3 weeks left! Every week seems to go faster, and equally feels like much more than just a week... Having said that, it's again going to be quite a short entry since we again barely saw anything!

It's been another quite frustrating week in terms of animal sightings. We've had one significant elephant sighting which was this morning, and there were about 30 or 40 of them, but all hidden in amongst the bushes while another one ran at us as soon as we tried to get closer... Wasn't the greatest ever sighting... Elephant research has been extremely annoying this week - we've spent 13 hours in the park and no elephants in that time! Saw a couple of sightings outside of research time, but then it's not research time so I can't research them! Getting worried now - I was promised that August there are herds of 250 elephants on Chamabondo vlei, so Iwas hoping to get one of those during the elephant research session that will happen on my 21st Birthday - that would be a pretty amazing present from the park - but we've barely seen any at all over there recently. There's hardly been any giraffes either. Bird Survey was more successful, counting over 30 species during our drive. 2 Game counts this week also didn't turn up much except for impala and warthogs, though recently we've been seeing more and more waterbucks to the point that we must be approaching some kind of record!

Really the big news this week is that our 2 local research interns (from the University of Zimbabwe and the National University of Science and Technology) are leaving and being replaced by 2 new ones. We spent this week with all 4 of them, helping to train the new people in the different activities, and then saying goodbye to the old interns. We had our differences (sometimes bigger differences than others!) but I'll still miss those 2.

And that really honestly is it! I basically spent the whole week either doing IDs or in the park, and since we didn't see much in the park at all, there's not really much exciting to say! Will upload pictures of the stuff we did see when I manage to get them onto my laptop. Other than that, talk to you next week!

Week 48, and it's going faster with every week! In precisely 1 month (and 5 hours!) I'll be landing back at Heathrow airport after a full 24 hours of travelling and then it's just the long drive home. This has been a very enjoyable week, and we've got a lot done, but I'm afraid to say that when typing it up it sounds very unproductive and quite tedious! We just didn't see much! Also sorry for the lack of pictures again, I'm really struggling with getting photos off my camera!

My week started with Bird Survey on Zambezi Drive and Minefields Drive. We got some pretty cool species including kingfishers, doves, francolins, babblers, tchagras, swallows, buntings, bee-eaters, hornbills, vultures, storks and lapwings. We counted a total of 29 species in our session, then went off looking for giraffes and elephants but we didn't find any. That fairly well sums up our attempts at finding elephants this week!All 3 of our elephant and giraffe sessions only produced a couple of giraffes and no eles. Afternoon Game Count was fun but it was pretty much entirely warthogs and impala. Never mind - I may complain about them now, but not much longer that I'll have them everywhere! That happened with both of our game counts, seeing only a couple of giraffes and kudu during each.

Thursday morning we went out for a Snare Sweep at the golf course at Elephant Hills hotel. The hotel puts out salt licks and obviously the grass and vegetation is constantly watered so it's very attractive to animals. This makes it a lovely course, but unfortunately also very attractive to poachers too. Having said that, we found no snares! Had a nice walk though!

Did more community work than normal this week, going to Monde School to teach volleyball as well as doing seedling project and litter pick. When we arrived at the school there were about 200 children waiting for us and getting very excited as we climbed out of the car! Trying to organise them was something of a nightmare, particularly since there was a whole lot of shouting and they were all trying to ambush those of us carrying equipment so they could go off and play. We eventually managed to divide into football, rugby, volleyball and then the small ones just playing simpler games and running around. I took the grade 4 and 5 girls for volleyball, and we quickly got the net set up and split the group into 4 teams, 2 with me and 2 with another volunteer. Since we only had one net, we swapped which groups were using it about halfway through. Only being there for 2 hours meant we had to jump through skills pretty quickly, but I got them to do catch-push volleys decently, some not bad digging, and then passing to each other with 3 touches on either side of the net. Unfortunately they couldn't seem to understand that the ball didn't have to go in the same order every time, or that they were playing against each other! It was more of a nice game of catch between 6 of them while the others stood back and watched. When I tried to get them to mix it up, the other 6 passed it very nicely 1-2-3-over between them and the first 6 stood back and watched! Trying to teach children who don't speak great English and aren't confident enough to say when they don't understand, is not the easiest thing I've had to do here! They were starting to get bored (unsurprising when there was no apparent element of competition to their throw and catch game!) so I decided to give them a go at hitting, first just at the ground, then over the net. This actually went quite well, particularly aided by 2 teachers who seemed to know what they were doing and spoke Ndebele, and we did quite well until we tried to bring in blocking and even the teachers couldn't explain that they had to stand at the net and try to stop the ball coming over by jumping with their hands in the air! We then swapped off the net and spent the rest of the time either practicing volleying and digging more, having some fun serving against a wall, and generally playing a game of How Long Can We Keep The Ball Off The Floor. They seemed to really enjoy it, and found it hilarious that I decided (considering the sand was sodden it was effectively beach volleyball) to join them playing bare foot! They sang us songs before we left, then it was home for an afternoon of elephant IDs. 

