Ok this is getting scary now... I swear it was less than 2 days ago that I was last writing this! How does it all go so fast?!

Elephant blocking the road

So what have I been up to this week? Well as usual the main answer is elephants. I've done several ID sessions, and am now up to 14th April, which is a really HORRIBLE sighting where none of the elephants were close, or had big notches, and most importantly, none of them were looking in the right direction... The kind of sighting that takes forever, but at the end of it you really don't get anywhere. Not much fun but eventually it will be over and I'll get to nicer ones. As for the sightings this week, barely any have been actually in the park. They've mostly been around the Big Tree - the largest baobab around at 18 m girth. I've never seen them right next to it, but they've broken the fence down that protects the tree from people going up and scratching their names into it. Hopefully not too many will take advantage... We also saw a large group in Chamabondo Vlei on Friday afternoon during a research session. There were over 40 of them (though unfortunately only 7 came close enough to get decent photos) and I got so excited by the tuskless matriarch leading the group... but no it wasn't my favourite girl, Sierra... 

And his friend!

White fronted bee eaters

Human-Wildlife Mitigation survey on Wednesday was not especially fun this week, as the road was even bumpier than usual. We were sat in the back of the car getting our teeth shaken out of our heads! Not quite sure how we managed it, but somehow we got back by 3pm despite only skipping 1 homestead because they weren't in. Spent the afternoon out at the golf course where we went to take some photos. There were warthogs, impala and waterbuck there which was cool to see, and we managed to get pretty close to them, particularly the warthogs which were almost all cute little sub-adults. The waterbuck however we had a problem with - they weren't aggressive at all, but they're skittish, which means that to get close enough for photographs you have to drop down to the ground and crawl along on your stomach... Which is fine when there aren't ant nests underneath you! Gets very itchy at times.... The night drive on Wednesday wasn't so successful as the morning research and afternoon photography session however. Seeing nothing but one small duiker was frustrating enough for us when we've been loads of times, so we felt really bad for the new volunteers who have never been out or seen hyenas. It didn't help that the usually freezing night had warmed to just very cold, so we were all bundled up even more than normal, which then led to everyone being so warm and cozy that over half the car was struggling to stay awake! It was unfortunate that we didn't see anything, but as we always say - it's what makes the other times more exciting. 

Emerald spotted wood dove

3 sessions of non-elephant research this week: bird survey, hyena tracking, and game count. Game count wasn't brilliantly exciting on Friday - we saw 2 bushbuck, 2 waterbuck, warthogs and impala. Not a bad session, but obviously we always hope to see predators, and of course I love to see my elephants! Hyena tracking was a very fun session this week. We had several new volunteers with us, so when we got to the point and found lots of tracks of different species, we had some fun going through them all, discussing what they were, and making various estimations as to how old all the different tracks were. The area was a dried up stream bed, where we saw tracks for civet cats, hyenas, lions, and zebras. We then moved on to a dried up waterhole, and there we tracked several hyenas, confirming our suspicions that they use the same route over and over to get from the park to the dump, where they scavenge on human waste. Finally bird survey - it was just the 2 of us which meant fewer eyes for looking around for them, but then that also meant we were able to spend less time pointing things out to new volunteers!

Sable antelope blocking our way this time!

Saturday morning was completely different. We started off with a litter pick along the roads outside the hospital and the school. It was so much better than last time - we actually managed to make a noticeable difference when we did this 2 weeks ago. However, we still collected about 5 bin liners full of litter. Having said that, I can't believe how much had accumulated there already... We headed home briefly, then went out again, this time to the lions, where we went for a lion walk with the clients. We took Lekker and Lala out, and walked them down to the river. Lala was totally mad - she was leaping all over Lekker and attacking him, keeping hold of his tail in her mouth when he tried to walk away, and generally being as much the annoying little cousin as I probably used to be to my big cousins! (Sorry guys...) There were a couple of elephants wandering around the area too - captive ones from the elephant back safari company next door - which was just slightly surreal... walking 2 lions with elephants in the background? Awesome!

