Another week down, and that makes it now 44 weeks done. That's my minimum placement time done!

Chameleon

Juvenile Martial Eagle

Monday was an amazing day! Started out with Bird Survey where we saw 32 species, including a juvenile Martial Eagle which was amazing, and a lanner falcon which took us so long to identify we had to give up and try again when we got back to the house using the photos we took! We got back to the house to find the photography vols all together in a bush? Chameleon! Big and usually bright green, but he darkened and brightened a few times which was pretty awesome to watch. After lunch we were off to game count where at first we saw nothing much, until another car drove past us and said "big herd of elephants just up the road". We were expecting maybe 20? More like 120! They completely surrounded us, and there were a lot that I knew from Zambia too. The best part though, was not getting very close to a large number of eles, but seeing Sierra again. Having not mentioned her for a while (I haven't seen her since I left Zambia in February!) let me remind you - Sierra is a tuskless female elephant who always looks like she's smiling, and has always been extremely calm around the calm, making her the cutest elephant ever! I've missed her... Better still, I was talking to the Zambian researcher and he said that they saw her over there on Friday last week, and again on Friday this week! Seems her and the rest of Breeding Herd 7 are very busy crossing back and forth! Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon were elephant and giraffe research, but despite the obviously huge numbers that are currently nearby, we never found the big herd again. We did however come across a couple of smaller herds in Chamabondo, and had some great fun watching a troop of vervet monkeys on Thursday when we couldn't find any "girls"! I spent Wednesday morning, Thursday morning and Friday afternoon doing IDs for the elephant project, and am currently still exactly 2 months behind. 

Antichrist, F43. No this is cropped!

Vervet monkeys crossing the road

Baby hyena on den monitoring

Tuesday afternoon was hyena tracking and Wednesday afternoon was den monitoring. As usual we didn't see the hyena during tracking, and instead spent the time there looking for tracks and signs of other animals. I now spend my time on hyena tracking doing the telemetry which is fun, not to mention it means I get to wave the big aerial around and feel like a real wildlife scientist! Den monitoring on Wednesday afternoon was not quite so great as last week, as only one 1 hyena baby popped out this time rather than 3, and they didn't come so close, but still it was fun, and the wait at the start for them to appear made it all the more tense. We enjoyed it a lot and the little hyena was very sweet. They're so fluffy!

Liuwa during our Saturday lion walk

Friday morning I joined the community volunteers at Masuwe school, and while there we taught them how to come up with rhymes for words - cat/mat/sat/fat and book/look/took/cook - and then how to convert present tense to past tense. Honestly, I'm not sure how many of them actually understood the point, but at least some of them improved in their confidence at speaking out in front of the class to make suggestions or give answers. Probably the most difficult was trying to explain why "That is a book." works as a sentence, but "That is a look." doesn't, when they didn't seem to understand what the word look actually meant! Not something I had anticipated considering they came up with it as a rhyme for book! I just assumed they knew the word if they said it! We joined them for break time playing Bulldog, Duck-duck-goose, and failing to explain Stuck-in-the-mud! It worked until one of us got stuck, and then they all just came running and it turned into a big group hug because we put our arms out!

Liuwa climbing a tree

Saturday morning was another fun morning. After a much-needed lie in thanks to a great night out at Shoestrings Bar on Friday, we headed to the lions where 3 of us took Lila and Liuwa out for a walk. They were SO active today! Jumping in the river, leaping all over each other, and wrestling. They're so sweet!

Liuwa (I swear I got photos of Lila too!)
leaping over the stream!

Week 43 has now been and gone, meaning that if I was doing a normal-length placement for the university this would now be my last week coming up! Scary! As it is, this time next week is my 2 month mark, leaving me 2/3 of my way through my time in Zimbabwe.

"I'm flying without wings!"