A very cute family!

Got your nose!

Week 46 has been another elephanty week, with 3 ID sessions and 1 full day of identification, along with 3 sessions in the park out looking for them and the giraffes. Our first drive (Tuesday morning) was less than successful, with no sign of any elephants or giraffes anywhere, but that is actually fairly expected during morning sessions these days. It's too cold - the animals don't want to come out of hiding until later in the day. Similarly with the birds on bird survey, we only counted 1 new species to add to last Friday's list. Friday's morning session was slightly more successful, catching a glimpse of 2 adult males, but unfortunately they were right at the part of the road that we couldn't follow them as the sand became too deep for our car! Stupid wildlife.... Why can't they just come out in the open and pose nicely for photos?! We then got a flat tyre halfway back, still stuck on the tiny side road that no one else comes down, with a car jack that wasn't big enough for the car! We spent quite a while collecting rocks to sit the jack on, so that it would be big enough to lift the car up! The rest of the waiting time we spent amusing ourselves by watching an ant-lion attempting to kill a tiny beetle, and the beetle trying to get out of the ant-lion's pitfall trap... Wasn't quite so exciting but good enough to keep us occupied until our driver had fixed the car! Thursday had the best elephant and giraffe research session of all. We started out as normal and quickly found lots of fresh elephant tracks, but all heading back in the direction that we had come, so clearly they had already got to the accessible areas of the park and moved on through. Eventually we found a set of tracks heading up the hill to "Elephant Baobab" so we tried following them. We got to the top of the hill and drove around to no avail, but from the top we were able to spot a group of about 5 giraffes down where we had previously been! We raced back down and counted a total of 18 in one herd which was awesome. We spent a long time with them, before heading on further up Zambezi Drive. We drove on and on, and were close to reaching our time limit so asked the driver to turn around. He decided to go around the corner to turn around, and there they were! A herd of 13! Lucky timing! There were 4 little calves that were unbelievably cute, all playing together. Their mothers were slightly less cute considering that they were really not especially happy to see us...!

Mummy and Baby

Other research activities this week only consisted of Game Count and Hyena Den Monitoring. Den monitoring is definitely not as exciting as it was previously.... This was the second session in a row with no sign of the hyenas! We've now obscured all the tracks around the den and in a few weeks, if we still haven't seen them again, we'll go and have a look and see if there are any new ones. Game Count was not especially productive, but was good for Elephant and Giraffe Research! We went down a road that we don't use much, and found 2 herds of eles, and a herd of giraffes. Other than that there were 3 warthogs at the main park gate and nothing else! To do a Game Count and not record a single impala is impressive...! There was the cutest little tiny baby with the second group!

And now for Saturday. First thing to say is happy birthday and congratulations to my sister for graduating vet school today after 5 years of hard work! Woo! I'm celebrating her birthday with a litter pick, then a lion walk with Lila and Liuwa, an afternoon of relaxation (and maybe some elephant IDs if I can be bothered though I'll probably spend all day tomorrow doing them so that's my 6th work day of the week!), and then tonight we're having a 4-days-late 4th July party for the American volunteers! Spending a significant amount of time this afternoon making punch, sangria and peach cobbler! Looking forward to dinner of burgers....

African Road Crossing!

Lila and Liuwa taking a drink

47 weeks down, 5 to go!

This has been another slightly crazy week with 4 days of work, and then 2 days of touristing at Antelope Park with another intern. Antelope Park in Gweru is the third place that ALERT has projects and we both wanted to go and visit before we leave.

U61, now named Bon Jovi!

Monday was an early start as usual, this time for Occupancy Survey in Chamabondo. For the second time in a row we had fresh leopard prints! No sign of the leopard though... We saw elephants while on the road which we hoped meant that the big herds would have returned to the vlei, but there was no sign of them. On the way to breakfast afterwards I spotted our FIRST lion of the week, really close to the road but it took me so long to point her out to everyone that she was gone before I got the photo! Not making THAT mistake again! Game Count in the afternoon we saw warthogs, giraffes, waterbuck, elephants, kudu, impala and zebra. We saw so many elephants!

Giraffes crossing the road

Tuesday started with elephant IDs, and then we headed out in the afternoon on elephant and giraffe research during which the animals were being extremely helpful - one small group of waterbuck, one small group of kudu, a few warthog and impala, and other than that nothing but elephants and giraffes! Just alternating between species sightings! A good session! 