Waterbuck

Another week already?! 3 months left now which is somehow managing to seem both very close and also a long way off! 

Water monitor lizard

GIraffes squaring up to spar

So what have I been up to? The biggest thing was my trip to Harare on Wednesday which was a lot less terrible than I was expecting, but was still one of the least comfortable trips of my life... For whatever reason, the immigration department of Zimbabwe requires me to go to Harare to collect my visa, which means a bus ride of over 12 hours each way. Got on the bus at 7:30pm on Tuesday, had my legs crushed by the guy in front of me, while the guy in the seat next to me took up half my seat too, and his son climbed all over me.... Eventually got off the bus in Harare at 9am! The countryside around Harare is beautiful - I have to admit that while I was exhausted from not sleeping, I did enjoy the last part of the journey. It may be somewhat ruined by power stations and more telegraph wires than I've ever seen, but it's still beautiful with these huge towers of rocks balanced on top of one another in impossible formations, and the mist coming off the ponds as the sun rises and they start to evaporate. Once you get to Harare...? It actually kind of reminded me of Plymouth! A very random mixture of concrete blocks and modern glass, with slightly too many people bustling around to be comfortable... I didn't spend much time outside though - I'd very much been told to minimise my time there, so I went straight to immigration, sat there for 4 hours while they put the sticker in my passport, then went straight back to the bus station for another 4 hour wait until my bus home arrived. Bus home wasn't much better - less comfy seats and this time next to a window which didn't close properly so was absolutely freezing despite my 3 jumpers! Was picked up from the bus station when I arrived at 5:30am, after 34 hours away, of which 26 were spent on a bus... and then straight off to work at 6:30am on Thursday! Slightly over obsessed with elephant research? Can't say I was entirely concentrating on Thursday's session.... 

Hamerkop

I've done 4 sessions of elephant research this week, spending several hours driving around the park and seeing almost none, and then several sightings out on the roads around town. One of the sightings included Van Gogh (F116) - the female elephant who is missing her left ear. We've only ever seen her once before, and it was several months ago with no view of her right ear - now maybe we can tie up a second female with her. Also done a Bird Survey session which yielded 27 species in the hour (the record being 28) plus another 5 at least during the rest of the drive. Bird survey is becoming more and more simply Alex and I showing off as new volunteers point at stuff and go "what's that?" and we just tell them! It's quite fun really! 

Van Gogh, F116

Waterbuck

Other research was occupancy survey on Monday morning, and 2 game counts. While I hate to admit it, I'm really not great at occupancy survey... I just can't see when this adult hyena track pointing North is so definitely different to that equal sized adult hyena track also pointing North... and when they say "this set of tracks has left the road so if we find a new set then it's a new hyena", why we then find another track and declare it to be the same hyena?! I'm just a bad tracker! Game counts we've done 2 and as usual it's been mainly impala and warthog. A few elephants and giraffes, a herd of 5 zebra, 2 bushbuck, several waterbuck and some buffalo. Not bad for a few hours work. 

Wartypigs!

Baby zebra!

Baboons on the rubbish dump after litter research

Final activity was helping out another research intern with his own research into the effect of non-biodegradable waste on elephants using the park. This essentially meant doing 3 litter picks of 500 m each along the Kazungula road, and estimating the weight of the trash that we collect. There was everything from drinks bottles and cans, to condom wrappers (yes we were very definitely wearing gloves!), to food containers. The number f beer bottles that have been launched out of windows was quite scary...

And that's it! Spending tomorrow doing elephant identification. I've now finished the March sightings, putting me back to less than 2 months behind!

Baby kudu!

