Harrison Institute, Centre for Biodiversity Research
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Visit our website:www.harrison-institute.org The Harrison Institute has extensive collections of small mammals (recent and fossil), a comprehensive library (both hard copy and pdf literature) and a dedicted team of reseachers. We work predominantly in the Old World Tropics (Africa and Asia), both researching the small mammal fauna and training the next generation of taxonomists.
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Just a note for those of you who like cycling. Myanmar is becoming a popular destination for cyclists with many organised tours, such as http://www.toursinmyanmar.com/tours/enjoyable-bagan-mandalay-cycling-tour.html (many will feature on our new nature tourism website, which will be published soon). Yesterday, we came across a group of 14 Canadians and Brits near the Sagaing Bridge (just south of Mandalay). Cycling is a great way to see and experience Myanmar, although probably not on a main road, which I would think would be rather hairy - especially yesterday when the roads were also full of young people celebrating the full moon festival. However, in the countryside, I suspect it is idyllic.
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Yesterday, on our way to Myitkangyi village, we had great views of six (near threatened) Painted storks. There were also large numbers of Ruddy Shelduck. I think we can finally say that the winter migrants have started to arrive on the Ayeyarwady River. We have been collecting bird data since 9 October and there have been very few records to report but since 10 November everything has changed. By the 10th, the water level had started to drop and sand banks appeared, on these we saw many Shelduck, over 50 Small pratincoles, Brown headed gulls, and even a Pallas's gull and Osprey. We will include all these records on the new Facebook page for wildlife reporting for the project and also submit them to the international database of ebird http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ . Meanwhile, our in-country partner, Aung Toe Khaing, is learning to identify birds. In addition, we will copy and distribute the Birds of Myanmar in Myanmar language to further stimulate interest.In Mandalay, we had a nice view of a Kestrel from the hotel window.
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The end of a long but good week and where better to spend a Saturday evening than in the rooftop restaurant/bar of the Ayeyarwady River View Hotel enjoying the wonderful panorama and a perfect sunset.
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Yesterday, we had our second set of visitors to Hsithe. Beatrix and I were there to welcome the 14 tourists from France and to enjoy with them the hospitality of the villagers. We were so lucky with the weather, which threatened torrential rain but turned out to be a perfect sunny and breezy day. Our visitors loved the village - the houses, the culture, the monastery - one even drew and painted some of the scenes. They had lunch in the visitor centre and bought the handicrafts. The more adventurous took part in the net casting. We congratulate the villagers on their professionalism and coping with such a HUGE learning curve. I congratulate Beatrix, Ko Toe, Hnin, Harry and the rest of the team for the fantastic (more than fantastic) effort and skills that they have invested to make this new destination come to life.
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Our French guests left us some very nice comments on our comments board. They also completed our wildlife monitoring sheet. Dolphins apart, there are very few birds at this time of the year - many, many more will come in December to March when the river level falls and the sandbanks appear - these are a haven for the winter migrants.
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Our opening day and the gods were on our side!! At the exact moment our very first visitors were arriving by boat at Hsithe, five dolphins decided to play in the river opposite. How wonderful is that? And, what a bonus for the four French tourists. It was like the dolphins also wanted to celebrate with their own opening ceremony. All photos are care of the smartphone of their guide/our colleague and friend, Ko Toe.
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Two days before our first 'official' tourists arrive and we are making the finishing touches to our visitor centre. Today the boards went up; labels were stuck to mango jam jars and tied onto the other handicrafts and Beatrix's prize loo is finished (see before and after photos!). The wooden handle for the loo door is now finished - naturally it is shaped like a dolphin (yet to be fixed!!). The loo roll holder will be the trunk of a carved wooden elephant head - still in production! Twenty boat loads of sand is being spread on the riverbank to cover the rather ugly sandbags used to protect the visitor centre from the floods and best of all Beatrix is fast recovering from 4 days of fever that struck her down on Thursday. Fingers crossed.
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A big thank you to Kyaw Zin Design Centre who have worked hard and fast to make our handicraft labels a reality. Designed in Sevenoaks by us, these have been sharpened, shaped, scaled and printed here in Mandalay by Kyaw Zin's brilliant young designer, Kyaw Nyi Nyi (see featured in the photographs!). They are now ready to be attached to all the handicrafts that the villagers have learnt to make, many under the supervision of Beatrix and Ko Toe. Our budget was small but we have put together this branding exercise from concept to final printed labels for a total cost of $20.70. I think to make everything for less than $21 is not so bad and I thank Becky Bates for her free (and very rapid) logo design one afternoon at the kitchen table in Tunbridge Wells. We now have probably enough labels for 6 months, possibly a year!
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Just to keep us on our toes, in addition to all the Darwin project work in Hsithe and Yangon, Beatrix and Ko Toe were also working in the village of Myitkangyi. Here she has designed and commissioned a new visitor centre, comparable to the one in Hsithe but with a very different shape and feel. If all goes well, and we all survive the challenges(!), it will open to the public on 30 November. The first boat load of visitors were already wanting to come this week but as you can see, we are not quite ready yet!!
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In addition to making information boards, as part of the Darwin Initiative programme, we are also working very hard to develop an ecotourism/nature tourism website for Myanmar. This is in collaboration with the MTF (Myanmar Tourism Federation). It is being written primarily by the Harrison Institute with input and advice from our Myanmar colleagues. It will be designed and published by a professional web company MM Net. During meetings in Yangon, I presented outlines of how the website might look and these will be used as a baseline for something more professional! Whilst in Yangon, I also had a great opportunity to catch up with Dr Thein Aung of the Myanmar Bird and Nature Society (MBNS) and discuss a series of possible future projects, including one on wetland birds, which is about to start in November, 2016 and is to be sponsored by the Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund (CEPF). I also discussed with one of the MBNS members, Hnin Pwin Phyu, an IT specialist, about updating the MBNS website and promoted our new destinations to her travel company. And, of course, I worked with our Darwin Initiative Yangon team member, Ms Hnin Witt Yee, of GeoDiscover concerning all aspects of promoting the new Ayeyarwady destinations. Others to whom I promoted the CBT included our good friend Axel Bruns of Azure Sky Travel who will be jointly running river cruises to Hintha in early 2017. From a science side, I met up with one of my former PhD students Dr Aye Aye Khaing, and her sister, who also got her doctorate in bat research. Dr Aye Aye Khaing is now Associate Professor at Pakkoku University. All is all, it was a fascinating 9 days. I include a few more photos of the city for your interest (or not?)!
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Over the weekend, as part of our Darwin project, Beatrix ran a hygiene and catering workshop in Hsithe. It was very popular with the villagers. It has been extensively reported and shared on Facebook and has already led to a lot of comments and interest from those involved in Community-based tourism, both Myanmar and foreign nationals. The Hsithe villagers will provide simple but tasty lunches, such as fried rice with chicken, for the tourists. Apparently the food they cooked was 'totally yummy'.
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While Beatrix was making the visitor centre ready in Hsithe, I was preparing information boards in Yangon - see a few atmospheric shots of the city! There are 10 boards for Hsithe and 8 for Myitkangyi - a million thanks to the staff of the print shop (Real Life) for their patience and for their accurate and exceptionally timely work. At the same time, they also printed our colour guides to the birds of the Ayeyarwady for our Citizen Science monitoring programme, aimed at tourists visiting our two new destinations. The little children of Hsithe village are already learning to use the project's binoculars - they are so cute and so keen!
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