Wednesday was Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation first, visiting all of the homesteads and checking the lights and cameras. It's a very long drive and normally can be quite dull, but thanks to the new BirdLasser app that I downloaded for bird survey, I had some more fun than usual because I was able to practice my bird knowledge and also was able to do some research mapping. We got back quite early, and I spent my afternoon doing elephant IDs and then trying to sort out my camera. Not a problem with it in terms of actual function, but my memory card is full, as is my laptop, so I have no way to empty the card! HELP!

Lions on the Road in front of us

Thursday was a very interesting morning when we went out on elephants and giraffes. No actual elephants and giraffes, and only a couple of sightings each of impala and warthogs.... and 2 separate lion sightings?! The very first animals we saw when we entered the park were a group of 4 lions (3 adult females and 1 sub adult male) just walking down the road ahead of us. We'd been watching their tracks as we went along and knew they were fresh, but hadn't dared to hope they were THAT fresh! We went way up along Zambezi Drive, then turned back and came along Chamabondo too, and there we saw another adult female (much further away this time) walking away from the waterhole. By the time we reached the end of the drive I didn't know whether I should be extremely happy for the volunteers that they saw so much, or disappointed for them that they saw so little! In the afternoon I stayed back to do IDs, and get as many of my remaining photos off my camera as possible! We got on the bus and headed to Antelope Park after dinner, leaving Chinotimba bus terminus at 9pm, and not arriving until 5:45am... OUCH!

Sub-adult male lion in the park

Baby Zebra!

Sunset over Zambezi National Park

Baby Shaka!

Meeting Jeche at Antelope Park

Antelope Park is extremely different from the other 2 ALERT projects. There are far more lion, and many more activities to do there, but very little environmental research since it's a game park not a national park. Personally the research is obviously my favourite part, so I'm glad I'm not based there, but I can see that as a lions volunteer or a tourist it's a great place to be. The accommodation they gave us was great! A big tent by the river that was more like a canvas chalet than a tent! Unfortunately, Gweru is SO much colder than here that even with the heater on and 2 blankets on my bed, I still ended up sleeping in my thick walking socks and jumper! Also with 114 lions on the property, you tend to wake up to a lot of roaring which does sound awesome. The first day we went out on an Elephant walk, helping to move them from their nighttime boma to their daytime one. Maybe it's just that I'm normally always in a car, but I swear that all 4 of those eles were HUGE in comparison to the ones here! Jeche is the male, and I swear we could've just walked underneath him without bending if we'd wanted to! After breakfast we went to join in with meat prep for the 3 oldest cubs. Having been told that we weren't going to be doing any meat prep, we didn't have gloves with us so didn't join in, but that meant we were able to watch as the cubs ate it. The meat was all put in the trees for them to jump up and pull it out. 2 of them were up for it, but there was 1 that couldn't deal with the effort and just waited for the others to get it out and eat their fill so she could go in and finish up the leftovers! Lunchtime was followed by a walk with Shaka, their 6 month old cub. He's SO CUTE! He just comes running over and bounces on you: ATTACK OF THE FLUFFBALL! He thankfully hasn't yet worked out claws or teeth, so it's just a headset in the calves by a fluffy mass. He's just the sweetest little thing. In the afternoon we went out to the release site and we got our first view of the Ngamo Pride. 

AS5

They are a seriously impressive bunch of lions! AS5, the oldest male of the lions born in the site, is just stunning! He's enormous! We went out again the next morning where they were playing about in the long grass before it got too hot. We did activity budgets each time to see what they were doing and to observe their interactions with another. We headed back to camp for a full English breakfast, then we were off to do a horseback safari through the game park. It's been a long time since I got on a horse, and I was far from a good rider before! The instant I got on the horse it was clear I was the least experienced... They all rode off and it took me a minute to even make "Carly" move! Even as they were riding away my horse was trying to turn back and go back to the paddock. Eventually once we were further away from the stables she was ok and while slow, we kept plodding along. Unfortunately we only saw wildebeest and impala, desperately looking for the giraffes but we couldn't find them. We finished with a swim, riding the horses into the water. Again, Carly was determined not to go in so only my feet got wet, but honestly with how freezing the water was I can't complain! Heading back she suddenly sped up - I really don't think that horse wanted to go out! Lunchtime we had no activity planned so we took the canoes out on the river and had a laugh about how useless we were at going in the right direction! We were supposed to be going on a cub sit with Shaka in the afternoon but unfortunately that was cancelled so we headed out to the Ngamo Pride for the third time in 2 days. Third time lucky! We finally were able to get photos of them without the release site fence in the background, and they did a big pride roar which was amazing even without them being all together when they did it! Back for dinner and a chat with the volunteers there, before coming back to the bus station and time for another 8-hour bus journey home. Got back at 5:30am and went straight to bed!