Wow - another week gone by already! Feels like barely yesterday that I was writing last week's entry! Ever since my family came out here and we spent our incredible 2 weeks in Botswana, I'm struggling to not start counting down to going home. Partly because it made me miss everyone at home all the more, but also because that's been something I've been looking forward to for my entire stay in Africa, especially since I came to Zimbabwe and it suddenly felt a whole lot closer. Now, the next major milestone is.... the end.... Sounds stupid to be thinking about that already - after all I've worked out that in precisely (almost to the minute!) in 100 days, I will be  boarding my plane out of Victoria Falls. 100 days is a long time! 

White-backed vulture watching it's friends on the kudu

Monday started off with the normal bird survey. We had a slight issue with the GPS - the battery died before we even reached the park, so we had to turn around and head home to get new batteries.... what a shame - we ran into 3 big bull elephants in the road! One was Kenny, one was Arsenij, one I haven't yet had a chance to identify so have no idea.... Pretty cool to be able to recognise 2/3 of the group instantly though! Anyway, we made it back to the park, this time with a functional GPS and we counted 15 species on bird survey. Unfortunately our time ran out just before we got to the point where there were suddenly a whole big group of vultures circling and dropping to the ground. Didn't manage to count them on our survey, but we did get a great view.... and a flat tire when we went to investigate! It was a dead male kudu, but didn't see it that well. Game count in the afternoon yielded 4 giraffe, 3 elephants, 14 zebra, and a whole lot of warthogs and impala! We went through Chamabondo - an area that seems to be sometimes amazing with 50+ elephants, sable antelope, and zebras and giraffes around every corner... or have almost nothing whatsoever! 

African Road Block!

Juvenile Giraffes

Tuesday we headed back to Chamabondo in the morning for an Elephant and Giraffe research session, and saw no eles, but did find a big herd of giraffes, and even more awesome, a herd of 16 sable antelope, including a mixture of males, females and young ones! I've never seen more than 5 in a group before. They are just absolutely stunning creatures - very bold and clean pattern, big manes, powerful bodies, and horns that just go on forever! Got very excited to see them! Spent the afternoon on elephant IDs, on which I am still stuck on the high sighting from the 9th March.... only just over 2 months behind on a 2 month old project so far! 

Beautiful female Sable Antelope 

A zebra that thought it was a Sable...

Spotted hyena during night drive. Unfortunately
didn't get a shot of anything else that night.

Wednesday was a fantastic day. Started off not especially exciting - off to immigration for the last time to get my passport stamped. My TEP visa application has now been filed and accepted, so next week it will be off to Harare (a 12 hour bus journey each way - yippee....) to get my visa finally sorted. I spent most of the rest of the day on IDs (still didn't finish the 9th March sighting) and then it was actually not until 7:30pm that it got awesome - night drive time! Best. Night drive. Ever! We started off not seeing much but other cars for ages, and by the time we reached our turning point at 8:45pm, we'd seen 1 elephant by the road, and a duiker on the airstrip and nothing else... then things got good.... Almost instantly we saw a hyena at the side of the road, and then not long after saw a genet which was awesome. Moving on we came across a bushbaby, a wild cat, and then one of the vols suddenly goes "STOP!". We asked her if it was a hyena, and she was like "no, it was bigger than that".... My reaction was to just assume it was a big hyena since the only things bigger are lion, leopard, wildebeest, buffalo, and elephant.... Oh no, she knew it was a LEOPARD, she was just too scared to say it in case we laughed at her! WE SAW A LEOPARD ON THE MAIN ROAD!!!! Driving on, we got back to the airstrip and things got exciting again - first the duiker again, and then 7 hyenas all together, just wandering down the runway towards us! They didn't care about the car at all - they just kept coming like it was a game of chicken! We stopped and one of them walked right up to within a metre of the car and just looked at us.... really quite eerie, especially when another one starts whooping very loudly somewhere just out of sight.... And the best part - I so nearly didn't go this week! My volunteer coordinator from Livingstone, and the ALERT Placement Organiser from the UK were coming across, and if I went I wouldn't get a chance to see them before they moved on to Antelope Park at 4am Thursday morning... it was only the last minute thought that actually they would want t go to bed very quickly after arriving that made me decide I might as well go.... Good thing I did, since they were both still up when I got back anyway! We had a full hour and a half long chat, and I didn't get to bed until nearly midnight in the end, having got back at 9:30! Such a great night! 

