GOOD DAY TO OBSERVE AGUS

To see the sun shining at the beginning of the day is always good news for us. Good weather means we can continue to observe our reintroduced orangutans and on this particular occassion we had planned to focus on Agus who we had encountered the previous day. Bad weather had hampered our observations that day, so we were looking forward to better results.

Post-release monitoring staff Deny, Awal, Bowo and Gunawan were scheduled to track and observe Agus, who we suspected to still be close to our transect on Berlian Hill. On the way to Berlian Hill, we tried to detect signals from other orangutans as well, but had no luck.

Arriving at our destination, we searched for Agus’s signal, but similar to the day before, only a very weak signal was picked up. So we pushed on and walked up Mobil Mogok transect, which is located at a slightly higher altitude, hoping for a better signal. Again, Agus’s signal still wasn’t emitting clearly, but at the end of this transect we found new and old nests, indicating presence of orangutans in the area.

Early afternoon we finally found Agus eating Syzygium sp. fruits.

We observed him for around 2 hours and he looked perfectly healthy and repeatedly kiss-squeaked showing his discomfort of our presence. He ate a whole variety of food items including different species of fruit, rattan pith and termites. Orangutans are largely frugivores or fruit-eaters, however they also consume decent amounts of vegetation particularly during periods when fruit is less available, together with insects and on occasion even bird eggs.

After two hours of close obeservations on Agus, rain began to fall heavily forcing us to retreat back to Camp Lesik. But we were pleased with the day’s results and very happy to spend a couple more hours with Agus. He has adapted well!