We arrived at Mitsinjo reserve late in the day, having spent time at Peyrieras Wildlife Park on the way. We checked in at our hotel, the Feon'ny Ala. Then we headed out for a night walk along the road.
On our night walk Dona found a mouse lemur, and we saw several chameleons, frogs, and spiders. We also heard a Scops Owl.
The next morning we went looking for birds and lemurs on one of the trails in the Mitsinjo Reserve. Our guide was a young man named Frederick, a.k.a. "Riek."
There were some strange looking things hanging from some of the trees by the hotel. They turned out to be some sort of trap, although we didn't find out exactly what they were trapping.
We heard some strange wailing, and Riek led us to the source — a small group of Indri. There was a male, a female with a baby, and an adolescent. The indri were chowing down on some kind of parasite attached to leaves.
We also found a group of Common Brown Lemurs. They are diurnal and eat foliage and fruits. As fruit-eaters, they help disperse the seeds of fruit they eat.
The Common Brown Lemur is a subspecies of the Brown Lemurs. As the Common Brown Lemur is a rainforest inhabitant found only in the north, this is the only place we saw it. We saw other Brown Lemurs, such as the Red-Fronted Brown Lemur, in dry areas of the south.
Madagascar has only mildly venemous snakes, which was great because we didn't have to worry too much whether to inspect a snake closely or not. There are two boa constrictors, the Madagascar Tree Boa and the Madagascar Ground Boa. We had our first encounter with both of these in the wild while at Mitsinjo. Both the tree and the ground boa are primarily nocturnal.
The Tree Boa was peacefully sleeping the night off ... where else? ... in a tree. But while they spend the day sleeping in the trees, their active night is spent hunting mostly small mammals on the ground. There are two tree boa species, S. madagascariensis and S. volotany. S. madagascariensis is a rainforest dweller, and the one we saw here. S. volotany is found in drier regions; we saw it later on. Tree boas are relatively small; the largest officially recorded was 1.85m long.
The Ground Boa we found was hiding underneath some leaves. It is the largest of the boas found in Madagascar, averaging about 2.4m in length but growing up to 3m.
We are always on the lookout for interesting insects. We were particularly keen to find a Giraffe-necked Weevil. We did manage to find one but it was a female; the male has a much longer neck.
We returned late in the day to Antananarivo to spend the nightr; we had a really long drive the next day to get to the put-in camp for our trip down the Manambolo River.