Hello High Park Nature Center!

By Stephanie Fox -
This blog post is a shout out from one nature lover to all of my favourite nature lovers at the high park nature center!  I have been thinking of you everyday since I have been in Ghana, there is so much awesome nature to ooo and awww about! As a primatologist (that is what you call someone who studies monkeys and other primates) it is my job to observe nature and wonder about it. I spend all day every day watching monkeys high up in the trees in a forest that is just a big bigger than high park, and I wonder about why they behave the way that they do.  Lucky for me this means spending all of my days in a forest where I can see all kinds of other awesome nature too!  I have collected some photos of some of the very cool nature I have seen in the last few weeks to share with you.
1) First, the monkeys of course!  The monkeys that I watch are called black and white colobus monkeys. They eat only leaves and spend almost all of their time high up in the trees. Here are some pictures of some of my favourite monkeys, including a small baby girl named Bridget who is with her mom Blue. When babies are born they have an all white coat. In this photo Bridget is about 2 months old, and you can see that she is nearly black and white already! 





2) There are really really really cool ants in the forest and I watch them at every chance I get, especially when the monkeys are sleeping!  One photo is of some big black ants unloading all of the larvae from their nest into a big pile. These ants march around in lines and hunt for prey- I once saw them catch a big worm while it was alive! The next photo is of some smaller black ants that work together with aphids. The ants tend to the aphids moving them around and protecting them from predators, and the aphids produce honeydew that they share with the ants as food. This is called a symbiotic relationship - when the ants and the aphids both benefit from the friendship.  The last two photos of ants are of red ants that make their nest by pulling together the leaves of the mango tree beside my house. I call these ants the ‘clean up crew’ because I always see them cleaning up any dead bugs on my porch – you can see them carrying a dead bug off of my curtain!




3) The forest where I work has over 300 species of butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) – it is called a ‘biodiversity hotspot’.  This also means that there are just as many awesome caterpillars everywhere!!!  Here are a few photos of a few of the lepidoptera that I have seen.




4) Birds! Here are two photos of birds that I often see from my porch.  The bird with a yellow head has beautiful blue feathers on the underside of its wings – I think it is a type of kingfisher. The other bird is called a Briku bird by Ghanaians, and makes a magestic ‘bri-ku-ku-ku-ku-ku’ call. 



 3) Lastly, here is a photo of me watching monkeys! 

Happy nature watching! 

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