A Lioness on Minefield Drive

So what has week 43 consisted of? PREDATORS! With 3 (possibly 4) sightings of wild lions during this week’s projects, and another one last week, there’s been a lot of talk of them in the volunteer house. I was there for 2 of the sightings, and for the 4^th possible sighting, during which time I was out of the car and stuck in a ditch… Litter can be a problem in the parks and there was a plastic bottle in the dried-up streambed that has been annoying us all for weeks. I finally insisted on just stopping and picking it up, and having had a quick check for dangerous animals, I got down into the ditch to pick it up. As soon as I was out of the car, 2 girls at the back started saying “lion”, but as that’s something of a common joke we all just ignored them... It was only once I was back in the car that we discovered they were being serious! We didn’t get a good enough look to be sure, but it seems likely that I was merrily picking up litter with a wild lion less then 30 m away… Whoops! Talk about the boy who cried wolf? We talk about the volunteers who cried lion! Besides the lions, we’ve also had a good hyena week. Occupancy survey was the busiest I’ve ever done, and a lot were hyenas. Not only did we start off with our first lion sighting (a big male on Chamabondo Vlei) but we had to start a second data sheet because there was so many spoors and scats to record. We even found evidence of Painted Dogs, which I am still desperate to see so fingers crossed for my remaining 2 months! Somehow that seems a lot shorter than it is… As well as Occupancy Survey, we also had 2 excellent sessions of Hyena Tracking. The first one was frustrating as we were SO close to the hyena but never actually managed to get a glimpse. We walked out to the point that they’d been when the last GPS signal was sent (about 1.5 hours previously) and instantly picked up a very strong signal from the VHF radio collar. 

Hyena pups

We steadily followed it through the brush, always getting almost to where we should get a look at it before it ran off again. After a while however, we spotted a pattern that was not just hyena-running-from-humans, but rather that we seemed to be following a herd of giraffes. We’d seen them from the road when we started tracking, and found that each time the giraffes ran away from us, so did the hyena. The hyena was not running from us, but rather running to keep up with the giraffes who could see us coming from much further away and ran! After nearly an hour they separated and we were forced to admit defeat as the hyenas ran away much faster than we could follow, but still it was a very exciting session! 

Are you watching us?

The second session was even better, although it can’t technically be classed as “tracking”. Last week during game count we found a place that we suspected was very close to a hyena den, so on Thursday afternoon we went to go and try to find the den itself, and monitor any individuals we saw going in and out. We found it extremely easily - it was actually very close to the road, right at the point that we’d glimpsed them. How did know instantly that it was the den? There was a little head poking out of the ground watching us! There were 3 sub-adult hyenas using the burrow while their mothers were away. They came out above ground, and spent most of their time just napping in the afternoon sun. After nearly an hour, they were chased underground by 2 warthogs who were extremely funny to watch! We were clearly parked across the path they’d been planning to take, but since we couldn’t risk scaring the hyenas halfway through our monitoring session, we couldn’t turn on the engine in order to move. The poor warthogs hung around for another hour trying to decide what to do next! Apparently walking around us was not a viable option… The pups were very interested but smart enough not to get too close! They did however come very close to us. Once the warthogs had gone and it had become very dark, they crept along the same path that the warthogs has been desperate to use, sniffing the air and getting closer and closer, trying to work out what we were. In some ways it’s a shame it was so dark, as we were unable to get photos of how close they were, but at the same time, I’m glad it was. I’m so obsessed with my camera that I often forget to actually just sit back and enjoy the experience of being that close to a hyena pup, or just enjoy watching the river and the bee eaters, rather than trying to get the perfect photo. The pups were adorable - how can they be classed as part of the “Ugly 5”?! I often think that about all of the “Ugly 5”… Apart from the Marabou Storks…! We had breakfast on Monday being watched by a herd of wildebeest - another one of the group that I think are actually quite fun-looking!

Waiting for Mum to return

Our breakfast view!

My charging friend!

Ok what have I done besides watch the large predators of the park? Well I also thought I was going to be killed by an elephant! Elephant and Giraffe Research (or “Gireles” as we now call them!) has been fairly successful this week, though we seem to have developed an annoying habit of always finding the elephants just as they’re leaving to head back into the bush, and never when they’re nicely out in the open! Makes counting them and identifying genders and ages very difficult, and taking photographs even harder! After one such encounter, we drove around to try and catch up with them, where we met a bull elephant on the road. He didn’t seem to mind us, and was ignoring us quite well, until another car arrived and that became too much… Unfortunately the moment that he decided to charge was right when I was stood precariously on the roof of our car, and not safely out of the way inside it! I’ve never dropped down from there that fast! Thankfully, it turned out to be just a mock charge, and he stopped about 15 m away. If he hadn’t, I don’t think being inside our open-topped vehicle would have actually given me much more protection…! (Don’t worry, the lion and the elephant are all of my near-death experiences for the week!) I spent Wednesday nice and safely tucked up in my room doing elephant IDs for 17^th April. The first of the sightings took me almost the entire day as they were yet again bad photos from unhelpful angles, but I finally straightened them out. I then proceeded to do the following 4 sightings all within the space of the next 20 minutes - I do love it when it’s just a single male with a nice big distinctive notch! 

Baby giraffes are so cute!