Out for a walk with Shaka

In the Ngamo Release Site

Week 45 - what's happening?! This week seemed to be going by slower than usual, but it still seems like only yesterday I was finding my best photos for last week's post...! More importantly, it's 1st July...  I GO HOME NEXT MONTH?!!

The Team out on Occupancy Survey

Zebras that decided we were a terrifying predator!

Monday was a very exciting morning. We started off with occupancy survey along Minesfield Drive, which is a road through the park that we frequently use but rarely see anything on: a few giraffe, some wildebeest, buffalo a couple of times, and on one occasion lions. Clearly we should be using it at night! We found tracks for lion, hyena, painted dog (which I still haven't seen... a group went to Chobe last week and saw a pack of them take down a kudu then fight off a BROWN hyena! AAAAHHHH!!), and leopard! Why do we never see the actual animals?! We then went around and collected the trail cameras that we set up a couple of weeks ago (with the necessary cartwheels and stupid faces to set off the cameras one last time before we collected them of course!) and they had caught some awesome stuff! (Since it's not my data I can't say what, but there were several species that none of us had ever seen on there!). Afternoon was Game Count on which we saw 6 species: giraffe, elephant, warthog, impala, bushbuck and waterbuck. Game Count has somewhat been the bane of my life this week - there was a whole lot of data input that needed doing, and since I needed that data for elephant research, I ended up first inputting it all, and then going through analysing it too! Took me hours.... The problem with the elephant data, was that it turned out that the GPS format converter I was using was completely useless! Was just giving me random locations that weren't always even in Zimbabwe when it came to plotting them on the map of the park, so I had to go back through and find every entry that I had taken from Game Count and reconvert them, as well as going through and checking every other GPS point to make sure they came out in the right place. After almost an entire day on this, I finally got it all figured out... Phew! There's still some wrinkles that need smoothing out with the elephants, but in general we seem to be on track. I'm still over 2 months behind on my IDs, but I'm currently blaming that on the fact that every ID session I've tried to do this week I've ended up doing Game Count data work instead! 

Kenny the Elephant peering through the branches at us

2 sessions of elephants and giraffes this week - Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning. The elephants are apparently not in a friendly mood, and have decided to hide away in the areas of the park that we can't reach rather than coming out to let me count them... We saw none... We did however find 4 on the way back from Friday's Bird Survey, and they were seen on both Game Counts (the second of which I skipped to do another ID session) so they are definitely still here somewhere! Seen quite a few giraffes this week though so still good sessions. Bird Survey on Friday was a bit different for 2 reasons. Firstly we went to Chamabondo this time, so there was a different selection of birds than we normally get. We still saw the standards: Cape Turtle Dove, Grey Go-Away Bird, Emerald-Spotted Wood-Dove and others similar, but we got several that we couldn't identify on sight, and have had to photograph and bring back to identify. We saw a Lizard Buzzard which was exciting, and 2 Cinnamon breasted buntings that were particularly nice sightings. The second reason it was different was because we were using a new system - SABAP2 (the South African Bird Atlassing Project 2) has an app for writing down bird locations, so as well as our old pencil-and-paper system, I was inputting data directly into their database. This allows far more information to be collected quickly, including recording behavioural information, locations of nests, numbers of individuals, and information on population dynamics. It's both very interesting, and quite scary - it feels a lot more official! Good fun though, and I like the birds. I'm definitely going to be putting in a lot more effort on my birding (and plants, and insects, and reptiles, and mammals....) knowledge when I get home. 

Southern Red-Billed Hornbill eating a seed

Lilac Breasted Roller in flight

Buffalo blocking our path

Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation on Wednesday was quite fun, particularly at the homestead with tiny puppies that come and jump all over you and lick every hand they can reach! We've found a new route to get to the communities, so it's a bit shorter and a much more scenic drive, and the roads have to be driven more slowly which makes it more comfortable too. Definitely a nicer way to go.... There were several reports of lions from the homesteaders this week, though they all said the lions simply walked around and moved on to somewhere else - a good sign that the lights are still doing their job! 

Last activity of the week was Kids Club on Saturday morning. This was both very nice, and slightly frustrating - we were there for about an hour playing with the children and that was good fun (if exhausting and somewhat painful at times!) but then another group turned up with donations to the orphanage. Of course this is fantastic, and the children were all delighted with their new rucksacks full of presents, but it did rather put a stop to our games! One little girl spoke no English, and it took us a long time to make her understand that while we were happy to keep pushing her swing, she'd get a bag if she went over with everyone else. It was really heartwarming to see how much donations make a difference.