The big yellow sun of Africa is trying
to make a return after wet season

Thursday morning meant another ID session, and no I STILL didn't finish that 9th March sighting....!! Only 4 elephants to go on it now - determined to finish it tomorrow (ignoring the fact that it's theoretically my day off!) . Elephant research in the afternoon wasn't much more thrilling - we saw 2 buffalo on the section of road that we nicknamed "Giraffe Loop"... and then haven't seen any giraffes on it since! Other than that, we pretty much sure nothing. Not especially exciting but that's what I love about research! The fact that sometimes you can have a drive like that, and sometimes you can have a drive like Wednesday night? That's what makes it exciting - no 2 drives are ever the same. Sunset drinks in the evening gave us a view of some more buffalo, and a very pretty bushbuck, but no elephants or hyenas like we sometimes see there. Never mind - can't ALWAYS  be on research!

At Masuwe Primary with all the kids and their shoes 

Friday was an amazing morning. We drove out to Masuwe Primary School, which is a small school in a very rural area, with a lot of very disadvantaged children. Some of them have to walk up to 10 km to school every morning, leaving at 4am in order to make it on time. In terms of the walking, many of them don't have shoes, and that was our activity on Friday morning. Our new volunteer coordinator, after she was here last time as a volunteer herself, fundraised and bought 165 pairs of plimsolls, all ordered in specific sizes for each child. Each pair needed the laces all putting in, so we laced up 165 pairs of shoes, and handed them all out individually for each kid. It was so heartwarming to do, and seeing them running around afterwards with the shoes was fantastic. Some of them were so protective that they wouldn't put them on because the ground was dusty - not quite the point! - and one little boy got so excited that he took his old shoes off, but never put the new ones on, so ended up running around barefoot carrying 2 pairs of shoes! So sweet. Game count in the afternoon was back to the days of when I first arrived - I don't remember the last time we had one which was just me and the 2 research interns from University of Zimbabwe. We saw some kudu, zebras, impala, 2 elephants, warthogs and a giraffe. Not a bad game count! We went out Friday night for some drinks again - our last night with our old volunteer coordinator. If you're reading this Amy, I've said it enough times but you were great! 

Liuwa <3

Week finished off with Saturday's activities of Seedling Project, Litter pick, and a lion walk. The seedling teak trees that we planted a few weeks ago are growing nicely, requiring us to go and water them once a week. With so many of us all there together, there wasn't enough work for us all on the seedlings, so rather than working on the seedlings, the rest of us worked on litter pick. We collected a total of 4 bin bags worth of rubbish from one short stretch of road, which was both disgusting and rewarding. It was also frustrating when we walked back over a section we'd literally just cleared, and had to pick up a crisp packet that someone had dropped right after seeing us picking them up.... Take it home PLEASE! We went for a lion walk when we were done with all the seedlings, taking Lila and Liuwa down to the river where they played and stalked each other. A lovely end to the morning. The rest of my day I spent sorting photos, writing this, and generally chilling out, ready for a long day of IDs tomorrow.

Cuddles with Lila 

Lila <3

Hope you've all had a good week, and I want to say thank you to everyone who reads this every week - it means a lot to me that so many people are so interested in how I'm getting on.

