During my time at Anjajavy I also went walking through the deciduous forest looking for wildlife. I'd spoken to Will Burrard-Lucas as I'd seen from his website that he'd been before. I was keen to see and hopefully photography mouse lemurs here and Will explained it is a great place to see them. So each night I'd follow the paths from the hotel into the forest. Usually I'd come across a Madagascar Nightjar which was protecting it's chick from predators. It's choice of nesting site right by the path didn't seem like a wise decision.
The best way to look for any nocturnal lemur was to scan the trees with a torch and look out for eye shine. Mouse lemurs turned out to be everywhere and you would see these two little red eyes, almost demonic, of the lemur looking back at you in the beam of your torch light.
The photo below shows a Fat Tailed Dwarf Lemur high up in the trees. Dwarf lemurs are the only primates to hibernate. This extraordinary characteristic has made them the subject of study by Duke University. The research is looking at how a these lemurs can slow down their vital organs in the hope it can be beneficial in space travel as well as emergency wards.
While spotting mouse lemurs with a torch was relatively straight forward, getting close enough to one to photograph was a whole different ball game.
Fortunately we came across a fruiting tree right next to the path and the fruits seemed to be favoured by these lemurs. Most would 'ping' from branch to branch and tree to tree with lightning speed and were impossible to photograph. Grey Mouse Lemurs and Golden Brown Mouse Lemurs were the two species we saw at this tree.
Only one, a Golden Brown Mouse Lemur with a little 'nick' in it's ear, casually moved around and was apparently unconcerned with me being there, nor with the flash firing. It even ate some of the fruits right in front of us.
The second and third photos were taken on my last night in Madagascar and what a way to finish an amazing trip to the country...