Sable Antelope

This morning was one of those days that manages to be both more relaxing than normal, and utterly exhausting! More relaxed because the responsibility of normal research is removed, but exhausting but children don’t get tired! We started off with a nice calm lion walk with Lila and Liuwa. They were fed yesterday so they weren’t in the mood to play or even walk much, so we only went a short distance, then sat down and let them just play and sleep by the river. It’s a very nice way to spend a Saturday morning, just sitting in the sun by the river, chatting to new friends, and watching lions sleep! They’re getting so big now too! I don’t come on lion walks very often, and haven’t seen Lila for ages - she’s starting to look like a real lioness! She’s HUGE! It won’t be long now before the walking stops for these lions. They’re getting too old, and could potentially do some damage if they were to decide that no they really don’t want to go on another walk! The time is coming for them to progress to Stage 2 and join some other lions in a new release site. After the lion walk we drove to the Rose of Charity Orphanage for Kids Club. I’ve given up teaching them volleyball there for 2 reasons. A) They’re already quite good, and B) They seem to have a knack for puncturing the balls… I only have 5 for them, having left another 5 in Zambia, and of those 2 are already punctured from 2 sessions… We’re going to hopefully do some more controlled sessions during a school lesson instead. The problem with not having a specific aim for the session though, is that instead of playing certain games or drawing pictures, we simply become human climbing frames which is fun at first but after an hour of having 3 kids trying to climb on you at once, while you’re also pushing the swing for another child, and the one on your back is yelling “run away, he’s going to eat me” in your ear every time a boy comes anywhere within 10 m of you, it tends to be quite exhausting! All good fun though, and while an hour is often enough for us to be ready to drop, I’ll still miss these kids when it’s finally time to say goodbye to Africa. 

Giraffe crossing the road

Kudu and Baby

Sorry for yet another crazy-long post! One day I might learn to write concisely (I’ll have to for writing my university report for the year!) but for now I hope you don’t mind reading my long-winded ramblings! Have a good week!

King of the Skies

Another busy week gone, and this next post will probably be just as long as any other!

Victoria Falls from the Bridge

Started off my week with a very enjoyable Sunday afternoon on the Victoria Falls Bridge. The Bridge is officially No-Man's-Land which means that there are no visa costs, so I met up with the Zambian researcher there. We spent almost 4 hours there just chatting and catching up - a really nice afternoon. 

Back to work on Monday morning, and we started out with Bird Survey as usual. We counted 18 species, and had particularly good fun this week - for whatever reason we were in rather odd moods and we just laughed most of the way around! The quelea were incredible that morning - literally thousands of tiny birds flocking together, their wings flashing in the sunlight. After we were done with birds, we did our usual couple of hours of Elephant and Giraffe Research on which, as usual, we saw no elephants within the park, but then found 6 on the road by Big Tree. In the afternoon we had game count and it was an awesome one! It took us a long time to find anything, and we were wondering where all the impala and warthogs were... That was answered when we found lions! There were 2 - an adult female and a sub-adult male. The total Game Count came up with waterbucks, wildebeest, impala, and giraffes, but surprisingly, no warthogs!

Lioness in the Park

Sunrise over the Falls Spray

Tuesday started off with Elephant and Giraffe Research, on which we saw a few elephants though again they were around the Big Tree. I spent the afternoon doing Elephant IDs, which went well but the sighting I started with on Monday was the same one that I'll be continuing (and probably not finishing!) tomorrow! I spent most of Wednesday doing that same sighting too. By Wednesday afternoon I couldn't bear the thought of continuing the terrible sighting, and spent that starting the next one, but I'll have to go back to the previous one tomorrow...! As well as the IDs, I also did a sunrise photography shoot and the evening night drive. Sunrise shoot was fun, but unfortunately due to some of the volunteers going on the lion project at 7:15, we actually had to leave early and we missed the sun appearing over the horizon! Can't complain though - the time before sunrise can often be better than the sunrise itself! The night drive was as eventful as the last 3 weeks in terms of seeing hyena... Not one! We did however see a buffalo which was cool, and even better, an eland! I've only ever seen them in the distance, so although it was very dark and still difficult to see, it was awesome to see one closer up.