SQUANK! (Again)

Another week down, another enjoyable, if somewhat stressful few days! I've yet again been doing a lot of elephant IDs and it's been crazy busy. I've finally reached the end of the 406 elephants from Zambia that all need ID sheets, bar the last 12 that I still need data for from the researcher over there which means I've managed to finally start actually going through the sightings that I've recorded and identify who is there. Exciting, but also depressingly slow and unbelievably frustrating to have the very first sighting already going wrong! If we see the mother, then we record the calf of an individual as present whether we see the baby or not, so when I found F100 (Karina, named after one of my best friends from university!) there, I also listed her calf U4.... Fine apart from the fact that the only 2 calves I saw in the sighting were not U4... so now I have 1 too many calves.... Ah well - hopefully the next sighting goes better! Uh oh - that's the herd of 67+ for which our longest telescopic lens was 250 mm so the photos really aren't great.... HELP! I'm currently 2 months behind, doing the sighting from 9th March, and with every day my list grows longer. Friday night this week we went camping at Chamabondo again, and we saw a total of 83+ elephants! Too dark to photograph most of them, but still got a lot to go through! We saw another 83+ (good number it seems!) on Monday in the park too, so lots of work to be getting on with, especially since I actually broke the record and took over 1000 photos in one day...! Camping was great fun - a nice group all just sat around the campfire, sharing stories, enjoying a drink, and then burrowing down into warm sleeping bags to avoid the freezing temperatures! It was so cold... Last time I went out there I was roasting so barely took any warm clothes with me this time, and then everyone was so cold we barely slept and were all totally buried in blankets! We saw 5 hyenas on the way back which was awesome too! 

Stanley helping me with IDs....

Stars at Chamabondo

Stars and elephants!

Giraffes

Wednesday we went to Human Wildlife Conflict Mitigation as usual, and checked all the cameras. We're struggling with a major battery shortage, so if anyone has found this and is reading it before they come out here, PLEASE BRING BATTERIES!! We never see any animals, so there's nothing especially exciting out there, but we still had a good time. 

Pied Kingfisher

2 bird surveys done this week, and it's good to know that I'm improving with my species recognition. The last couple of times we've been out I've been running it, which is quite fun. Again we've averaged about 17 species, and have started listing birds that we hear now too - that I'm not good at yet... There was a guy here with a bird app on his phone that gave the calls as well as the photos, and that was really helpful. Think I'm going to get one of those for UK wildlife when I get home. Once we finish the bird surveys, we start doing elephant and giraffe research, and last time we went we saw hundreds of birds after bird survey ended, and then we saw no big animals at all! What's wildlife for if not keeping you on your toes eh? 

That's actually been all for my week: Human Wildlife, Birds and Elephants.... no occupancy, no hyenas, no community and so on. It's actually felt more like Livingstone - fewer jobs to do, more time on each one, and therefore feeling more productive!

Baboon baby!

Waterbuck baby

Little bee-eater

Hello! Sorry for not posting again sooner, I've been totally snowed under with work to do for the elephant project - research is now in full swing, but identification is still very behind so I've taking all my spare time trying to get further forward on that. Now that I've crossed the border to Zimbabwe, I'm setting up the elephant project on this side too, to find out which elephants are crossing and using both parks. However in order to do that, I have to have a full copy of the database from Zambia... 406 elephants to draw out ID sheets for, when each one takes a minimum of about 5 minutes! YIKES! So that's what I've spent a lot of my time doing in the past 2 weeks...

Squank! (M40)

Elephant research in the park is going well, and we're seeing at least one group almost every time we go out. Not just elephants either - giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, impala, baboons, LOTS of birds, waterbuck, bushbuck, and once last week, a lioness! It's interesting to see their interactions too - it's very rare that we see giraffes without zebra in tow, and there's usually wildebeest and impala with them too. Wildebeest follow zebra because the zebra trim the longer grass for them and then they can feed on the shorter growth underneath, but so far we don't see why they would join the giraffes. Bird surveys in the past couple of weeks have been good too, usually averaging about 15 species per hour long session. We usually do 1 hour out, then spend the rest of our morning doing more giraffe and elephant research drives - not complaining! 

Wildebeest

Martial Eagle

Giraffe

More giraffes!

