Munyinya is the silverback for Hirwa group.  He looks over a family of five adult females and their infants.  This week’s health check was a pleasure – the family was resting and playing in the bamboo zone, and as usual the kids were playing like crazy all around Muyinya.  At one point I could see him through the bamboo laying in the sun looking quite relaxed.  All of a sudden there was a big crash as Imbundu and two others, along with the branch they were playing on, fell to the ground inches from the chief.  Munyinya jumped to his feet and pig-grunted loudly, looking quite annoyed.  He slapped the ground and the kids scattered.  As he laid back down, the kids all came back and he made nice contentment vocalizations. The episode was over and peace reigned once again.

Impundu is a bit of a trouble maker in other ways – he was very interested in the tracker and I, and was approaching us much too closely.  Clearly he didn’t respect the MGVP rule of maintaining 21 feet of distance between humans and gorillas in order to decrease the risk of disease transmission.  We backed up and made pig-grunt vocalizations telling him to move away.  He stopped briefly and did a little display, then moved on to the group to play.  The little boys played like crazy the whole time we were observing!

A great view of Mikeno and Visoke from Hirwa group’s home range.

As the group moved out of the bamboo and into a large field of thistle and celery we noticed that Magahane had a healing wound above her left eye, but nothing to worry about.Kabatwa was enjoying thistle for breakfast. She has had the broken little finger for a long time. The young males are always the picture of mischief…The group was very content in general this morning. At one point they were napping in the sun, looking very comfortable indeed!

We heard one little cough-like noise, but we later watched Magahane eating gallium, a sticky vine-like plant that frequently makes the gorillas choke a bit, so at the end of the day and this observation, Hirwa group was declared healthy!

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