The Zambezi Gorge

Hyenas in the Vlei

Thursday started out with our second Game Count of the week, after the ranger that we booked for hyena tracking had to back out. It was almost as exciting as the last one! We went through Chamabondo Vlei this time, where we didn't see a huge number of animals, but when we did see them they were awesome! Elephants, zebras, warthogs, impalas, and giraffes are quite common sightings, but a steenbok and 3 spotted hyenas?! Not something you see often! The hyenas included 2 juveniles which were adorable - how can they be classed as a part of the ugly 5?! I have the same opinion for the warthogs, baboons and wildebeest, though I'll admit that the marabou storks are thoroughly deserving of their "Ugly 5" status...! Getting home from Game Count, I finally got what I've been asking for since August... I've jumped out of the car (about 4 feet) several times a day for the past 9 months, and have always managed to remain upright, but this time I landed awkwardly and ended up rather hard on my hands and knees! All anyone could comment on though, was the fact that my camera seemed to be more important than my face - automatically grabbed the camera and pulled it out of harms way, rather than catching myself! The afternoon was back to Elephants and Giraffe Research and we made our way back to Chamabondo, hoping to get another glimpse of the hyenas, but no luck. We found 2 groups of giraffes, and 3 groups of elephants right at the end, but they were in particularly awkward mood today - as soon as they heard us coming they were running off into the bushes, and all I ever saw was glimpses of backsides disappearing into the brush. We did get a great view of a Black-backed Jackal however. The sunset was fantastic, and the full moon even better!

Black-Backed Jackal

Watching the Hyenas in the grass

Friday was a day that we'd been looking forward to a lot but was slightly unfortunate... We had planned a full day game drive through the park, exploring some of the loops off of Zambezi Drive that we haven't been able to explore on shorter drives. However, even when on the normal sections of the road we barely saw anything, and on the loops themselves we saw even less. We had lunch by the river where we saw a hippo, and that day produced more kudu than I've ever seen in a day, but other than that there was a waterbuck, some giraffes, impala, warthogs, and nothing else. We ended up getting back much sooner than expected because we hadn't spent any time in one place to watch anything! We got back and I spent the afternoon moving into my new room - the new photography manager is arriving today and she's taking my old room, so at last after nearly 10 months, I'm finally going to have to move into a room that will require sharing! I've had a good run... The evening was also disappointing - we had planned to go to the Falls in the evening to see the full moon, which causes a lunar rainbow in the spray. Unfortunately, we were given the wrong information, and we arrived too late. We're going to try again tonight, but it's supposed to be cloudy... Never mind - maybe next month! 

Giraffe on our Game Drive

Our lunchtime view

The Full Moon over Chamabondo

And now finally for Saturday. We spent the morning first watering the seedlings that we planted back in late February when I first arrived in Zimbabwe. They don't seem to be doing brilliantly - they are so small still that people don't realise what they are, and they just get trampled as people walk along the side of the road. They are however still alive, and hopefully they will grow. We finished quickly, and from there we went along to the Rose of Charity Orphanage for the next couple of hours. We played with the kids for ages, and I've finally been able to play some volleyball again! The children were so cute, and loved playing with the volleyballs and as always, my camera! I have many photos of random objects now...!

How can another week have gone already?! I swear time is starting to speed up... 

Victoria Falls from above

Started off with the greatest (very early!) 21st Birthday Present ever! Sunday dawned grey, cloudy and dull for the first time in weeks which scared me for a while, but the weather improved around mid day. I spent that morning writing my university report, then life definitely improved in the afternoon when a car came to pick me up, and took me towards Masuwe, to the helipad. The helicopter flight was incredible. I was in the front next to the pilot, giving me a fantastic view all around and even between my feet! We flew around the falls a couple of times in each direction, giving a wonderful view of the spray flying up from the waterfall and the rainbows through it. The river is so beautiful from above, and the sun was now out and sparkling on the water. The river is dropping so the islands are beginning to show making it even more beautiful. I'm glad I waited for the dry season to return instead of doing the flight in the wet season - the spray was beautiful, and the waterfalls are still large enough to be stunningly impressive, but the spray is now small enough that you can actually see the falls! After our 4 laps of the falls, we flew a short way upriver until we were over the largest island opposite Livingstone, then back down and along some of the lower gorge. We did one last lap of the falls each way, then flew back towards the helipad. Taking a 5-minute detour, we saw a small herd of giraffes, hanging out with some zebras and baboons, before the helicopter eventually landed back where we started. It was a full half hour flight, but it felt like 5 minutes! One of the most beautiful views I've ever seen, and I repeat what I've said before - of all the things that I'll miss about being here, I think the river may actually be top of the list... Apart from the elephants of course! The Zambezi is just so beautiful and there is just nothing like it at home. 

The Smoke That Thunders

Anyway - back to work on Monday! We started out with Occupancy Survey in Chamabondo Vlei, where we found tracks for hyenas, civet cats, and most excitingly, painted dogs. I've still never seen a painted dog, and I'm getting slightly desperate! I really want to see one, and so many of the volunteers have seen them now when they go to Chobe. Not that long ago some of them saw a pack fighting a group of hyenas! Anyway, occupancy survey was fun, and as we leave at 6:30am, it's never too warm for walking along the roads. The afternoon I was supposed to be going out on game count, but with so many IDs to get through I stayed behind and started on the last sighting from 14th April. The photos are terrible - it was almost dark when I took them and they're all movement-blurred and grainy... It's going to take a long time...

Zebra that we saw during Elephant and Giraffe Research

Tuesday started off with another session of work on the project being done by one of the other interns - his work on the improper disposal of non-biodegradable waste. There are 25 campsites along the river on turnings off from Zambezi Drive. 10 were done last week, but we spent the morning walking along through the other 15 sites and picking up any litter that we found. I was glad to discover that there's remarkably little there. In all 15 sites we only found some paper, a plastic bottle, and the wrapper off of a water bottle. It was slightly annoying to hear that there was a pride of 4 lions right at the point that we were walking towards - we wanted to go and find them, both to see them and more importantly, to make sure we knew where they were as we walked along! The afternoon we were back out in the park, but this time on Elephant and Giraffe Research. Knowing that there had been lions around in the morning, we were rather hoping to find them, but there was no sign. Unfortunately the elephants were nowhere to be seen anywhere either. We went for sunset drinks afterwards at the safari lodge, where we watched a few marabou stork down by the water. 

Wednesday was a rather odd day... We were supposed to have a full day of Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation Survey as usual, but it went somewhat wrong... First we got a flat tyre before we even reached the first homestead - normally we get to the first one around about 10am, this week we got there at 11:15! We did the first two homesteads, and got back on the car to head to the third when we heard that the car was being called in for a service that day! We literally just stopped for lunch and came home! I spent the rest of the day doing more IDs instead. At 7:30 we headed out on night drive, but it was very similar to last week - absolutely nothing to see...

African Hawk Eagle

Thursday started off with Elephant and Giraffe Research. We went to Chamabondo to look for them first, where we found no giraffes, but 1 small group of elephants. We also saw a beautiful African Hawk Eagle perched in a tree. The elephants were entirely unhelpful that morning. Firstly, the group that we saw in Chamabondo was hidden very well in bushes, but they also got quite aggressive. The first elephant that we saw crossing the road really didn't like seeing us there... She was almost all the way across the road when we came around the corner, at which point she spun around, tossing her head, and getting ready the charge at us! We made a hasty retreat back around the corner, and unfortunately missed all the rest of the group bar 2 more females and a calf, so we have no idea how many there were. Once we left the park, we went for a quick drive around the Big Tree as usual, and found a group of 8+ elephants but they were too far away and hidden in bushes to determine an exact number or to get any photos for identification. The afternoon was not so pleasant... Hyena tracking is normally quite fun as we go bush whacking through the park, but this time the GPS point that we were heading for (showing the last point where the hyena was) was right on the edge of the town, just in among the trees next to the road. Being right next to the town, the trees and scrub are absolutely full of litter, including some pretty disgusting bits and pieces that I never want to have to walk through again! When we finally found the point there was a single paw print, but no other signs of the hyena and the telemetry aerial could pick up no signal from the VHF collar. 

The first of the groups of elephants

Bird survey was the research activity for Friday. At first we saw very little, probably because of the cold. It's getting to be absolutely freezing whenever we go out early or late, and even in the middle of the day I often still wear my jumper on the car now. Once the sun came out, the birds began to get more active, and by the end of the hour-long session, we'd counted 19 species, including several that we don't often see: black-crowned tchagra, village indigobird, orange-breasted bush-shrike, and a grey-backed camaroptera. Afternoon was great - we went camping again in Chamabondo, and when we arrived at the platform we saw so many elephants! Broke the record this time when we reached a total elephant count for the day of minimum 108! Of course I wasn't able to get the best data because after a while it got dark and the elephants changed from easily-identifiable individuals with obvious ear notches and nicks, to large dark blobs shifting around by the black waterhole. We had really good fun watching the elephants, and also saw springhares and zebras. The best part was definitely the cute little baby elephant that, when trying to drink, fell into the waterhole! It was so cute! At first, the calf just swam and played about in the pool, but then the group started to move away and the calf couldn't get out! Mummy-Elephant had to come over to the pool to pull it out, and eventually hooked the calf out with her trunk around its tail. Finished off our night with s'mores around the fire, roasting marshmallows and chocolate on sticks. We woke up very cold on Saturday morning, and then we headed home for much-needed showers, and now it's time to get back on with more elephant IDs!

Helping her calf out of the Waterhole!

Enjoying a nice long drink

Yet another ele!

We didn't drink enough... Had to come back!