Even MORE giraffes!

Baby waterbuck

A waterbuck which we couldn't
quite work out.... beard looks
like a male but no horns?

We've done a couple of game counts in the park, and I've been out on Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation survey once too. Human-Wildlife is interesting to see people's reactions, and occasionally we catch the odd cool animal on the cameras, but in general it can be quite tedious. It's a very long drive (about 80 km) out to the communities, and then driving around them it can be up to half an hour between each homestead, so in general it is simply a lot of driving for not a lot of time off the car. It's very rewarding though - you can really tell from how we're treated and how happy the homeowners often are to see us, that we are really making a difference to their lives, and that their livestock are so much safer thanks to the work that ALERT is doing.

Spotted hyenas

Hyena work has been fun, though slightly less productive at times than usual. We've now had a couple of sessions on which we've not seen any hyena. Having said that, last week we hadn't seen anything for ages, and I was just starting to think "we've never had a night drive and seen absolutely nothing" when we saw a family of 5 hyena, including 2 subadults and 2 juveniles, right on the road and we were able to sit with them for ages. They popped up out of a hole under the road so we think there is probably a den literally right underneath the main road from Vic Falls to Botswana! The previous week we also saw them - a group of 7 this time - but didn't get much further than that because a police car saw us stopped by the side of the road and sent us home because he was worried we were poachers.... only shots we could take were on cameras, but they followed us all the way home! That was quite scary... Hyena tracking I've done very little of in the past 2 weeks, as it is an activity for which I'm useful but not actually needed, so I decided that elephant IDs were a better use of my time.  

Lila with her grass bundle!

I've been to see the lions just once in the past fortnight, but it was a very good session. We started off with a lion walk, on which the cubs were a little bit mad and Liuwa was jumping on Lila quite a bit. We took them down to the river for a play, and we were gutted (and very glad!) to hear that when we arrived, we had missed meeting 3 wild lions (a big male and 2 cubs) just wandering through! We don't know what the cubs would have done if they'd met the wild group, but they probably would have wandered off with them which would have been a nightmare to try and get them back - at this age they aren't collared so they would be very difficult to track. Thankfully, no such situation arose.... but we were so annoyed to have missed seeing a wild pride! The rest of the morning we spent in the enclosure with Lila and Liuwa, playing with them with toys made of grass bundles tied to sticks. They had so much fun, and the grass was thoroughly destroyed! They really are just like giant pussy cats when they do that, though it reminds you how quick they can be, and how strong and sharp their claws are when they're hunting! 

I am actually in love with this photo...!

Dojiwe

Last thing to talk about for my 2 weeks was our visit to go and see a rescued orphan elephant. We had completely the wrong information - we thought she was a 15 month old elephant who they were planning on releasing back into the wild, so we were going to see her in order to discuss the release plans, and to find out if we could get the data from the collar they were planning on putting on her. It turned out she was actually 15 YEARS old, and had been living with humans since she was a tiny baby. She's completely domesticated, and is used to people riding her and petting her all the time, and most importantly, when scared she runs to people.... not an elephant that is going to be released! Instead of an actual release, the collar that her 'keepers' are fundraising for is for her own protection - she is allowed to just wander free if she wants to and sometimes will leave for a few days. The collar is so they can track her to make sure she doesn't wander into people's homesteads and then get shot. While it isn't quite the conservation project we were expecting, it's still a good cause. The elephant herself is gorgeous. Her name is Dojiwe, and she is just beautiful. We spent about half an hour watching her perform tricks and play with the water from the tap, then we went for a 2 hour walk through the bush with her and her handler, feeding her treats and taking so many photos we all struggled for batteries and memory space by the end! I absolutely loved my morning with her, and for her own sake I really hope that one day she does decide she wants to be wild, and manages to integrate with a wild herd. Just a wonderful day.

Sorry for yet another very long post, I hope I managed to sum everything up in not TOO many words!