitty 